November 5, 1933
In a speech marking the opening of the 1933-34 academic year, Judah Magnes, the president of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, outlines a plan for the university’s expansion. It includes 14 new positions for Jewish professors from Germany who lost their positions as part of the Nazi policy to dehumanize Jews.
“It has been a heartening act of human fellowship and an historic expression of the unity of science and learning for universities and committees in various countries of Europe and in America to have given hospitality and the opportunity for further work to a considerable number of discharged and resigned scholars,” Magnes says. “It will not, I am sure, be regarded as invidious if I say that, no matter how sincerely these savants are welcomed elsewhere, it is not possible to want them so genuinely, to need them so deeply, and to wish to keep them so sincerely as here in Jerusalem, among their brothers.”
The university raises $60,000 from the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, the American Friends of the Hebrew University, the American Jewish Physicians Committee and the American Academic Assistance Committee to provide for the German professors.
