WW2 Refugees

Includes letters referencing the work of the Society of Friends in Vienna

Since 2001, National Holocaust Memorial Day has been commemorated in the UK on January 27 – the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau, the

The Wiener Library holds many personal accounts of children evacuated from Nazi Germany, Austria and Czechoslovakia between December 1938 and September

10, 000 children, the majority of whom were Jewish, were brought to Britain from Germany, Austria, Czechoslovakia and Poland to escape persecution by the Nazis between 1 December 1938 and 1 Septemb…

The following is a repost of a blog post by Rhoda Howard-Hassmann, coeditor with Margaret Walton-Roberts of The Human Right to Citizenship: A Slippery

Since 2006 the Library has been involved in a collaborative microfilming project with the US Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM). The Museum, based in Washington DC, is the most comprehensive institu…

A living memorial to the Holocaust, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum inspires citizens and leaders worldwide to confront hatred, prevent genocide, and promote human dignity.

THE MISSING CHAPTER: HOW THE BRITISH QUAKERS HELPED TO SAVE THE JEWS OF GERMANY AND AUSTRIA FROM NAZI PERSECUTION by JENNIFER TAYLOR October 2009

Last week saw the 80th anniversary of the November Pogrom in Germany and Austria, now known as Kristallnacht. This outburst of anti-Semitic violence happened over the night of the 9th/10th of Novem…

This thesis details the previously under-acknowledged work of British Quakers with refugees from fascism in the period leading up to the Second World War. This work can be characterised as distinctly Quaker in origin, complex in organisation and grassroots in implementation. The first chapter establishes how interwar British Quakers were able to mobilise existing networks and values of humanitarian intervention to respond rapidly to the European humanitarian crisis presented by fascism. The Spanish Civil War saw the lines between legal social work and illegal resistance become blurred, forcing British Quaker workers to question their own and their country’s official neutrality in the face of fascism. The second chapter draws attention to both the official structures and the unofficial responses of humanitarian workers. Female domestic servants were the largest professional category of refugees from fascism to enter Britain. Their refuge was largely negotiated by other women, which has not been acknowledged. In the third chapter, I focus on intimate histories to approach a gendered analysis of humanitarian intervention. Finally, I argue that the Kindertransport, in which Quaker leadership was essential, represents the culmination of the interwar voluntary tradition and should be seen as the product of a complex, inter-agency effort. I argue that the Quaker work was hugely significant as a humanitarian endeavour in its own right. Beyond this evident and momentous impact, the Quaker work should be seen as a case study for the changing role of both voluntarism and humanitarianism between the wars. This dissertation illustrates the ways in which the interwar period saw both the professionalization of the humanitarian sector, and an increasing recognition that governments had to support private charities in their humanitarian responses to international crises.

Read through pages of historic government documents related to the British scheme to rescue Jewish children from Nazi occupied regions. The scheme became known as the Kindertransport.

Access World Jewish Relief's archives on Jewish refugees from the 1930s. Discover more about your Jewish genealogy and heritage with our help today.