The ‘First Letters’ of Jacob Wahrman

What is it about?

Within the broader framework of the history of Jews, Germans, and science after the Holocaust, this article examines the tensions between Israeli and German scientists, paying particular attention to sciences that had been corrupted during the Nazi era. More specifically, the article studies the correspondence between German-born Israeli geneticist Jacob Wahrman and his German and Austrian colleagues, initiated as early as 1950 when Wahrman was still a PhD student. The article employs David Kettler’s notion of ‘first letters’as a theoretical framework for reading Wahrman’s correspondence with German biologists and geneticists. In addition, the letters are brought into conversation with the genetic utopia promoted in the science fiction novels of Ram Moav, Wahrman s colleague in the Department of Genetics at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Reading Wahrman and Moav together, the article focuses on what might be termed a post-Holocaustian‘genetic fantasy’.

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