Dinner Party
an excerpt
It was the winter of 1943, or perhaps 1944, my remembrance of time not what it once was.
We were sitting in the dining room of a house owned by an acquaintance from the college, awaiting the arrival of a very special guest. I had read about this guest numerous times over recent years. This as of yet unarrived fellow had often been referred to as a 'genius'.
He had arrived in the U.S. from Zurich, in Switzerland, where he had excelled in the studies of advanced mathematics and physics. Born in Germany, he was of Jewish descent, and had renounced his German citizenship several years before to avoid military conscription, also citing the rise of Hitler. He had then moved to what was most likely the safest place in the world at the time for a Jew. The United States.
