In the autumn of 1937, Robert’s aunt Hedwig Oppenheimer Stern (Julius’ youngest sister) and her son Alfred Stern and his family landed in New York as refugees from Nazi Germany. Robert had sponsored them legally and paid their expenses, and soon he persuaded them to settle in Berkeley. Robert’s generosity toward the Sterns was not fleeting. He always regarded them as family; decades later, when Hedwig Stern died, her son wrote Oppenheimer, “As long as she could think and feel, she was all for you.”
