SOURCE: "Albert Einstein: A Necrological Approach," in The Centennial Review, Vol. 35, No. 3, Fall, 1991, pp. 591-606.

In the following essay, Kaplan contends that Einstein's Autobiographical Notes must be examined as a necrology-or obituary-largely because of Einstein's professional and personal connections to both the Jewish Holocaust of World War II and the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, Japan, by the United States, which Kaplan considers "the twin catastrophes at the limits of twentieth-century history and its meaning. "

1. Introduction

This essay offers a close reading of a repeated figure in the autobiographical narrative of a survivor and a mourner whose life and work are bound up with the disasters which are evoked under the impossible names of Hiroshima and the Holocaust. Upon first impression, one might not think that an autobiographical text whose stated purpose is to review the philosophical achievements and the scientific discoveries of one of the most renowned thinkers...