Robert Max Vasilii Kempner (1899-1993)

Consulente del ministero degli Interni della Repubblica di Weimar, avvocato brillante, come oppositore di Hitler e come ebreo aveva perso il lavoro e la cittadinanza. Con la seconda moglie, nel 1935 decise di espatriare in Italia (quasi mai lo si ricorda). Ma anche i bei tempi italiani finirono: incarcerato e «derubato da Hitler come da Mussolini», nel ’39 trovò una sistemazione alla University of Pennsylvania grazie agli ex colleghi di sua madre, una batteriologa di fama internazionale. Fu tra i pochi grantees dell’Emergency Committee in Aid for Displaced Foreign Scholars, ma solo dopo un iniziale rifiuto che contestò puntualmente. Personaggio controverso, a tratti inquietante, fu procuratore degli Stati Uniti al processo di Norimberga contro i crimini di guerra. An advisor to the Ministry of the Interior in the Weimar Republic and a brilliant lawyer, as an opponent of Hitler and as a Jew he lost his job and his citizenship. In 1935, with his second wife he decided to emigrate to Italy (this is hardly ever remembered). But even the good days in Italy came to an end: imprisoned and «robbed by Hitler as well as by Mussolini», in 1939 he found a post at the University of Pennsylvania thanks to former colleagues of his mother, an internationally renowned bacteriologist. He was among the few grantees of the Emergency Committee in Aid for Displaced Foreign Scholars, but only after an initial refusal, which he promptly challenged. A controversial, at times disturbing figure, he was a prosecuting attorney for the United States at the Nuremberg war crimes trial.