Death-Rays as Life-Savers in the Third Reich - Pedro Waloschek ...

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ancestry in order to qualify for service, whereas ordinary citizens had to prove only two for their blood to be considered pure or sufficiently Germano-Nordic. Antonia’s Certificate of Aryan Descent did have one flaw. The entry for her husband’s religion read, „Hebrew“. However, since he was never at home, she could (and did) tell the authorities that she had no idea where he was. Furthermore, on the 26 th of June 1939 my grandfather was forced to add ‘Israel’ to his name and so became ‘Karl Israel Stark’. According to regulations they were also ordered to share their home with another ‘non-Aryan’ family but - probably thanks to Vienna’s legendary sloppiness - this never happened. Grandfather Karl was not afraid. He sent letters and postcards to Argentina in which he wrote about his life. He always wrote out his name and address in full. However, the post was heavily censored at the time, and any lines deemed unacceptable by the authorities were carefully cut out. The last letter we received from grandfather during the war was dated 25 th September 1941, and we got no more post until late in 1946. My mother kept and filed each and every scrap of correspondence. But let’s return to the hand-written pages from Karl Stark’s exercise book. Some of the pages seem to have been used to record addresses, and some names had a familiar ring to them. There are references to family birthdays, in some cases the dates on which relatives died, and occasionally he noted the date on which people had left Vienna: „Hans Waloschek, left on 17 th September 1936“ (my father) „Grete, Peter and Jutta, left on 28 th March 1937“ (my mother, I and my sister) „Eduard Stark, left on 19 th February 1939“ (Karl’s eldest son, an active Social Democrat) „The Bibers, left on 25 th July 1939“ (Antonia’s sister and her family) There are also entries about his two sisters: „Mathilde Stark, born on 6 th November 1875. Taken away on 5 th January 1942“ „Helene Grau, nee Stark, born on 11 th January 1879. Taken away on 5 th January 1942“. 14
Although strictly speaking they were our great aunts, we called them Auntie Minna and Auntie Leni. They were ‘taken away’ after denunciation by a racially ‘blameless’ Aryan, who coveted their wellsituated apartment in Vienna. It was as simple as that. I was told subsequently that they did not suffer long. Too old to work, they were ‘selected’ for the gas chambers as soon as they arrived in the camp. Another note referred to my uncle Felix, Karl Stark’s younger son: „Dr. Felix Stark, Ried am Riederberg – Physicist at Lorenz, Berlin“. Much later, Uncle Felix recounted that he and his entire family and household goods were forced to move from Vienna to Berlin so that he could work on a top secret project related to the notorious rocket propelled V2 bombs. He had to promise formally, never to speak about it. He was treated extremely well, and not a single piece of his valuable china was broken in transport, not even when they were all moved back to Austria before the end of the war. Already on the 10 th of June 1938 Uncle Felix had written to us in Argentina: „A decision has finally been made about what is to become of me. According to a law passed on 5 th June, I cannot remain at my post; firstly because I am of mixed race and secondly, because my wife is of mixed race.“ Until that point in time he had been a grammar school physics teacher and held a post in Vienna’s schools inspectorate. He received a small settlement and, at the age of 32, was forced into retirement. He sought work in industry and eventually trained as an electrician. By this route he did eventually find employment and was subsequently moved to Berlin where, according to Karl Stark’s booklet, he worked for Lorenz. No one in the company was greatly bothered by his non-Aryan origins; after all, he was working for victory. This is probably where he was in the spring of 1943, by which time his brother Eduard, the active Social Democrat, had become a detainee in a British internment camp. I am quite certain that my family, with its conflicts, contradictions and separations, was not exceptional in Vienna. In fact I would even go so 15
Page 1 and 2: Pedro Waloschek Death-Rays as Life-
Page 3: Pedro Waloschek Death-Rays as Life-
Page 6 and 7: unambiguous (albeit secret) reports
Page 8 and 9: Recently some new and interesting d
Page 10 and 11: German troops in Stalingrad, who co
Page 12 and 13: my father for deserting the ‘Reic
Page 16 and 17: far as to claim that it was typical
Page 18 and 19: With the hindsight afforded by the
Page 20 and 21: contact brushes) is one of his most
Page 22 and 23: ecognised the value of his early wo
Page 24 and 25: nature’, although this is not spe
Page 26 and 27: ultraviolet radiation. He remarks t
Page 28 and 29: article, to which he added his own
Page 31 and 32: 3 Richard Gans and Heinz Schmellenm
Page 33 and 34: ‘Einführung in die Theorie des M
Page 35 and 36: were classified as ‘first-degree
Page 37 and 38: senior assistants at the Institute
Page 39 and 40: Heinz Schmellenmeier in May 1944 [G
Page 41 and 42: The matter was discussed with a few
Page 43 and 44: gram - and equally dangerous! At th
Page 45 and 46: Schmellenmeier explained the reason
Page 47 and 48: deal with aircraft approaching from
Page 49 and 50: any experts been asked, therefore,
Page 51 and 52: Rheotron could never have had the c
Page 53 and 54: work being done in America must als
Page 55 and 56: special permission by the Gestapo),
Page 57 and 58: we were only able to eat a fraction
Page 59 and 60: Board of the Reich’s Air Travel M
Page 61 and 62: liked to regale us with tales about
Page 63 and 64: 44 Ernst Schiebold and his ‘X-Ray
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proposal’s title, he again came t
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storing energy in adequate capacito
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Box 3 The Van-de-Graaff-Generator P
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It is important to remember at this
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irradiation above about 600 roentge
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This was the situation of Schiebold
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We may assume that Schiebold began
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4. An order worth 150,000 RM placed
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Seifert & Co’, a company that had
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Box 5b Hall and Bunker for Accelera
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‘Mobile X-Ray Station for Materia
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instruments needed by the aircraft
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Prof. Fritz Günther made some inte
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5. Rolf Wideröe’s “Beam- Trans
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BBC (CH) the construction of betatr
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für Elektrotechnik” and all the
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got a small room in the seller of t
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Kerst had also elaborated with his
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Friedrich Geist was at the time dir
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owners of the factory. It was the
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school (Piaristen Gymnasium) after
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Berlin. And it was in August 1943 w
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were from the beginning registered
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The 15-MeV-Beam-Transformer Vacuum-
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see his family and write reports in
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colleague and director of research,
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6 The End of the X-Ray-Guns On Dece
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was occasionally visited during the
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Spengler, Rößler und Wideröe. Th
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voltage generator which Gerlach per
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traversed material. After 2 radiati
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also on the Airing meeting. He star
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night-flight squadron of the Luftwa
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Egerer also mentions that he sugges
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expertise on the scandalous hygieni
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concentrated on the biography of se
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“Rheotron”-project and even off
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and Gentner were both working on su
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his results in an 18 pages long qui
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During the detailed design work Wid
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7 The Luftwaffe´s Last ‘Betatron
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Overbeek spent Xmas 1944 still in D
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Luftwaffe) with the obvious agreeme
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cleaning and lice searching. I was
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had taken over (she was a lawyer) t
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they had already invested a lot of
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un [Go46]. This was the first exper
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But after some time Lind did not fe
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Erlangen. Senior physicist Hans Kop
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collisions of electrons with electr
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and finally six return yokes, inste
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authority proposes, is accepted as
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called “linacs”) came up and do
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Appendix: Max Steenbeck and Konrad
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London. As it was done for many oth
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completely all activities for the e
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as it was planned by the Siemens ma
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original details. The vacuum tube c
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GDR and of the Committee for Europe
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Chronology Some historic events are
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1938 six volumes with reports of me
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1938-02-04 Rüdenberg and Steenbeck
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1941-12-06 Siemens and General Elec
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official research commission, respo
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activities in Groß Ostheim. Schie-
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1945-01 Design-work for Wideröe´s
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V2-rockets in Germany. In jail he w
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is transported to Göt-tingen. Ther
Page 203 and 204:
References Comments: Accurate sourc
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[Am78] Amaldi, E.(?): “The advent
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GmbH, Ham-burg, 87 p. (1981). Copy
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Untersuchung von Parawissenschaften
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[Ke42] Kerst, D.W.: “20 MeV Betat
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143-144 (1945) (Issue Nr. 5 and 6,
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[SE40] Schiebold, E.: Prospectus on
Page 217 and 218:
[SJ94c] Schiebold, Joachim: Several
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[Sw92] Swinne, E.: „Richard Gans
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Soc. 25, 469-481 (1929). Submitted
Page 223 and 224:
asche Durchführung von Konstruktio
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