Representing Rescue: The National Committee for Rescue from Nazi Terror, the British and the Rescue of Jews from Nazism

Abstract

From December 1942 to May 1943, the question of an Allied effort to rescue the Jews of Europe would momentarily command the attention of the British Government and the general public. At the centre of attempts to place the issue of rescue on the national agenda were a small group of MPs and Jewish representatives who formed themselves into ‘The National Committee for Rescue from Nazi Terror’. The relationship between a British Government committed to its policy that relief for all victims lay only with an Allied victory and the endeavours of the Committee illustrates the extent to which the question of ‘rescue’ would lie at the centre of the complex circumstances regarding Britain’s response to the Holocaust.