Sigmund Freud שלמה זיגמונד פרויד
Founder of psychoanalysis; he made the unconscious part of human self-understanding
He joined B'nai B'rith in 1897. He refused a religious wedding in 1886—and was compelled to go through one anyway under Austrian law. Toward Zionism as a political programme he was cold: in his 1930 letter to Chaim Koffler, declining to sign a Keren HaYesod appeal, he called Palestine "historically overburdened" and the project ill-advised.
He was persecuted as a Jew, to the end. His books were burned in 1933; after the Anschluss he left Vienna on the Orient Express on 4 June 1938 and reached London on the 6th. Four of his sisters were murdered in the camps—Marie Bonaparte could not get them visas. He died about three in the morning on 23 September 1939 of a dose of morphine given at his own request by Max Schur: that is 10 Tishrei 5700, the night of Yom Kippur.
And one thing that must not be printed. He did sign the Gestapo's receipt stating that he had been well treated; the famous addition—"I can heartily recommend the Gestapo to anyone"—is almost certainly a later invention.
On the timeline
Sources
Documents of the period
- The address to the Vienna B'nai B'rith lodge, 1926; the letter to Ch. Koffler, 1930 — “a godless Jew”; the refusal to sign a Zionist appeal
Scholarship
- Wikipedia, “Sigmund Freud”; E. Jones, biography — the departure of 4 June 1938; the murder of four sisters; the death on Yom Kippur
Basis: documents and evidence.