Jewish Scientists, Jewish Ethics and the Making of the Atomic Bomb

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8 Jewish Scientists, Jewish Ethics and the Making of the Atomic Bomb

MERON MEDZINI

n his book The Jews and the Japanese: The Successful Outsiders, Ben-Ami IShillony devoted a chapter to the Jewish scientists who played a central role in the development of nuclear physics and later in the construction and testing of the ﬁ rst atomic bomb. He correctly traced the well-known facts that among the leading nuclear physics scientists, there was an inordinately large number of Jews (Shillony 1992: 190–3). Many of them were German, Hungarian, Polish, Austrian and even Italian Jews. Due to the rise of virulent anti-Semitism in Germany, especially after the Nazi takeover of that country in 1933, most of the German-Jewish scientists found themselves unemployed, with no laboratory facilities or even citi- zenship, and had to seek refuge in other European countries. Eventually, many of them settled in the United States. A similar fate awaited Jewish scientists in other central European countries that came under German occupation, such as Austria, or German inﬂ uence as in the case of Hungary. Within a short time, many of these scientists who found refuge in America were highly instrumental in the exceedingly elabo- rate and complex research and work that eventually culminated in the construction of the atomic bomb at various research centres and, since 1943, at the Los Alamos site. In this facility there were a large number of Jews occupying the highest positions. Of the heads of sections in charge of the Manhattan Project, at least eight were Jewish, led by the man in charge of the operation, J. Robert Oppenheimer. Among them Edward Teller, Eugene Wigner, Leo Szilard, all Hungarian Jews, stood out. From Vienna came Victor Weisskopf. Max Born, James Franck, Hans Bethe and Otto Frisch were born in Germany. Some of them studied under Niels Bohr, a Dane whose mother was Jewish. Others were native-born Americans – Isadore Rabi, Richard Feynman and Eugene Rabinowitz. Joseph Rotblatt came from Poland via Britain (Jungk 1958: 19–34).

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Other well-known scientists involved in the development of nuclear power were also Jews; Albert Einstein led the list and he was the one who, at the insistence of Leo Szilard, wrote in August 1939 the famous letter that alerted President Roosevelt to the military uses of atomic power. Szilard was also among the scientists who met with Roosevelt later that year to discuss the signifi cance of nuclear fi ssion and its possible use in the coming war (Lanouette 1992: 209–13). Other Hungarian Jews who fi gured prominently in the development of nuclear physics were Theodore Von Karman, George de Hevesy, Michael Polyani and John Von Neumann. Emilio Segre was an Italian Jew. Enrico Fermi had a Jewish wife and escaped from Fascist Italy to protect her (Fermi 1954: 139). Given the large number of Jews so deeply involved in various capaci- ties in the Manhattan Project, I have often wondered if the fact that they were born Jewish infl uenced in any manner their thinking regarding the new and terrible weapon they were building, and to what extent their being born Jewish, or holding any Jewish religious sentiments, or growing up on Jewish ethics, played any role in their behaviour and attitude towards the use of the most destructive weapon mankind has ever devised. This chapter sets out to discuss some of the following questions: Was their experience with anti-Semitism an important factor in their work? Did they have knowledge regarding the Holocaust taking place at the time they were busy in Los Alamos and other laboratories in the United States? Did they know anything about Japan prior to the war? Did they set out to prove to their superiors, chiefl y General Leslie Groves, that they were more loyal to America and even greater patriots than their American-born colleagues? I was further curious if anyone among them was a practising Jew, was it possible at all for an observant Jew to practise his religion in Los Alamos? Did they observe the Sabbath, eat only Kosher food? Did they fast on the Day of Atonement? I also wondered if they were involved at all in the decision-making process regarding the use of the bomb on Japanese targets that could involve civilian casualties? Were there any Jewish scientists who were totally opposed to the use of the bomb on enemy targets and if so, did they have any infl uence? A cursory examination shows a number of factors that may help provide preliminary and partial answers to some of these questions. Most, if not all, of the Jewish scientists who were born in Europe were Jews only by birth. From their own autobiographies or biographies, it clearly emerges that none of them was a practising Jew. In America, J. Robert Oppenheimer and his Jewish colleagues had no temple or syna- gogue affi liation (Smith and Weiner, eds 1980: 2–8). They came from assimilated Jewish families. Leo Szilard was born Leo Spitz, but his father decided to Hungarianize the family name (as was the case with another illustrious Hungarian Jew, the renowned conductor Sir George Solti, whose family name was originally Stern) (Lanouette 1992: 13–14). Hans Bethe did not think of himself as a Jew. He later wrote: ‘I was not Jewish.

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