U of Ideas of General Interest ó November 1998 University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Contact: Andrea Lynn, Humanities/Social Sciences Editor (217) 333-2177; [email protected]
RESCUING JEWS Heroic effort to save victims of HitlerÃs regime detailed in new book
CHAMPAIGN, Ill. ó The woman who arranged Oscar SchindlerÃs emigration to Argentina and who herself was intimately involved in some of the earliest efforts to aid victims of the Nazis has written a history of what she considers to be the greatest communal humanitarian effort in the history of Anglo-Jewry. Marked by heroism, generosity and grinding hard work, the effort ìresulted in the saving of thousands of lives,î writes Amy Zahl Gottlieb.
GottliebÃs book, ìMen of Vision: Anglo-JewryÃs Aid to Victims of the Nazi Regime, 1933-1945,î was published in May by Weidenfeld & Nicolson. Already in its second printing, the book traces the largely unknown work of the Central British Fund for German Jewry (CBF) ñ known by refugees as Woburn House ñ which was established only four months after Adolf Hitler was appointed Chancellor of Germany in January 1933. An aggressive fund-raising campaign and a quickly arranged operation for locating, transporting, processing and caring for refugees, the CBF helped rescue thousands of German and Austrian Jews and non-Aryan, including 10,000 unaccompanied children.
Gottlieb, 78, who taught the first course on the Holocaust at the University of Illinois, was a member of the first Jewish Relief Unit sent overseas from England in February 1944 by the Jewish Committee for Relief Abroad. Following service in Egypt and Greece, she joined the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee and in
Austria and Germany directed the emigration of thousands of Jewish displaced persons. She was until recently the assistant to the U. of I. vice president for academic affairs. She holds a doctorate in economic history from the London School of Economics.
The CBF was created by leaders of the Anglo-Jewish community ñ most of them sons of wealthy patrician families as well as officers in World War I ñ who early on saw ìthe problems which have arisen, and will arise, in relation to the economic and social welfare of our German co-religionists during the continuance of the present policy of discrimination,î they wrote in an appeal to Anthony and Lionel de Rothschild to co-chair the committee.
Ads in the Jewish Chronicle appealed to the Anglo-Jewish community for contributions. ìJews of Britain, Do Your Duty,î one ad read. From the inception of the CBF until the end of the first year of the war, some 3 million pounds were raised in the Jewish community for the benefit of German and Austrians Jews.
The discovery in the late 1980s of a cache of documents allowed Gottlieb to tell for the first time the story of the CBF. The papers were found in the garage of a home for aged refugees in London. Gottlieb archived, microfilmed and distributed the ìtreasure troveî to libraries all over the globe.
The leaders of the ad hoc refugee organization promised the British government that no refugee would become a public charge, and they kept their word. ìThat, to me, is extraordinary,î Gottlieb said. ìBut these were extraordinary people. I wonder whether we shall see their like again.î
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