AUTHENTICITY CERTIFIED: Text version below transcribed directly from audio]

Ladies and Gentlemen:

The Nobel Anniversary celebration takes on a special significance this year.  Well after our deadly struggle of many years, we are at peace again; or what we are supposed to consider as peace.  And it bears a still more significant significance for the physicists who, in one way or another, were connected with the construction of the use of the atomic bomb.

For these physicists find themselves in a position not unlike to that of Alfred Nobel himself.  Alfred Nobel invented the most powerful explosive ever known up to his time, a means of destruction par excellence.  In order to atone for this, in order to relieve his human conscience, he instituted his awards for the promotion of peace and for achievements of peace.

Today, the physicists who participated in forging the most formidable and dangerous weapon of all times are harassed by an equal feeling of responsibility, not to say guilt.  We cannot desist from warning, and warning again, we cannot and should not slacken in our efforts to make the nations of the world, and especially their governments, aware of the unspeakable disaster they are certain to provoke unless they change their attitude toward each other and toward the task of shaping the future.

We helped in creating this new weapon in order to prevent the enemies of mankind from achieving it ahead of us, which, given the mentality of the Nazis, would have meant inconceivable destruction and the enslavement of the rest of the world.

We delivered this weapon into the hands of the Americans and the British people as trustees of the whole [of] mankind, as fighters for peace and liberty.  But so far, we fail to see any guarantee of peace.  We do not see any guarantee of the freedoms that were promised to the nations in the Atlantic Charter.  The war is won, but the peace is not.

The great powers, united in fighting, are now divided over the peace settlements.

The world was promised freedom from fear, but in fact fear has increased tremendously since the termination of the war.

The world was promised freedom from want, but large parts of the world are faced with starvation while others are living in abundance.

The nations were promised liberation and justice but we have witnessed, and are witnessing even now, the sad spectacle of liberating armies firing into populations who want their independence and social equality, and supporting in those countries, by force of arms, such parties and personalities as appear to be most suited to serve vested interests. 

Territorial questions and arguments of power, obsolete though they are, still prevail over the essential demands of common welfare and justice.

Allow me to be more specific about just one case, which is but a symptom of the general situation: the case of my own people, the Jewish people.  As long as Nazi violence was unleashed only, or mainly, against the Jews, the rest of the world looked on passively; and even treaties and agreements were made with the patently criminal government of the Third Reich. Later, when Hitler was on the point of taking over Romania and Hungary, at the time when Maidanek and Oswiecim were in Allied hands, and the methods of the gas chambers were well known all over the world, all attempts to rescue the Romanian and Hungarian Jews came to naught because the doors of Palestine were closed to Jewish immigrants and no country could be found that would admit those forsaken people.  They were left to perish like their brothers and sisters in the occupied countries.

We shall never forget the heroic efforts of the small countries, of the Scandinavian, the Dutch, the Swiss nations, and of individuals in the occupied parts of Europe who did all in their power to protect Jewish lives.  We do not forget the human[e] attitude of the Soviet Union who was the only one among the big powers to open her doors to hundreds of thousands of Jews when the Nazi armies were advancing in Poland.

But after all that had happened, and was not prevented from happening -- how is it today?

While in Europe territories are being distributed without any qualms about the wishes of the people concerned, the remainders of European Jewry, one-fifth of its prewar population, are again denied access to their haven in Palestine and left to hunger and cold and persisting hostility.  There is no country, even today, that would be willing or able to offer them a place where they could live in peace and security.  And the fact that many of them are still kept in degrading conditions of concentration camps by the Allies gives sufficient evidence of the shamefulness and hopelessness of the situation.

These people are forbidden to enter Palestine with reference to the principle of democracy, but actually the Western powers, in upholding the ban of the White Paper, are yielding to the threats and the external pressure of five vast and underpopulated Arab States.  It is sheer irony when the British Foreign Minister tells the poor lot of European Jews they should remain in Europe because their genius is needed there, and, on the other hand, advises them not to try to get at the head of the queue lest they might incur new hatred -- hatred and persecution.  Well, I am afraid they cannot help it; with their six million dead they have been pushed at the head of the queue, of the queue of Nazi victims, most against their will.

The picture of our postwar world is not bright.  As far as we, the physicists, are concerned we are no politicians and it has never been our wish to meddle in politics.  But we know a few things that the politicians do not know.  And we feel the duty to speak up and to remind those responsible that: there is no escape into easy comforts; there is no distance ahead for proceeding little by little and delaying the necessary changes into an indefinite future; there is no time left for petty bargaining.

The situation calls for a courageous effort, for a radical change in our whole attitude in the entire political concept.  May the spirit that prompted Alfred Nobel to create this great institution -- the spirit of trust and confidence, of generosity and brotherhood among men, prevail in the minds of those upon whose decisions our destiny rests. Otherwise, human civilization will be doomed.