Survivors: Jewish Self-Help and Rescue in Nazi-Occupied Western Europe, Bob Moore (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2010), xv + 512 pp., $45.00 hardcover

Abstract

Scholars continue to scrutinize Jewish and non-Jewish responses to the Holocaust. This research has swept aside shallow dichotomies of “good” and “evil.” No longer do we accept interpretations that paint all Jews as the former because of their victimization and self-reliant resistance, and all Gentiles as the latter for their alleged passivity or their outright collaboration in the atrocities. Recently scholars have focused much more on Eastern Europe. Their work has helped dispel long-held myths about the relationship between Jews and non-Jews. Studies such as Gunnar S. Paulsson's Secret City: The Hidden Jews of Warsaw, 1940–1945 force a reevaluation of simplistic characterizations. Bob Moore continues in this vein, examining the role of Jewish self-help and of rescue by non-Jews in Nazi-occupied Western Europe. Survivors deepens his own research into Jewish survival in the Netherlands and broadens the inquiry to Belgium, France, Norway, and Denmark. Moore emphasizes that survival rarely occurred without non-Jewish help. The lone Jewish resister was the exception. Moore correctly points out the paucity of related monographs on Western Europe. What he adds to the scholarship is two-fold. First, he provides an analysis of how rescue and self-help worked in occupied Western Europe, illustrating the extent to which Jews relied on non-Jews for assistance. Second, and more important for advancing our understanding of the Holocaust, Moore examines the link between the general non-Jewish resistance movements in occupied Western Europe and rescue and self-help.