His education began in a private gymnasium in Yerevan, and Petrosian soon distinguished himself as an exceptionally able student. A chance meeting with Ludwig Barth, the German physicist, resulted in an invitation to study physics at Leipzig University. In 1932 the University accepted him as a student for a doctorate, and he began work on the quantum theory of matter. It was an exciting time to do physics in Germany…
'In more than one way,' Findhorn suggested. 'The Nazis were coming on stream.'
Romella picked up the thick sheaf of papers on the table. 'And here we are. The diaries start then.'
'He must have been twenty-three. I wonder what triggered him?'
Romella was flicking through the pages. 'A girl, maybe. A girl by the name of Lisa Rosen.' And translating in a low, melodious voice which Findhorn found curiously sensual, they at last entered the strange world of Lev Baruch Petrosian.
She was brown-haired, talkative and cheerful. The contrast with Petrosian's withdrawn, introverted character could hardly have been more stark.
The diaries recorded the slightly immature recollections and emotions of a young man finding his way in a disintegrating world. Lev's world was one of strident voices at street corners, of unemployed men prepared to march like robots behind swastikas and martial bands, of professors introducing seminars with 'Heil Hitler!' and adopting, either from conviction or self-preservation, the attitudes and postures of the Nazis.
They also increasingly mentioned the name Lisa.
One evening, Lisa took Petrosian to a social gathering at the house of her brother, Willy Rosen. The social gathering turned out to be a meeting of the local student communists. Lev politely refused the invitation to join. He attended several such meetings, arm in arm with Lisa, but always without commitment.
One snowy day in January 1933, Lisa failed to appear at the laboratory. When he visited her in her little apartment, Lev was horrified to find her in bed, her face black and blue and her eyes almost closed up. The Brownshirts had used fists and heavy sticks to break up one of the meetings. After that, it seemed to Lev the most natural thing in the world to join the communists, the only group opposing the thugs with any degree of effectiveness. On the Party's instructions, he joined in secret. He was strictly forbidden to join the Reichsbanner, the Social Democratic Party groups who fought the Nazi Brownshirts in the streets. You are too talented, he was told, too potentially valuable to the cause, to risk a knife in your ribs.
On 30 January 1933, Hitler came to power. On 27 February the Reichstag was set on fire, and a national outburst of orchestrated thuggery against communists and Jews followed. Lev, this time with Lisa, once again found himself avoiding broken glass and unruly gangs in narrow streets. On 22 September the Reich Chamber of Culture came into being and promptly set about banishing all 'non-Aryan' culture from German life. On 4 October the racial and political purity of all newspapers and their editors was assured by the passing of the Reich Press Law. On that day too, Ludwig Barth summoned Lev: 'I can no longer accept you as a student. Your background is non-Aryan; you associate with Lisa Rosen, a communist and a Jewess. You have been speaking out against the Brownshirts.'
'Is this you speaking, professor, or the University?'
'It doesn't matter; there is no prospect that the University will grant you a doctorate.'
Professor Barth's comments did no more than crystallize thoughts which were already in Lev's mind. German academic life was in free-fall, matching the descent into hell of the country outside. The universities were being Nazified, recalcitrant professors dismissed, some murdered.
That evening Willy knocked on the door of Lev's fourth-floor apartment. Lev let him in. Willy was in an excited state. 'Lev,' he said, 'you are about to be arrested. Why? For speaking out against the Brownshirts. It is the Party's decision that you must leave the country immediately.'
'And Lisa and yourself?'
'Our place is here,' Willy said, 'fighting the fascists, with what outcome who can say? But you are too valuable to lose. You must carry on the struggle for world communism abroad.' Willy gave him the name of a girl in Kiel. 'She will look after you. Now go, quickly.'
Within half an hour Lev was heaving a suitcase loaded with books and little else through dark streets. After an hour, a safe distance from his apartment, he climbed a fence and spent a freezing night on a park bench, listening to the sounds of the dark. Early in the morning he made his way to the railway station. He half expected arrest on arrival, but in fact caught a train to Kiel without incident. He half expected arrest at Kiel too, but again left the railway station unchallenged, and found his way to an address which turned out to be a taxi service. He stayed there for six weeks, never leaving the house, until it was judged safe to transport him across dark fields to Denmark. Once there, he presented himself at the Neils Bohr Institute in Copenhagen where, as it happened, Otto Frisch was looking for an assistant. He wanted to test his Aunt Lise Meitner's quirky idea that perhaps an isotope of a rare heavy element called uranium was an unstable thing, prone to spontaneous fission like an amoeba.
A few months after Petrosian's flight, a mentally unstable Nazi storm trooper by the name of Bernhard Rust became the Reich's Minister for Science, Education and Popular Culture.
Soon after that, another storm trooper was appointed Rector of Berlin University. He promptly instituted twenty-five courses in 'racial science'.
Physics became 'a tool of world Jewry for the destruction of modern science'. Einstein the Jew was 'an alien mountebank' whose prestige proved, if proof were needed, that Jewish world rule was imminent.
And while German cultural and scientific life continued to self-destruct, a great exodus of talent took place. Soon this immense flow would be turned back against the Reich, focussed on its destruction. Some of it was directed into radar, some went into codebreaking. But for Lev Petrosian, far away in the New Mexico desert, it was the Bomb.
Dear Lev,
Yes, your letter did get through on the old Geghard trading route. If you think this isn't my handwriting you're right. I'm dictating to that pious old fornicator Father Arzumanyan. He asks if he can have his arithmetic book back as you've had plenty of time to master it.
Tomas is well. So am I. So are our sheep. That's about all the news here except that I'm seeing a girl. I can't say more as the good Father would refuse to write it down. Let me just say that she has skin as smooth as a baby's bottom and a bottom as… oh dear, I'm being censored.
Now here's a wonderful coincidence, but also black news. Aunt Lyudmila told me her friend Karineh — the one with the nose, you remember — knew of someone who'd made it out of Germany through Denmark, just as you did. So I enquired and it turns out he's now a teacher in the Gymnasium. A man called Victor. He says he knows you from Leipzig. It also turns out he was smuggled out through the Kiel underground in exactly the same way as you, with the same Kiel girl. She must be quite something but I must stop thinking like that now I'm in love. Anyway, now for the bad news. He tells me the Gestapo have arrested your friend Lisa. He says nobody knows anything about her fate, and that this type of thing is happening all the time now.
We're all expecting war any day. I want to kill Nazis, but who would look after the sheep? Tomas is too old to cope alone.
I love your stories about England but of course you're making them up. Tell me more anyway. And will you ever get to AMERIKA?
Your loving brother,
Anastas
Petrosian's diary, Monday, 27 August 1939