Holocaust and Rescue: Impotent or Indifferent? Anglo-Jewry, 1938-1945 (review)

Pamela Shatzkes's study of Anglo-Jewish responses to the Holocaust, based on communal records as well as newly available government documents, is the most authoritative treatment thus far. She criticizes earlier interpretations by Tony Kushner, Richard Bolchover, and Geoffrey Alderman, historians who argued that the Anglo-Jewish leadership failed to help European Jews during the Holocaust because of indifference, timidity, and fear of anti-Semitism.¹ The problem, according to Shatzkes, was not one of indifference or lack of will. Although community leaders did in fact make a strong and constant effort, she attributes their failure to a lack of skill and charisma, a misunderstanding of the goals of the British government, and naiveté.

Shatzkes sharply contrasts the prewar and postwar response of Anglo-Jewry. Confronted with the refugee crisis of 1933ñ39, the leaders of the community succeeded in helping sixty thousand Jewish refugees enter Great Britain. Long experienced in charity work and the absorption of immigrants, Anglo-Jewish community activists had the required competence and skill to accomplish this. They guaranteed the support of every refugee who arrived after 1933, raised a significant amount of money, and received government cooperation.

After war broke out, the picture changed. The mission of Jewish leaders was to persuade the government to rescue European Jews. Their record in this regard was one of dismal failure. Shatzkes chronicles the rescue schemes presented repeatedly to the Foreign Office by community leaders. Time and again, the government rejected these requests. "What was necessary," writes Shatzkes, "was political expertise in devising and negotiating strategies to help European Jewry which the wartime government might find acceptable" (p. 162). Community leaders were unable to devise such strategies. Jewish leaders such as Selig Brodetsky of the Board of Deputies of British Jews failed to understand the profound existential crisis that Britain faced and its total commitment to winning the war. Shatzkes argues that the insistence of Jewish leaders that immediate rescue take precedence over war policy was narrow-minded and naive, and that their incessant lecturing of the government on itsmoral responsibilities (humanitarianism was not a high priority) and repeated references to Palestine were self-defeating.

Shatzkes believes that the various schemes (to exchange German POWs for Jews, to divert shipping, to send food to occupied Europe, to petition Hitler to release Jews, to issue warnings to the Nazi regime, to save children from Vichy France, Hungary, and the Balkans) were impractical, or interfered with the government's primary goal of victory, or touched on the sensitive Palestine issue. A Foreign Office official expressed one British government attitude toward the frequent Jewish petitions and proposals: "In my opinion a disproportionate amount of the time of theOffice is wasted on dealing with those wailing Jews" (p. 159). There were a few small successes. The government helped guarantee some Latin American protective documents; Mauritius visas saved 1,300 lives; food packages were sent to Eastern Europe via Portugal. But by 1943ñ45 Jewish organizations were reduced to passing endless resolutions to show the community that "they were doing something."

However, Shatzkes undermines her central argumentóthat more skill, charisma, and diplomatic "savvy" on the part of community leaders might have produced different resultsóby asserting repeatedly that the Jewish organizations had no power whatsoever to influence government policy. On the weight of the evidence, one is inclined to agree. Why then be so harsh on the leaders? How much did they matter anyhow? In an otherwise penetrating and thorough study, Shatzkes never resolves this contradiction, failing to come to grips with the roots of the Anglo-Jewish powerlessness that lies at the very heart of her subject.

Anglo-Jewry successfully protected Jews in many places during the nineteenth century and frequently managed to have the British government intervene on their behalf. Despite growing anti-alien sentiment between 1881 and 1914, the community's leaders...