Haifa police officially announced today that Prof. Kurt Sitte, who was discharged from his post as head of the physics department of the Haifa Institute of Technology, had been arrested in June on suspicion of having transferred information to a foreign agent.
It was also disclosed that a magistrate had twice issued detention orders against Prof. Sitte on special authorization of the Attorney General’s office. The Technion announced yesterday that he had been releived of his duties and replaced by Prof. Nathan Rosen.
Dr. Sitte is a Czech-born non-Jew who married and subsequently divorced a Jewess. He came to Israel at the invitation of the Technion and by 1954 was Professor of Experimental Physics. The Technion listed him then as an international authority on nuclear research and space investigation.
Prof. Sitte’s department at the Technion dealt with research work ordered by a Western country and it was reported by an evening daily that he had been in charge of research ordered by the U.S. Air Force in the field of cosmic rays.
The 50-year-old expert was graduated from a Prague University and later served on its faculty until 1938 when he was sent to the Dachau concentration camp as one of the first non-Jews to oppose the Nazi regime. After the war, he worked at Edinburgh University and later in Manchester. He lectured at Syracuse University during a visit to the United States in 1959.
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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.
