l x x i v I N T R O D U C T I O N T O V O L U M E 1 4 distribute 100,000 lire from the Italian Red Cross to needy Soviet émigré scientists. In 1925, Einstein contributed to an anthology of letters from political prisoners in the Soviet Union. He condemned the political murders carried out by the Soviet “terror regime” and hoped that the anthology would force those in power to change their policies unless they wished to lose all sympathy for their political ideals (Doc. 423). XII Einstein’s twelve-week trip to South America, long in the making, was originally conceived by Leopoldo Lugones, a fellow member of the ICIC and a prominent Argentinian writer, amateur scientist, and early proponent of relativity.[47] While visiting Paris in July 1921, Lugones, known for his anti-German stance at the time, called on his French colleagues to send one of their physicists to lecture on relativ- ity in Argentina. In reaction, both the German Foreign Ministry and the Prussian Ministry of Education contacted Einstein to inquire whether he himself would be willing to embark on such a lecture tour. In response, he stated that he did not fore- see himself traveling to South America in the next eighteen months and recom- mended that they invite German-Argentinian physicist Jakob Laub in his stead.[48] The assassination of Walther Rathenau in June 1922, and the ensuing personal threats to Einstein, apparently led Lugones to reassess his position on the issue of whom to invite to Argentina to lecture on relativity. In the wake of the assassination, he actually proposed offering a chair to Einstein in Buenos Aires.[49] A few months later, the Institución Cultural Argentino-Germana put forth a more modest proposal: to invite Einstein for a lecture series in Argentina. However, due to Einstein’s reputation as a pacifist and a “traitor to the fatherland,” the German members of the Institución opposed the proposal.[50] The Institución made another attempt to invite Einstein in October 1923 (Abs. 198), which he rejected due to lack of time.[51] The invitation which Einstein eventually did accept was extended to him in two stages. In November 1923, a group of prominent Jewish families invited him to vis- it Argentina and promised an honorarium of $4,000, yet made no mention of a lec- ture tour (Doc. 138). But Einstein insisted that he could only accept an academic invitation, and thus proposals for a lecture tour were issued over the next two months by the University of Buenos Aires. In parallel, he was also informed that funding for a tour of five Argentinian universities would, for the main part, be pro- vided by the Jewish cultural institution, the Asociación Hebraica. This invitation