Jad Abumrad

All right.

So Sam, what happened to this guy after World War I?

He actually was very humiliated that Germany had lost and especially humiliated over the fact that they had to pay enormous war reparations to other countries.

So he decided he was going to invent a process to pay for these reparations by himself.

And what he decided to do is go into the ocean, into seawater,

which contains very small levels of gold.

But, you know, over the entire ocean, there's a lot of gold dissolved into the sea.

And he spends five years in a futile effort to distill gold from the ocean's waters.

Sounds insane.

On the other hand, if anyone could do it.

He was trying to repeat this master stroke.

Needless to say.

He fails.

It was actually a crushing blow for him.

And then things really take a turn.

1933 comes and Hitler takes over.

And one of the first acts that the Nazis do is to basically issue an order that says there shall be no Jews in the civil service.

Now, Haber was Jewish, but because he'd served in World War I, he technically would be exempt.

But 75% of the people who worked for him at the Institute, they were Jewish.

And they would have to be dismissed immediately.