¹ "Nazi Boomerang," Washington Post, Aug. 9, 1945, reprinted in AAUW Journal 39, no. 1 (fall 1945): 38.

² Meitner's nickname "Jewish mother of the bomb" can be traced to a docudrama written by William P. Lawrence and published in the Saturday Evening Post in 1940. Lawrence later became a well-known science writer for the New York Times. In the Saturday Evening Post story Lawrence claimed that the idea of fission began forming in Meitner's mind when she was staring out of the train window on her way from Berlin to Stockholm. In fact, Meitner was stunned and deeply distraught when she heard about the bombing of Hiroshima: "She did not know how the Americans had managed to separate the Uranium . . . she only knew that she had been present in the beginning." (See Ruth Lewin Sime, Lise Meitner: A Life in Physics [Berkeley, Calif., 1996], 313ff.)

³ Neither the International Federation of University Women nor any of its national member organizations is mentioned in recent accounts of refugee aid. As in the case of Meitner, for example, scholars emphasize the role powerful physicist friends played in her rescue, which is doubtless true. Nevertheless, the role of the female network - which contributed to her living expenses in Stockholm - is completely overlooked. The same is true for scholars who focus on gender and emigration. See Hiltrud Häntzschel's recent account in Claus-Dieter Krohn et al., eds., Handbuch der deutschsprachigen Emigration 1933-1945 (Darmstadt, 1998), 101-16.

⁴ Krohn et al., eds., Handbuch der deutschsprachigen Emigration, 683.

⁵ About 2,000 of the scholars who had been dismissed later emigrated. A list issued by the SPSL in 1936 named over 1,000 displaced German scholars; among them were only 78 women. Until 1945 the New York Committee of Displaced German Scholars alone placed more than 350 scientists within the United States. In total, roughly 1,300 scientists re-established themselves in the United States, many of them with the financial support of the Rockefeller Foundation. Younger scholars and women are assumed to have found their way "without any help," ibid., 686; for England, see Marion Berghahn, German-Jewish Refugees in England: The Ambiguities of Assimilation (New York, 1984), 77ff.

⁶ Hiltrud Häntzschel, "Frauen jüdischer Herkunft an bayerischen Universitäten: Zum Zusammenhang von Religion, Geschlecht und 'Rasse,'" in Hiltrud Häntzschel and Hadumod Bussmann, eds., Bedrohlich gescheit: Ein Jahrhundert Frauen und Wissenschaften in Bayern (Munich, 1997), 195ff. For further exceptions to this rule, see especially the essays by Atina Grossman on "New Women in Exile: German Women Doctors and the Emigration," and Frank Mecklenburg on "The Occupation of Women Emigrés: Women Lawyers in the United States," in Sybille Quack, ed., Between Sorrow and Strength: Women Refugees of the Nazi Period (New York, 1995), 215-38 and 289-99, resp.; Sybille Quack, Zuflucht Amerika: Zur Sozialgeschichte der Emigration deutsch-jüdischer Frauen in die USA 1933-1945 (Bonn, 1995); Marion Kaplan, Between Dignity and Depair: Jewish Life in Nazi Germany (New York, 1998).

⁷ "A World Organization of University Women," Journal of the ACA 18, nos. 5 and 6 (Mar. 1920): iv-v.

⁸ Virginia Gildersleeve, "What the AAUW Has Meant to the IFUW," AAUW Journal 35, no. 1 (1941): 13-15. This trend of considerable growth continued with another peak in 1939-40: Starting with about 12,000 members in 1917, the AAUW had 16,500 members in 1922-3, 36,000 in 1930, 63,000 in 1939, and almost 70,100 in June 1941. In 1949 the membership had again doubled to 112,746. In 1976 the AAUW had 190,327 members. Figures are from Susan Levine, Degrees of Equality: The American Association of University Women and the Challenge of 20th-Century Feminism (Philadelphia, 1995), 216. The biggest European sister organizations (Germany and England) never had more than 4,000 members.

⁹ "The International Federation of University Women: Council Meeting in London," AAUW Journal 15, no. 1 (Oct. 1921): 10.

¹⁰ Whitelaw Reid's property, a sixteenth-century mansion at 4 rue de Chevreuse, was next to the Luxembourg Gardens. Reid was a close friend of Virginia Gildersleeve, dean of Barnard College and co-founder of the IFUW. During World War I Reid converted the mansion into a hospital for American officers and later handed it over to the American Red Cross. After the war she initially lent the property to the AAUW; in 1927 she turned it over to a group of women, all of whom were prominent members of the AAUW. See Marion Talbot and Lois Kimball Mathews Rosenberry, The History of the American Association of University Women, 1881-1931 (Boston, 1931), 274-5. For Crosby Hall, see J. H. Sondheimer, History of the British Federation of University Women, 1907-1957 (London, 1958), microfilmed copy in AAUW Archives, series IX, reel 149/4.

¹¹ Five of these were awarded to German women, who thereby led the list of recipient nations along with the English. See "The International Federation," AAUW Journal 35, no. 1 (fall 1941): 53-5.

¹² Whether the IFUW should promote understanding and friendship among women academics "of different nations" or "of all nations of the world" was a subject of vigorous discussion, with the latter, more open wording finally being agreed on. "How soon and on whose initiative the women of the countries of Central Europe might be expected to come in were questions on which every shade of opinion seemed to exist." See Report of the First Conference of the International Federation of University Women by Ada Cromstock, Journal of the Association of Collegiate Alumnae 14, no. 1 (Oct. 1920): 4-11, including the first bylaws of the IFUW, 6.

¹³ "Withdrawal of German Federation of University Women," AAUW Journal 30, no. 3 (spring 1936): 180.

¹⁴ "The farewells at the end of the day were tinged with regret that this Conference experience (in Edinburgh) had come to an end, but carried a refrain of joy in the prospect of meeting in Germany in 1936." "The Edinburgh Conference," AAUW Journal 26, no. 1 (Oct. 1932): 42.

¹⁵ "Some Highlights of the Council Meeting," AAUW Journal 29, no. 2 (1935): 121.

¹⁶ Ibid.

¹⁷ Amendment to the bylaws (Art. II, 1), cited in AAUW Journal 29, no. 1 (Oct. 1935): 50. In addition to the International Federation of Women Physicians, the IFUW was the only international academic organization that actually excluded German organizations that had conformed to the Nazi line.

¹⁸ "Withdrawal of German Federation of University Women," AAUW Journal 30, no. 3 (1936): 180.

¹⁹ Esther Caukin-Brunauer, "The Women's Movement in Germany - Some Echoes," AAUW Journal 29 (Summer 1935): 105.

²⁰ Esther Caukin-Brunauer, "Notes on my experiences in Germany in 1933, presented very informally to the members of the board of directors of the AAUW," April 1934, in AAUW Archives, series I, reel 1/59.

²¹ Esther Brunauer, The Nazi State (Washington, D.C., 1935); See also Esther Caukin-Brunauer, The National Revolution in Germany 1933 (Washington, D.C., 1933); Brunauer, "The German Woman Marches - Back," AAUW Journal 27, no. 2 (1934): 85-7; Caukin-Brunauer, "The German Frauenfront: 'Kinder, Küche, Kirche' and the Women's Organizations," AAUW Journal 27, no. 3 (1934): 131-7.

²² "Speaking Engagement for Dr. Brunauer," AAUW Journal 27, no. 2 (1934): 116; "Dr. Brunauer Addresses Meetings," AAUW Journal 27, no. 3 (1934): 185.

²³ Sondheimer, History of the British Federation, 33.

²⁴ This was the case with Nina Bleiberg, a physician from Vienna who stayed with the Manchester branch in 1939 while awaiting her visa to the United States. The branches of Edinburgh and Glasgow supported the attorney Philipine Hannak from Prague. Olga Janowitz received a grant to pursue her research on plankton at Hull College. AAUW Archives, series V, war relief cases, fol. 45.

²⁵ "Assistance to Displaced German Women," AAUW Journal 29, no. 1 (1935): 50.

²⁶ "The Work of AAUW Fellows, 1934/5," AAUW Journal 30, no. 2 (1936): 93.

²⁷ "Assistance to Displaced German Women," 50.

²⁸ AAUW, Twelfth National Convention, Cincinnati, Ohio, May 5-9, 1941, Proceedings, 252. See also "Report of the National Committees at the Convention in Dallas, 1947," AAUW Journal 40-1 (Summer 1947): 245.

²⁹ Disembursement from Reconstruction Aid Fund in the United States, Mar. 8, 1946, in AAUW Archives, series V, reel 130/38: Fellowships, Funds, Reconstruction Aid and War Relief, 1940-1949.

³⁰ AAUW Archives, series V, war relief cases, fol. 22.

³¹ Not only autobiographies but also scholars address this question, an old reproach from early left-wing Jewish emigrants. A prominent example at the inspection of autobiographical and scholarly dealings with this problem is Peter Gay, My German Question: Growing up in Nazi Berlin (New Haven, Conn., 1998). See also Kaplan, Between Dignity.

³² Every generalization of course runs the risk of being short-sighted. In some cases, family bonds were the decisive factor not to leave. As we know from other examples, some women decided to stay with their aging parents or to go back in order to look after them. The most tragic examples here are those of Lucie Adelsberger from Berlin and Käthe Spiegel from Prague. Adelsberger, a physician internationally known for her research in immunology at the Robert Koch Institute, came to United States with a visitor's visa in 1938 and was offered a teaching position at Harvard University. Yet, she decided to go back to Germany because her mother was severely ill and needed full-time care. In 1943 Adelsberger was deported to Auschwitz. She survived the death camp and immigrated to the United States in 1945, where she worked as an immunologist at the Montefiore Hospital and Medical Center in New York City. Käthe Spiegel, historian and librarian, wrote in February 1940: "Last month my mother (with whom I lived) died and some days later I lost my position in the library. Now I have to find a new start." The AAUW made tremendous efforts to get Spiegel, a leading member of the czech federation, out, providing her with an affidavit, paying for travel and visa, and depositing money in Cuba; yet, when every obstacle was eliminated, the United States entered the war. Spiegel's trip, scheduled on Dec. 8, 1941, was canceled, and Spiegel disappeared. She did not survive her deportation to Poland. For Adelsberger, see AAUW Archives, series V, war relief cases, fol. 2, and her memoirs: Lucie Adelsberger, Auschwitz, ein Tatsachenbericht: Das Vermächtnis der Opfer für uns Juden und für alle Menschen (Berlin, 1956). The English translation appeared recently as Auschwitz: A Doctor's Story (Boston, 1995). For Spiegel, see AAUW Archives, series V, war relief cases, fol. 38.

³³ Erna Barschak via Carola Blume, Mills College, to Esther Brunauer, Dec. 12, 1938, in AAUW Archives, series V, war relief cases, fol. 42. See also Barschak's ciriculum vitae in the same folder. For additional examples of careers in Jewish schools, see the case files of Ruth Ehrmann (fol. 9) and Rose Bluhm (fol. 42).

³⁴ Gertrud Schlesinger to Esther Brunauer on Jan. 1, 1939, in AAUW Archives, series V, war relief cases, fol. 45.

³⁵ Jellinek to Brunauer, Sept. 7, 1938, in AAUW Archives, series V, war relief cases, fol. 21.

³⁶ See Jellinek's grateful letter from St. Louis to Brunauer, Oct. 13, 1939, in AAUW Archives, series V, war relief cases, fol. 21.

³⁷ Gertrud Schlesinger to Brunauer, Jan. 22, 1939. Schlesinger made it to England with the help of the IFUW, where she and Leonore Goldschmidt administered a school for refugees. From there, she wanted to continue on to the United States, particularly when her professional opportunities worsened with the outbreak of the war and the future of the school appeared threatened. However, the AAUW was unable to help her. Gertrud Schlesinger to Brunauer, Apr. 30, 1940, in AAUW Archives, series V, war relief cases, fol. 45.

³⁸ Holme to Brunauer, Apr. 28, 1940, in AAUW Archives, series V, war relief cases, fol. 42.

³⁹ Erna Barschak, My American Adventure (New York, 1945).

⁴⁰ See File Alice Mühsam, series V, war relief cases, fol. 26. Even Mühsam, though, seems to have made it back to her professional field: Her two books, German Readings (New York, 1959) and Coin and Temple: A Study of the Architectural Representation on Ancient Jewish Coins (Leeds, 1966), indicate that she found a way to pursue research and writing in later life.

⁴¹ In 1940 Brunauer managed to get the AAUW to speak out in favor of lifting the Neutrality Act of 1935. See Levine, Degrees of Equality, 56.