So good to see liberal America standing up to the Trumpian threat today. A strange thing happened to me as I followed the topical posts.
Each time I saw the #HandsOff hashtag, what my brain read instead was #Hausdorff, for Felix Hausdorff, the eminent mathematician.
To my shame, I knew nothing about Felix Hausdorff the man. To me as a former Berliner and an emigree to England, Hausdorff sounded like an East Prussian landed-gentry name, I expected a Junker. Wrong. Today I learnt that Felix Hausdorff was in fact Jewish. He, his wife and his sister in law escaped the death camps by suicide, in 1942. (His daughter Lenore survived.) I never knew.
So there really is a hidden connection between today's encouraging #HandsOff news and Felix Hausdorff, the great thinker who was exposed to the same evil of unchecked state power that threatens us today, and against which today's protests took a stance.
