Early on the morning of 3 August 1944, a unit of heavily armed German soldiers arrived at the Villa Il Focardo outside Florence.
They didn’t knock. They didn’t ring the bell. They simply smashed through the front door, marched in and started shouting for the villa’s owner, Robert Einstein, cousin of the world-famous scientistAlbert Einstein.
Robert and Albert had grown up together in Munich, Germany, in the 1880s and 1890s. For 11 years they had lived in the same house. You could say they were brother-cousins. Their fathers, Jakob and Hermann Einstein, were in business together, running an electrification company. Over the years, they had brought electric light to beer halls, town squares and cafes.
In 1894, the Einstein company failed to win a large contract and went bankrupt. The two families moved to Milan and started again. When this business also went bust, the brothers parted ways but the cousins remained close. Robert stayed in Italy, qualified as an engineer and married Nina Mazzetti, a priest’s daughter from the north. In the 1920s, they moved to a small apartment in Rome and began building a life.
This was around the time that Benito Mussolini and his National Fascist Party (PNF) took power. The fascists were, at this point, not particularly antisemitic and Jews were as likely to be party members as the rest of the population. For his part, the Jewish Robert Einstein did not join the fascists, but as a businessman he was sympathetic towards their investment in public infrastructure and modernisation of the government.
Meanwhile, Albert Einstein had returned to Germany and published his paper on relativity. In 1922, he was awarded the Nobel prize and was the most famous scientist in the world.
As it happens, I have a personal connection to the Einsteins. Our two families knew each other in Berlin in the 1920s. My grandmother used to tell a story from when she was a child. One day, Albert Einstein and his wife came for dinner at the family’s apartment on Kaiserallee near the Kurfürstendamm. She recalled peering through the keyhole of the dining room door and seeing that the great scientist was wearing house slippers, confirming rumours of his forgetful nature.
After the meal, her father, Alfred Alexander, escorted Albert to the salon to take coffee, intending to quiz him about the theory of relativity. But when he climbed into bed later that night, Alfred confessed to his wife that he and his guest had become so engrossed in discussing the latest detective novels that he had forgotten to ask.
The two men also had a professional relationship. My great-grandfather was the Einstein family doctor. On 27 April 1926, Albert Einstein wrote a letter thanking my great-grandfather for the treatment he had provided to his terminally ill uncle and aunt: “Dear and esteemed Dr Alexander!” Albert said. “Words cannot express the good you have done for my family.” Having detailed the specifics of the treatment, he ended with a sentence that imagined a tactile link between the two families: “Clasping your hand in sincere gratitude, A Einstein.”
Neither Albert nor Alfred had a sense of the horror their families would soon face.
In 1934, Robert and Nina Einstein were still living in Rome when Nina’s brother asked them for help. His wife had died and he was struggling to look after their seven-year-old twins. Robert and Nina had two girls of their own (Luce, who was 17, and Cici, who was eight), but they agreed to take in their two nieces.
The Rome apartment was now too crowded. Robert and Nina shared a love of nature and decided the time was right to move to the countryside. They found a villa outside Florence called Il Focardo. It had a peach orchard, vines and olive trees. Perhaps most importantly, it came with 10 contadini, or farmers, who would help manage the estate. It was paradise.
In May 1938, Adolf Hitler was invited to Florence by Mussolini. Desperate to impress his visitor, the Italian leader spent vast sums cleaning up the buildings, parks and streets, then gave the Führer a pomp-filled guided tour of the city. Travelling in a 20-car motorcade, they were cheered on by tens of thousands of flag-waving Italians, right arms raised to the sky in the fascist salute. The two men appeared to bond during this trip.
Six months later, on 11 November 1938, to the shock of Italian Jews, Mussolini announced the introduction of racial laws (similar to the Nazis’ Nuremberg laws). The legislation was approved by parliament and signed into law byKing Vittorio Emanuele III. Jewish children were forbidden to attend public schools and universities. Jews could no longer work in banks, insurance companies or local government. They could not marry non-Jews, serve in the army or be PNF members.
In practice, these laws were intermittently enforced, dependent on the whims of the local police and party officials. As a result, the Einsteins’ lives at Il Focardo were little affected. Luce continued to attend medical school in Florence. Cici and her cousins went to the local high school, while Robert and Nina managed the estate.
This sense of relative calm changed in the autumn of 1943, when the German army swept through northern Italy and occupied Florence and its surrounding area. On 1 December, Mussolini’s minister of the interior, Guido Buffarini Guidi, announced on national radio Police Order Number 5, including this command: all Jews were to be rounded up and put in concentration camps.
Over the next seven months, more than 8,000 Jews were arrested, amounting to 20% of the Italian Jewish population. The roundups, or razzia as they were called in Italy, were carried out by German SS and police forces, supported by Italian fascists.
Robert and Nina were still living at Il Focardo with their two daughters and two nieces. They had been joined by Nina’s sister Seba and a third niece, Anna Maria, the daughter of another of Nina’s sisters whose family thought she would be safer in the country.
Over the next days and weeks, Robert and his family watched in horror as Jews across Tuscany were arrested and put on trains to Auschwitz. It was too late for the Einsteins to flee. With the railway stations, airports and border crossings carefully monitored, the Nazis and their Italian partners made it impossible to leave.
But the Einsteins still thought they were safe. They were tucked away in the villa, far off the beaten track. Nina and the other female family members were Christian and therefore would not be a target of the roundups. And while Robert was Jewish, he was an Italian citizen and much respected locally. It was unlikely that anyone would give him away.
This dark period underlines another connection between my family and the Einsteins. We also experienced the horrors of fascist persecution. My family was German Jewish. My grandmother was thrown out of Heidelberg University because of her religion. Her father had to close his business, as Jews were not allowed to practise medicine. The Nazis stole our family’s precioushouse by the lakeoutside Berlin.
Most of my family were able to get out of Nazi Germany, including my grandmother and her parents. They were very grateful when they found refuge in England. But five of my relatives were not so lucky. They were still in Berlin when, in 1943, the Nazis organised their latest roundup. All were murdered in the Holocaust.
By the third week of July 1944, the allies were quickly moving up through Italy from the south. At night, planes could be heard buzzing overhead. There was talk that Florence might fall in a few weeks.
It was the height of the Tuscan summer. The sun beat down unrelentingly. Thecontadini were working in Il Focardo’s orchards, harvesting the peaches. And it was then that Robert heard there was a German unit looking for him. According to the local priest and an owner of a nearby estate, the soldiers had specifically mentioned he was the cousin of Albert Einstein.
Why would the Germans want to track down Albert Einstein’s relative in Italy? A decade earlier, in 1933, the great scientist had fled Germany when he learned the Nazis wanted to kill him. This was hardly a secret. Newspapers across Europe carried front page stories stating that Hitler wanted Einstein assassinated. London’s Daily Herald announced “Price placed on Einstein’s head”, adding this was valued at £1,000 – equivalent to about half a million pounds today.
Fearing for his life, Albert had fled to England, where heholed upfor a few days in Norfolk. He then took a boat with his wife to the US and moved into a house in Princeton, New Jersey.
If anything, Hitler’s hatred of Albert Einstein had intensified over the intervening years. The scientist had very publicly criticised the Nazi regime in the newspapers andraised moneyfor the war effort. He had also provided support to the US military (given its secrecy, it is unlikely that Hitler knew of Einstein’s involvement with theManhattan Project).
By the summer of 1944, he was, if anything, considered by the Nazi regime to be even more of an enemy than in 1933. The threat of assassination was still very real.
The problem, for the Nazis, was that living in the US, the famous physicist was well beyond their reach. The same was true of his nearest relatives. Albert’s wife, stepdaughter, sister and eldest son were all living in the US, while his first wife and youngest son were in neutral Switzerland.
This left his cousin, Robert, as his closest relative living in Nazi-occupied Europe.
After hearing the Germans were looking for him, Robert and Nina decided he must go into hiding. It was agreed Nina and the girls would stay at the villa; after all, they were Christian, what harm could come to them?
So it was that, in late July 1944, Robert kissed his family goodbye and headed up the rocky track towards the woods behind the villa. There he would remain for the next two weeks, sleeping in a different spot each night.
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As the days passed, Robert could hear gunfire and artillery shells, and it sounded as if it was getting closer. Coming to see him one day with supplies, Nina confirmed this. She had heard on the BBC radio that the allies were 20 miles south of Florence. They might be in the city later that week. The prospect of liberation after years of war was thrilling.
This is how things stood when, at 7am on 3 August 1944, the group of heavily armed Germans smashed through the front door of the villa. Alerted by the noise, Nina ran to see what was happening. She found seven soldiers standing in the front hallway. She was soon joined by her two daughters, sister and three nieces. Having lived for a while with her husband in Munich, Nina could speak a few words in German. She demanded to know what was going on. How dare they barge into her house like this?
The intruders were led by a captain who looked to be in his early 30s. He was of average height, had a gaunt face, short-cropped blond hair and wore round metal glasses. Unlike the other soldiers who carried machine guns, the captain had only a pistol which was tucked into a holster on his belt. Ignoring Nina’s umbrage, he demanded to know the whereabouts of the patrone. Where was the cousin of Albert Einstein?
Nina didn’t answer. The German asked again, his voice rising. She maintained her silence. When the captain looked to the others, they also kept quiet.
Frustrated, the captain ordered the seven women to be taken into the cellar. They were pushed along a narrow corridor, then through an open metal door and down some steep wooden steps. Once they were downstairs, the door was closed and locked with a clank.
Over the next few hours, the hostages followed what was going on upstairs. They heard the shuffle of boots overhead: it seemed the soldiers were exploring the villa’s every nook and cranny. Later came the sound of corks popping, followed by the clinking of glasses, cheering and laughter. After that, there was the rumble of large pieces of furniture being dragged across the floor and the unmistakable sound of a ping-pong game being played. By mid-afternoon, things had calmed down. Perhaps the soldiers were resting?
Robert, meanwhile, was still in the woods. He had seen the German soldiers arrive in their military vehicles. He was terrified but paralysed by indecision. Should he stay out of sight or run to the villa and protect his family? If he did the latter, what then? He was unarmed and alone. In the end he decided to stick with the plan. Given the allies were quickly approaching, surely the soldiers would not stick around for long. After stealing supplies and anything else of value, they would move on.
Back in the cellar, the quiet was pierced by the creak of the metal door, followed by the sound of boots coming down the stairs. “Raus!” a soldier screamed. “Raus! Raus!”
Nina was taken to the living room for questioning, while the other six women were locked in an upstairs bedroom. The captain demanded that she disclose her husband’s whereabouts and sensing she had to give him something, Nina said she sometimes met her husband in the woods, but she never knew where he would be. To find him, she called his name. Satisfied he was at last getting somewhere, the captain told two of his men to escort Nina outside to search for Robert.
By now it was dark, but their way was illuminated by a full moon. As they walked up the rocky track towards the woods, Nina called her husband’s name.
“Roberto,” she cried, “Roberto.” When there was no response, they continued on. She called again. “Roberto! Roberto.” Again there was nothing.
When Robert had first gone into hiding, they had discussed exactly this scenario. If Nina came looking for him at a time they had not previously agreed, he was to stay hidden, so this is exactly what he did. He heard his wife call for him, but did not come out.
After 30 minutes, the soldiers realised their efforts were futile. They returned to the villa and informed the captain. Furious, he told his men to bring down Nina’s daughters, Luce and Cici. He would press them for details. And if they still refused to help, he would be forced to take drastic measures.
Robert was standing in the woods when he heard a noise that filled him with terror. It was the sound of machine guns firing. He started to run.
A few minutes later, he bumped into his nieces and sister-in-law, who were fleeing the villa. Robert was desperate to know what had happened. Where were his wife and daughters? Were they OK?
They told him the terrible news: Nina, Luce and Cici had been murdered. Their bodies were back at the villa. The Germans had set the building on fire. Robert screamed in anguish and collapsed to the ground.
At almost exactly the same time that Robert heard the machine-gun fire, Germans blew up five of the bridges across the Arno River in Florence. They then retreated to the north. Early next morning, 4 August 1944, New Zealand soldiers arrived in Florence. The city was liberated.
Six weeks later, an American war crimes investigator sent a letter to Albert Einstein informing him that his cousin’s family had been murdered in Italy. The news was devastating.
A year later, Albert would hear more terrible news from Italy. Overwhelmed by guilt and grief, Robert had taken an overdose of sleeping pills. He died in a hospital in Florence on 13 July 1945.
After the war, my family lost contact with the Einsteins. They were living in the US and Switzerland; we were in London. The only remaining evidence of a connection was the letter from Albert Einstein to my great-grandfather.
But contact was made again when I met Robert Einstein’s niece, Anna Maria. Though in her 90s, she still had a clear memory of the dreadful events of August 1944.
She told me it was the worst day of her life; she was still terrorised by what happened.
She was also confident about why the murder had taken place. It had been ordered at the very highest level in the Nazi regime. Robert had been targeted because he was the cousin of Albert Einstein. And as Robert was not available, they had brutally murdered his wife and daughters. It was a vendetta.
The Einstein Vendetta by Thomas Harding is published by Michael Joseph at £22. To support the Guardian and Observer, order your copy atguardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply. Follow the author on X@thomasharding