“The Jewish people alone, has for centuries been in the anomalous position of being victimized and hounded as a people, though bereft of all the rights and protections which even the smallest people normally has... Zionism offered the means of ending this discrimination. Through the return to the land to which they were bound by close historic ties... Jews sought to abolish their pariah status among peoples.” (Letter to Jawaharlal Nehru, Prime Minister of India, 1947)
Although Albert Einstein did not come to live in Palestine and refused David Ben Gurion’s request to be the second president of the State of Israel, he was a committed Zionist. In light of the difficult situation of the Jews before the Second World War, he supported the “Kimberley Plan” of 1933. This plan was the initiative of Jewish intellectuals and businessmen to settle in the region of Kimberley in Australia, and establish a Jewish state there. This plan was abandoned, and thereafter Einstein supported the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine, as the fulfillment of the Jews’ historical connection to the land.
Albert Einstein’s archive is kept at the Hebrew University, an institute he helped found. However, being a central personality during the 20th century, his name also appears in various contexts in the material of the CZA. Here is some of the documentation we found about him.