Professor. Albert Einstein helping a jobless violinist to find work.
Sigismund Alexander, of 169 East 96th street, has been unemployed for a long time. He wrote to the great scientist thinking that, as a brother violinist, he might get help. And he did. For the professor answered in German thus:
“I live a very, very quiet life here in Princeton and could not help you directly to find a job. But your letter was very intersting to me–so much so that I promise herewith to write an autographic letter of thanks to any one who gives you a job for at least a month.”
Mrs. Rose Miller, investigator for Bernard S. Deutsch, president of the Board of Aldermen, told the Jewish Daily Bulletin yesterday that Alexander had come to her office after an exchange of leftters with Mr. Deutsch. At the office, he wrote in his report that he has been in this country since 1923, that he is a “German-born Jew,citizen since 1929, married, worked as a violinist the past few years mostly in German American circles. Played substitutes and so on, but since Nazism has grown up in German circles, I am absolutely unable to find work in German places or single jobs in the German Verein.”
He continued: “It is impossible for me to have a job. They don’t say in my face We don’t take you, but they don’t even look at me. Sometimes they say Heil Hitler. Sometimes they speak about the Jews having everything, we have nothing, and so on.”
Mrs. Miller directed the violinist to the offices of the CWA at 124 East 28th street, but there was no opening there. So now Alexander is waiting for something to turn up, fortified only by his letter from the Herr Professor.
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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.
