Victor Gollancz

Gollancz publicised the anti-Semitism of the Nazi regime early on; in 1933 he had published the compilation volume The Little Brown Book of the Hitler Terror[10] and Fritz Seidler's book on the Nazi persecution of the Jews The Bloodless Pogrom in 1934. In the summer of 1942 Gollancz came to realise that he and the rest of the world had been seriously underestimating the horrific extent of the Nazi persecution of the Jews. He explained in his 16,000 word pamphlet Let My People Go, written over Christmas 1942, that between one and two million Jews had already been murdered in Nazi-controlled Europe and "unless something effective is done, within a very few months these six million Jews will all be dead."[11] Gollancz proposed a series of practical responses, centred around a rescue plan, and undertook a lecture and fundraising tour; he was also made Vice-President of Eleanor Rathbone's National Committee for Rescue from Nazi Terror. Published early in the new year of 1943, the pamphlet sold a quarter of a million copies within three months[12] and was quoted in the Parliament of Canada in 1943,[13] and in The Adelaide Advertiser on Saturday 15 May 1943.[14] Along with Rathbone, Gollancz was the foremost British campaigner during the Second World War on the issue of the Nazi extermination of European Jewry.

Towards the end of June 1943, Gollancz suffered a serious nervous breakdown, believed to have been brought on by overwork (he had cut out holidays and reduced his social and cultural life) and his identification with the Nazis' victims. After his recovery he started work on a book to be called The Necessity for Zionism; although the book was never written, he did publish a number of books on Jewish topics.[15] His work for Zionism at this time led to him being appointed as a governor of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. In May 1945, he wrote his last major contribution to Jewish refugees, the pamphlet Nowhere to Lay Their Heads: The Jewish tragedy in Europe and its solution, a personal appeal for the opening up of Palestine for large-scale Jewish immigration from Europe, which he distributed for free and was a great success.[16]

In April 1945, Gollancz addressed the issue of German collective guilt in a pamphlet, What Buchenwald Really Means that explained that all Germans were not guilty. He maintained that hundreds of thousands of gentiles had been persecuted by the Nazis and many more had been terrorized into silence. Equally, British citizens who had done nothing to save the Jews despite living in a democracy, were not free of guilt. This marked a shift of Gollancz's attention towards the people of Germany. In September 1945, he started an organisation Save Europe Now (SEN) to campaign for the support of Germans,[17] and over the next four years he wrote another eight pamphlets and books addressing the issue and visited the country several times.

Gollancz's campaign for the humane treatment of German civilians involved efforts to persuade the British government to end the ban on sending provisions to Germany and ask that it pursue a policy of reconciliation, as well as organising an airlift to provide Germany and other war-torn European countries with provisions and books. He wrote regular critical articles for, and letters to, British newspapers, and after a visit to the British Zone of Occupation in October and November 1946, he published these along with shocking close-up photos of malnourished children he took there in In Darkest Germany [18] in January 1947.

On the expulsion of Germans after World War II he said: "So far as the conscience of humanity should ever again become sensitive, will this expulsion be an undying disgrace for all those who remember it, who caused it or who put up with it. The Germans have been driven out, but not simply with an imperfection of excessive consideration, but with the highest imaginable degree of brutality." In his book, Our Threatened Values (London, 1946), Gollancz described the conditions Sudeten German prisoners faced in a Czech concentration camp: "They live crammed together in shacks without consideration for gender and age ... They ranged in age from 4 to 80. Everyone looked emaciated ... the most shocking sights were the babies ... nearby stood another mother with a shrivelled bundle of skin and bones in her arms ... Two old women lay as if dead on two cots. Only upon closer inspection, did one discover that they were still lightly breathing. They were, like those babies, nearly dead from hunger ..." When Field Marshal Montgomery wanted to allot each German citizen a guaranteed diet of only 1,000 calories a day and justified this by referring to the fact that the prisoners of the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp had received only 800, Gollancz wrote about starvation in Germany, pointing out that many prisoners never even received 1,000 calories. "There is really only one method of re-educating people," explained Gollancz, "namely the example that one lives oneself."

Gollancz's motives for his work for Germany can be traced to his internationalism and his ethic of brotherly love. He explained his rationale thus, "In the management of our helping actions should nothing, but absolutely nothing else, be decisive than the degree of need." For his biographer, Ruth Dudley Edwards, Gollancz's campaign was based in his concern for the moral underdog and his enjoyment in fighting for unpopular causes.[19] The campaign led Gollancz's friend, Rev. John Collins to start Christian Action in December 1946, an organisation with similar aims (which later became involved in the campaign against Apartheid).[20] In 1960 Gollancz was awarded the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade for his work with SEN.

During the fighting that marked the creation of the state of Israel, Gollancz became concerned for the plight of the Arabs and in October 1948 he founded the Jewish Society for Human Service (JSHS), with Rabbi Leo Baeck as its president. This body was based on "the universalist ethic of Judaism" and aimed to work in the newly formed state of Israel "to relieve the suffering of Jews and Arabs indifferently."[21]

In February 1951, Victor Gollancz wrote a letter to The Manchester Guardian asking people to join an international struggle against poverty. Gollancz's letter called for a negotiated end to the Korean War and the creation of an international fund "to turn swords into ploughshares", readers were asked to send a postcard to Gollancz with the simple word 'yes'. He received 5,000 responses. This led to the founding of the Association for World Peace (AWP) with Gollancz as chairman and Canon Charles Raven the vice-Chairman. In May 1951, Gollancz invited Harold Wilson to chair an AWP committee and write a pamphlet which was eventually called 'War on Want - a Plan for World Development', published on 9 June 1952. This document led to the founding of the international anti-poverty charity War on Want; its parent body, the AWP, waned after Gollancz stepped down from the chairmanship in 1952.

With Arthur Koestler and John Collins, Gollancz set up the National Campaign for the Prevention of Legal Cruelty in 1955. This organisation was renamed The National Campaign for the Abolition of Capital Punishment (NCACP) and campaigned against judicial killing in the UK. This drive against capital punishment would later lead Gollancz to campaign against the execution of the Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann. He addressed the issue in a controversial pamphlet, The Case of Adolf Eichmann.[22]