Nazi German Labour Front rather than become a member of a Nazi-controlled organisation. As a result, he could neither work in the chemical industry nor receive his habilitation, the prerequisite for an academic position. Meitner persuaded Hahn to hire Strassmann as an assistant. Soon he would be credited as a third collaborator on the papers they produced, and would sometimes even be listed first. Hahn spent February to June 1933 in the United States and Canada as a visiting professor at Cornell University. He gave an interview to the Toronto Star Weekly in which he painted a flattering portrait of Adolf Hitler: The April 1933 Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service banned Jews and communists from academia. Meitner was exempt from its impact because she was an Austrian rather than a German citizen. Haber was likewise exempt as a veteran of World War I, but chose to resign his directorship of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute of Physical Chemistry and Electrochemistry in protest on 30 April 1933, but the directors of the other Kaiser Wilhelm Institutes, even the Jewish ones, complied with the new law, which applied to the KWS as a whole and those Kaiser Wilhelm institutes with more than 50% state support, which exempted the KWI for Chemistry. Hahn therefore did not have to fire any of his own full-time staff, but as the interim director of Haber's institute, he dismissed a quarter of its staff, including three department heads. Gerhart Jander was appointed the new director of Haber's old institute, and, ironically, reoriented it towards chemical warfare research. Like most KWS institute directors, Haber had accrued a large discretionary fund. It was his wish that it be distributed to the dismissed staff to facilitate their emigration, but the Rockefeller Foundation insisted that the funds either be used for scientific research or returned. Hahn brokered a deal whereby 10 per cent of the funds would be allocated to Haber's people. In August 1933 the administrators of the KWS were alerted that several boxes of Rockefeller Foundation-funded equipment was about to be shipped to Herbert Freundlich, one of the department heads that Hahn had dismissed, in England. Hahn complied with an order to halt the shipment, but when Planck, the president of the KWS since 1930, returned from vacation, he ordered Hahn to expedite the shipment. Haber died on 29 January 1934. A memorial service was held