Well Worth Saving: American Universities' Life-and-Death Decisions on Refugees from Nazi Europe

by Laurel Leff,
The Jerusalem Post, January 17, 2020

With Nazis in control of the German government, Daniel O’Brien, a Rockefeller Foundation official based in Europe, wrote in his diary, “The Jews are being put out everywhere and without justice.” In April 1933, the government dismissed all Jews from civil service positions, including universities and research institutes, even if they or their grandparents had converted to Christianity. At the University of Berlin, students insisted that the rector post “12 theses,” including “Our most dangerous enemy is the Jew,” on all buildings. “The general situation is bad for science,” O’Brien noted. “It may get worse.”