for
a degree in higher mathematics. As the Nazi spirit grew in strength he
decided that it was time to get out, and some time before the war began
he went to Belgium and there joined relatives who were in the diamond
industry.
"I
found no work for a mathematician, but for a diamond cutter there was
always a job. So rather later than most, I set to work learning a new
trade," he said. "The people who taught me were old-fashioned; you
might call them traditionalist. For example, they cut facets by
instinct rather than measurement. It was their pride to get the best
result through experience rather than theory. They had good results,
but I didn't approach the problem that way. As I saw it, the refraction
of the light that gives a diamond its fire is based on certain
mathematical laws and could not be otherwise. Therefore I sat down and
worked out my angles mathematically, and long before anyone else used
it I employed a kind of protractor that would measure these angles
without possibility of a mistake. They said I couldn't do it that way;
that they had done it their way for generations. But I did it my way,
and I succeeded."
He
happened to be in England on a business errand when the German blitz
began and the Storm Troopers marched into Belgium. His family was not
with him: he never saw them again. Briefel found work in England and is
now a naturalized Briton.
A
few days after my visit to this English factory I came upon some
statistics that showed dramatically what an effect the war has had on
diamond cutting. There are about five hundred cutters in England at
the present time and nearly as many in France: four hundred and
seventy-five. In Holland, where many of these people lived and worked
before the war, there
