Einstein Letter Criticizing Neville Chamberlain Goes On Auction Block
Image by Getty Images
It might not be the theory of relativity, but several of Albert Einstein’s letters will go on auction in Los Angeles this week – presenting smart buyers with an opportunity to own history.
Nate D. Sanders Auctions will take bids for the items, the Algemeiner reported, including letters in which the famed physicist reflects on the Munich Agreement – in which France and Britain allowed Nazi Germany to take Czechoslovakia – and his divorce from his first wife.
“Now [Chamberlain] saved Hitler in the nick of time by crowning himself with the wreath of love of peace and inducing France to betray the Czechs,” Einstein wrote to friend Michele Besso about the Munich Agreement, inked by British prime minister Neville Chamberlain.
Einstein, who died in 1955, left Germany in 1933, after the Nazis took power. He then took up residence in New Jersey as a professor at Princeton.
His tone in the letters, written in the 1930s, is decidedly pessimistic. “I do not have any hope left for the future of Europe,” he writes in one of his letters to Besso.
Contact Daniel J. Solomon at [email protected] or on Twitter @DanielJSolomon
This is a moment of great uncertainty. Here’s what you can do about it.
We hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, we’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s independent Jewish news this Passover. All donations are being matched by the Forward Board - up to $100,000.
This is a moment of great uncertainty for the news media, for the Jewish people, and for our sacred democracy. It is a time of confusion and declining trust in public institutions. An era in which we need humans to report facts, conduct investigations that hold power to account, tell stories that matter and share honest discourse on all that divides us.
With no paywall or subscriptions, the Forward is entirely supported by readers like you. Every dollar you give this Passover is invested in the future of the Forward — and telling the American Jewish story fully and fairly.
The Forward doesn’t rely on funding from institutions like governments or your local Jewish federation. There are thousands of readers like you who give us $18 or $36 or $100 each month or year.
Support our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
