This book challenges the widely held view which condemns as weak and half-hearted Anglo-Jewish efforts on behalf of European Jews during the Nazi period. Anglo-Jewish organizations achieved remarkable successes in the pre-war years, combining their administrative expertise with the financial guarantee of maintenance to accomplish the rescue of over fifty thousand refugees. By tragic contrast, their lack of political and diplomatic experience during wartime rendered them almost entirely incapable of influencing an intransigent government engaged in global war to save Jewish lives.

This is a penetrating and balanced analysis of the options facing British Jews as they wrested with the problems of rescuing the victims of Nazi discrimination. Alive to political realities, and mercifully unpolemical, Shatzkes exposes the cruel dilemmas that made rescue increasingly difficult. The result is an impressive reworking of a contentious story, told here with compassion and understanding. RICHARD OVERY, Professor of History, King's College London