On 12 September 1942, in the middle of the Second World War, Albert Einstein wrote a letter to nineteen-year-old German-Jewish refugee Hans Kaufmann in Santiago de Chile. In it, he expresses grave misgivings about the creation of a central authority to protect Jewish interests. The letter was in answer to a communication by the young man in which he had asked Einstein to head a Jewish organization which would defend the interests of Jews, their dignity, and the project of a national home in Palestine. In celebration of the gift of this important letter penned by the world-famous Nobel prize winner, the Archive of the Jewish Museum Berlin is hosting a symposium dedicated to topics relevant to the letters of Hans Kaufmann and Albert Einstein: the history of the Kaufmann family, German-Jewish emigration to Chile during the Nazi era, Albert Einstein’s attitude towards the Jewish national project, and the status of Zionism in the year 1942.
With Ofer Ashkenazi, Daniel Kaufmann, Judy Kaufmann, Derek Penslar, Aubrey Pomerance and Irmtrud Wojak.
Julia Friedrich is Director of Collections at the Jewish Museum Berlin.
Aubrey Pomerance is Head of Archives at the Jewish Museum Berlin.
Irmtrud Wojak is Managing Director of the Fritz Bauer Forum and the Buxus Foundation. She is a historian, author and curator. Her research focuses on contemporary legal history, exile, and cultures of memory. In 2004 Wojak curated the first major exhibition on the Auschwitz trial, and in 2009 she published the authoritative Fritz Bauer Biography. She was Deputy Director at the Fritz Bauer Institute in Frankfurt until 2005. In 2007/08, she was Head of the Historical Department at the International Tracing Service (Bad Arolsen) and founded the NS Documentation Center in Munich.
Daniel and Judy Kaufmann are Hans Kaufmann’s eldest son and granddaughter respectively. They were both born and raised in Santiago, Chile, where Hans Kaufmann fled from Germany in 1939 with his parents. Judy is an illustrator based in Barcelona, while Daniel lives between Washington DC and Nice, working and teaching on international development and global governance. Both are globetrotters, cyclists, and avid readers. Although they have not been living in the same country, they remain very close.
Ofer Ashkenazi is an Associate Professor of History and Director of the Richard Koebner-Minerva Center for German History at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He has published on various topics related to German and German-Jewish history, including the interwar peace movement in Germany, Albert Einstein's politics, German Jews in Mandate Palestine, and the participation of Jews in German visual culture. His previous book is entitled Anti-Heimat Cinema: The Jewish Invention of the German Landscape (U. Michigan Press, 2020). His current project deals with Jewish photography in Nazi Germany.
Derek Penslar is the William Lee Frost Professor of Jewish History at Harvard University. Penslar takes a comparative and transnational approach to Jewish history, which he examines in the context of modern capitalism, nationalism, and colonialism. Penslar’s most recent books are Theodor Herzl: The Charismatic Leader (2020/German ed. 2022) and Zionism: An Emotional State, which will be published next year. He is currently working on a book entitled The War for Palestine, 1948: A Global History. Penslar is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada and Honorary Fellow of St. Anne’s College, Oxford.