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EINSTEIN, ALBERT. (1879-1955). German-born physicist, humanitarian and Nobel Prize winner; promulgator of the general and special theories of relativity. TLS. (“A. Einstein”). 1p. 4to. Princeton, June 21, 1942. On Einstein’s blind-embossed, Mercer Street stationery. To German-American psychoanalystand advocate for holocaust survivors, WILLIAM G. NIEDERLAND (1904-1993). In German with translation.

I was very happy to receive your gift which I will hold in honor. I am also glad that this offers me the opportunity to write to you. I always felt that you never received the gratitude you deserved for your work for the United Jewish Appeal in Princeton that your services would have called for. I have also reproached myself for having left that evening before it was over. But I had just returned from New York and was very tired…

Having fled Germany after the rise of Hitler in 1933, Einstein devoted much time to helping his co-religionists escape the turmoil engulfing Europe and “came to be regarded as the symbol and leader of the entire group of refugee scholars,” (Einstein: His Life and Times, Frank). In 1939, the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, the United Palestine Appeal and the National Coordinating Committee Fund all merged to become the United Jewish Appeal for Refugees and Overseas Needs. Beginning in 1935, Germany’s Nuremberg Laws and the successive anti-Jewish legislation disenfranchised Germany’s Jews. This was followed by the systematic rounding up, internment and murder of Jews throughout Nazi-occupied Europe. Compounding the problem, strict quotas restricted Jewish refugees from entering the British Mandate of Palestine (the future Israel) while the United States and other countries hesitated to open their borders to increased immigration. Throughout Europe, Jews had been stripped of their property, wealth, homes, and civil rights, with many forced into slavery or killed in pogroms and other actions by Germany’s military and her allies. In 1942, the year of our letter, “the final solution,” or mass extermination of the Jews was implemented, making foreign aid to Jewish refugees more urgent than ever before.

Niederland, the son of a rabbi, trained in Germany as a medical doctor but immigrated to Italy in 1934. The increasing threat of Fascism prompted him to flee to England and, in 1940, he settled in the United States where he taught and wrote on a diverse range of topics, practicing psychoanalysis in New York and New Jersey. His publications include Eros and Thanatos in the Life of Heinrich Schliemann: Psychoanalytic Profile of a Creative Mind, Man Made Plague: A Primer on Neurosisand The Survivor Syndrome. The latter title came as a result of Niederland’s work with Nazi concentration camp survivors; the characteristics he observed in his patients prompted him to coin the term “survivor syndrome.” He also advocated for victims of Nazi persecution in the German courts where they sought financial compensation for their treatment. Later Niederland worked with Vietnam War veterans suffering from post-traumatic stress disorders.

The recipient’s father, Abraham Niederland, was an orthodox rabbi who dabbled in a curious form of artwork akin to a word mosaic. He executed portraits of Kaiser Wilhelm II in 1908 and FDR in 1942, which were drawn using minutely written Hebrew words to tell the sitter’s biography. According to the previous owner, Einstein is thanking Niederland for his father’s portrait of Roosevelt, a copy of which is included with our letter as well as other background materials. The image was published several times in The Jewish Advocate which described it as, “the work of a Palestinian rabbi, Abraham Niederland of Rehoboth (Palestine), who after long and painstaking toil created this extraordinary testimonial in honor of the President and his heroic efforts to establish righteousness among the peoples. The portrait contains the biography of the President and an expression of homage on his third election, also written in Hebrew characters… The words express, in the classical language of the Bible, the author’s love and admiration of the American people and its great president. The text is thoughtfully based on passages and quotations from the Sacred Scripts, and quotes, among others, Proverbs, 28, and Chulin, 4: ‘A ruler who struggles for truth – a righteous people,’” (The Jewish Advocate, January 27, 1944).

Folded and fine, with the original envelope.

Item #17431

Price: $3,000