Bertrand Goldschmidt was a French nuclear chemist who served during World War II with American nuclear researchers, becoming an expert in the chemistry of plutonium and plutonium extraction. He chose to return to [[France]] after the war and joined its [[Atomic Energy Commission]]. Goldschmidt was among the few outsiders permitted to visit the completed reactor at [[Dimona]] in the 1960s.[^1] Goldschmidt had strong emotional ties to [[Israel]], heightened by his marriage into the [[Rothschild]] banking family, known for their contributions to Israeli and Jewish causes. He and his wife visited [[Israel]] in the early 1950s and met [[David Ben-Gurion]] through [[Ernst David Bergmann]]. As director of chemistry for [[France]]'s Atomic Energy Commission, he later became a respected spokesman on nonproliferation issues.[^1] Goldschmidt vividly recalled a meeting of the French Atomic Energy Commission where [[Ernst David Bergmann]] and [[Shimon Peres]] requested to buy a heavy-water research reactor similar to the one [[Canada]] was building in [[India]]. He remained convinced that the basic decision to help [[Israel]] get the bomb was made during these meetings in mid-September, before the [[Suez Crisis]].[^1] ### Footnotes [^1]: Hersh, Seymour M. *The Samson Option: Israel's Nuclear Arsenal and American Foreign Policy*. Random House, 1991. Chapter 3.