Einstein On His Anti-Nazi Work: "Had Those Fellows" Listened, "These Horrors Would Not Have Existed"

He didn’t have to be told a third time: first came the Dreyfus affair, then the rise of Hitler – Einstein saw, earlier than most, that Europe was not a safe place for Jews. By 1933, he had cleared out of Europe forever – but went back, from Pasadena and Princeton, to warn others of the coming scourge. Writing ten years later to another early anti-Nazi activist, Lionel Ettlinger – who helped create the first documentary report of the Nazi assault on the Jews – Einstein recalls how, “if those fellows would at that time have taken to heart your information more seriously, with which I traveled around Belgium and England during 1933," the horrors of the present hour might have been averted. Trusting, however, that Hitler – a pathological demagogue Einstein deemed of limited intellectual capacity – would ultimately fail, Einstein adds
 
Thanks to the intuition of the Fuhrer, it is hoped that the worst can be averted this time; even though none of our Jewish brothers will benefit from it anymore.
 
Unfortunately, writing in 1943, before the horrors of the Holocaust were fully known, Einstein was only half right.

Typed Letter Signed (“A. Einstein”), in German, 1 page, quarto, Princeton, New Jersey, March 15, 1943.  To Lionel Ettlinger in New York City.