The machinations of the Nazis brought about his dismissal from the University of Heidelberg with which he has been associated since 1923, Professor Emil J. Gumbel, German Jewish professor, informed the correspondent of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency yesterday.
Professor Gumbel is now in the United States attending the world Genetic congress at Cornell University.
“I was ousted from the University of Heidelberg through the machinations of the Nazis,” Professor Gumbel stated. “The Nazi students meant to be the dictators of the Universities in Germany. They have strongly opposed me for years because I have shown how they have murdered innocent people. I have enumerated in several of my works all the Fascist murders. I have given detailed facts and the German Minister of Justice in 1924 gave an official answer which confirmed all my statements. So the battle has been a very long one, and they have tried since the beginning to get rid of me.
“They hate me because I am a pacifist,” he continued. “The important fact is that the Professors at Heidelberg and the other Universities do not oppose the Nazis as they ought to do in order to save the Republic. They think that they ought not to oppose the crowd. I have attacked them at all times and have shown how in one town they kill people in their beds; in another town, they murder them in the street. That is the reason why I was ousted.
“The majority of the students at the Universities are not fully Nazis but the Nazis play a most prominent role because they are well organized and they make promises which can never be fulfilled. Of course, my dismissal has created great rejoicing in the Nazi press because it is rightly considered a great victory against pacifists, socialists and Jews. They will now threaten other professors who are affiliated with socialists, pacifists, etc. and my case is a general case of this movement.
“I do not think that the Nazis will attain complete supremacy in my Fatherland. But I do think that the government will compromise with them and tolerate some of their ideas and fulfil them. You know that the Nazis are simply the old forces which formed the Kaiser’s regime. There is nothing new in their ideas. They promise everything to everybody and state that when they attain power, the will make “heads roll”. They will continue to assassinate people — especially the Jews, because anti-Semitism is popular in Germany.
“The anti-Semitic plank in their program is the only one they can fully fulfil — the rest is impossible. The Nazis tell the workers that if elected, they will see that bread will be cheaper. On the other hand, they inform the peasants that bread will be dearer. They tell the landlords that rents will be higher and they say to the tenants that rents will be lower. They say ‘we will smash the Treaty of Versailles’ and yet they privately state ‘we will go to war and join France against Russia’, — of course,” stated Professor Gumbel, “France does not wish this, — it is a vain hope, in fact the Nazis have no practical program except what they term the ‘race program’.
“For instance, they proposed in Parliament that any woman who marries a Jew should be sentenced to ten years imprisonment”. The professor further stated “the present German government does not really want to fight the Nazis because they want the Nazis to be as strong as possible as friends. You see they really need the Nazis in order to keep the working people down. But, I can assure you that the government has no aim to divide its power with the Nazis. I have never heard of a general who was keen on dividing his power with a sergeant”.
Professor Emil J. Gumbel was born in Munich in 1891 and had a brilliant scholastic career. In 1913 he was assistant lecturer at the university of Munich in statistics. In 1923 he became lecturer at the University of Heidelberg in Mathematical statistics and believers of probabilities. Since 1930 he has been professor of statistics. Professor Gumbel expects to deliver several lectures in this country. During the coming winter, he will lecture at the University of Paris on “Theory of Life Tables and Natality Statistics”. During the World Genetic Congress at Cornell University, he delivered a masterly address on “Biological Life Tables”.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
