Excellence in exile | JANUARY 3
The people on both sides of the camera shared a fate that was common to many thousands of German Jews: shortly after the Nazis seized power in 1933, Albert Einstein decided to immigrate permanently to the United States. He took the position of professor of theoretical physics at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, where this picture was taken five years later. In light of the increasing difficulties after the Nazi seizure of power, the photographer Lotte Jacobi also left Germany and emigrated to the United States in 1935. Jacobi was unpersuaded by the Nazis’ offer to grant her the status of “Honorary Aryan.” She left behind a studio in Berlin which she had run together with her sister, Ruth, also an accomplished photographer. Among the many prominent figures Jacobi photographed were Marc Chagall, Martin Buber, Eleanor Roosevelt, Thomas Mann, and Kurt Weill.
Correspondence across the ocean | JANUARY 2
This letter was written by Otto Neubauer, who had recently arrived in America from Mannheim, to his father Maximilian and his brother Ernst back home. Since the rest of the family was unable to emigrate despite years of trying, Otto wrote them regularly. The rich exchange of letters between the members of the Neubauer family reflects, as in the case of many other German Jewish emigrants in the 1930s, deep longing and attempts to describe every aspect of the new life in America.
Mutual aid for the dispossessed | JANUARY 1
After the passing of the Nuremberg Laws in 1935, Jews were excluded from the support of the “Winter Relief Agency of the German People” and had to organize their own relief agency. Nazi legislation was making it more and more difficult for Jews in Germany to earn a living. The Jewish Winter Relief Organization stepped into the breach and assisted impoverished members of the community with food, medicine, and heating fuel. The photo was taken at a concert for the benefit of the Jewish Winter Relief.