The Tragedy of the German-Jew – A Tragedy of One-Sided Love
90 years since the passing of Fritz Haber: Shvat 13, 5694-Shvat 13, 5784 (Jan. 29, 1934-Jan. 23, 2024)
By: Yaakov Rosenfeld
This is the tragic story of a converted Jew who was an ardent German patriot for most of his life, and in his old age, with increasing feelings of of disillusionment and piercing regret, died of a heart attack on his way to Israel.
Fritz Haber (Wikipedia)
Fritz Haber was born in the city of Breslau (Prussia, now Wroclaw, Poland) to parents who were believers and traditionalists to a certain extent. His mother died when he was an infant, and his relationship with his father had ups and downs.
His family was affluent and his father hoped that Fritz would become involved in the management of the dye and medication factory that he owned, but the son followed a completely different path.
He left the factory and got a position as a junior researcher at the University of Jena (Germany).
During his work there, Haber felt himself to be a German, not a Jew, and decided to convert to a Lutheranism. The purpose of the conversion was to help him get an academic position. In 1894, after two years in Jena, Haber accepted a position as a researcher and lecturer at the University of Karlsruhe. He was engaged in the study of combustion processes of carbohydrates, and gradually entered more and more into the fields of physical chemistry, and especially electrochemistry – the mutual relationship between electricity and chemical processes.
Haber’s ingenious research gave rise to a process for the production of ammonia (which is used as a raw material in the fertilizer industry, and in the production of nitrogen compounds) for which he received a Nobel Prize. The doubling of the industrial production of chemical fertilizers that became possible was one of the foundations of the green revolution of the twentieth century and contributed to the reduction of hunger and the extension of life expectancy in the world.
The converted Jew’s work and research contributed greatly to scientific studies that were an integral part of the global industry, but his most important research, and the one that earned him most of his publicity, dealt with the fixation of atmospheric nitrogen for the production of ammonia.
It is true that the process invented by Fritz Haber saved many populations around the world from starvation, but, unfortunately, his technology was used by the German army to develop means of killing and suffocation during the First World War, for which thousands of people were killed by brutal suffocation.
Fritz Haber, who still considered himself to be German with all the fervour of his soul, took an active part in the production of choke bombs and would run around army camps instructing German soldiers in the operation of the deadly systems.
In the same episode, when his wife (a Jewish convert as well) found out about the mass killing that was taking place under the direction of her husband, lost her sanity and shot herself. Fritz himself, if you were wondering, did not bother to attend her funeral at all. As described in the article by Itai Nevo (Weizmann Institute) he “did not even stay in Berlin for her funeral because he rushed east to monitor the use of chemical weapons on the Russian front…”
After the war, he was declared a war criminal in Europe and suffered a nervous breakdown, but even after, that he continued to be a German patriot, and came up with ideas for saving its economy, which was severely damaged as a result of the heavy reparations it had to pay to the victims of its aggression during the World War years.
With the strengthening of the Nazi party in Germany, its members criticized the government employing Jewish scientists, including Haber. The Nazis were not impressed by the fact that he converted to Christianity, nor by his absolute loyalty to Germany, nor by the fact that he saved Germany from starvation in the Great War, nor by his contribution to the military effort. For them, he was “Haber the Jew”, and with their rise to power in 1933, he realized that he had to escape from his beloved homeland.
Poor, sick and despondent, he immigrated to England, where he sought his place and himself, and then his friend Chaim Weizmann suggested that he move to Israel and establish a scientific institute there.
Fritz was inclined to accept the offer, and on his way to Israel, on Shvat 13, 5694, exactly ninety years ago, he suffered a heart attack and died in a hotel in Basel, Switzerland.
Shortly before his death, Fritz Haber retracted his defiance of his religion and his people. The celebrated scientist, winner of the Nobel Prize (which many in the world protested against being awarded as he was a war criminal) suffered feelings of remorse and pangs of conscience. He said to Chaim Weizmann: “At the end of my days I see myself as bankrupt; I will go and not be, and my name will be forgotten…”
The famous Jewish scientist Albert Einstein wrote about Fritz Haber after his death: “Haber’s life was the tragedy of the German Jew – a tragedy of one-sided love.”
Incidentally, a year before his death, Fritz Haber joined Max Planck in demanding the expulsion of Albert Einstein from the Prussian Academy of Sciences, because of his declaration that he would not return to Germany because it does not recognize individual rights and equality before the law. He was a true German patriot, which was dear to his heart, but all this did not suit him on Judgement Day. The same Max Planck, the great German physicist, tried, after the Nazis came to power, to assist Fritz Haber, and even talked about it with Hitler himself, but all his efforts were unsuccessful. In the same episode, Fritz Haber wrote to Albert Einstein: “I have never felt Jewish like I do now.”
And here is a horrifying passage about the tragedy of Fritz Haber from Itai Nevo’s article on the Weizmann Institute website:
His professional past also continued to haunt Haber after his death. When the Nazis formulated the “Final Solution” and decided to exterminate the Jews, someone remembered the zyklon gas developed in his laboratory. The original material included hydrogen cyanide with the addition of a caustic, as a deterrent against exposure to the dangerous gas. The Nazis ordered a version of the gas without the caustic substance, and with a method of packing it in a porous material that allows for its quick release. This version later received the nickname Zyklon B, and was used by the Germans in the massacre of more than a million Jews in the extermination camps. Thus, the gas developed by Haber was used by the people he so wanted to be a part of, in destroying a significant part of the people from whom he sought to break away…
What should we actually learn from this heartbreaking tragic scene – a chilling life story of a Jewish genius who, in order to advance on the German scientific ladder of fame, gave up his religion, lost his wife, who also converted to Christianity after him, and did not even accompany her on her last journey, and finally, after he sinned and sank into the despair of regret, were his discoveries used for the mass killing of his Jewish brethren a few years after his death?
“This day, I call upon the heaven and the earth as witnesses that I have warned you: I have set before you life and death, the blessing and the curse. You shall choose life, so that you and your offspring will live” (Deuteronomy 30:19)
Every person, throughout his life, is faced with choices. G-d asks us to choose the good. Because the result of the bad choice, even by one person, could be disastrous for all of humanity.
(Sources: Davidson Institute, Weizmann Institue, Wikipedia)
