Saints and Liars: The Story of Americans Who Saved Refugees from the Nazis
“Deborah Dwork has fashioned an inspiring, wide-ranging, and gripping story of brave Americans living perilously among their refugee clients in dangerous wartime Europe and China.”
“Our Americans were, at one and the same time, saints and liars. They undertook elicit activities to achieve their goals, including clandestine rescues, illegal currency exchange, and aiding undocumented refugees. They bent rules and regulations without a qualm to obtain needed supplies, equipment, and funds to keep their communities afloat. Furthermore, they tried to save targeted victims even as deportation trains rolled from France to annihilation camps in the East.”
Saints and Liars is a brilliant expose covering the lives of American religious group volunteers as they rescue victims of deadly Nazi oppression in Europe and brutal Japanese conquest in China during World War II. Author Deborah Dwork has fashioned an inspiring, wide-ranging, and gripping story of brave Americans living perilously among their refugee clients in dangerous wartime Europe and China.
Throughout Europe the volunteers risk their lives to protect, shelter, feed, and transport tens of thousands of war refugees fleeing Nazi troops, the Gestapo, and local gendarmes. In most cases, their actions are scrupulously observed by German spies. In Shanghai China, Americans are forced to maintain pleasant relations with the Japanese military, always negotiating on behalf of their vulnerable clients. Some American volunteers, who are no more than conscientious citizens before the war, are suddenly asked to spy on Japan and Germany, collecting intelligence for the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the precursor of the CIA.
Several American religious organizations lead the effort to rescue refugees living in Nazi-controlled Europe, and among the many European Jews who manage to escape to Shanghai, China, on dubious documents, which was occupied by the Japanese military. These include the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC), the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC), and the Unitarian Commission for Service (UCS). Quakers are also able to make a difference by rescuing refugees in Europe. Each of these groups assign staff to coordinate the work of saving refugees fleeing Hitler in Europe, or those from Europe trapped in China. This extraordinary book contains the cumulative knowledge of their daring, ingenuity, and perseverance in lands far from home, under wartime diplomatic conditions.
Many of the refugees escaping Europe are Jewish families fleeing from Nazi extermination camps. They had already left their home countries. If caught by police or Gestapo agents, they risk being sent to Nazi extermination camps. Few have a valid passport, or proof of another country’s entrance visa, which is required to move from one nation into another during wartime in Europe. Many countries around the world are unwilling to absorb these war refugees, including the United States, which has strict quotas for admitting Jews in 1940. Without assistance, these families are destined for very dark days, if they survive at all. This is the story of some of the individuals and families who are saved by private American citizens before and after America enters the war.
In Shanghai, Marseille, Lisbon, and Vilna, we follow American volunteers as they find ways to spirit clients over mountainous borders, through forests, and across lakes and rivers, just to reach relative safety. Each refugee must have legal documents, including passports, as well as exit and entrance visas for their destinations and to pass through other nations on the way. These documents are procured in any manner possible, and at all costs. Meanwhile, thousands of refugees being held in captivity by occupying forces need first aid, food, shelter, medical care, and hope. All this was provided by the courageous volunteers. American religious organizations provide the funds to make this massive rescue possible. Success leads to the survival of thousands of Europeans, many of whom become productive citizens of the United States.
To achieve success, the volunteers must not just spirit people across borders with proper documents. Many of these volunteers must be skilled negotiators with German and Japanese military leaders. And they must communicate and coordinate with refugee rescue organizations from other religious groups, often functioning nearby in Europe. With unpredictable changes in circumstances and events, these volunteers are constantly stressed to the point of exhaustion, exacerbated by loneliness. Yet none of them cease trying to help.
It should be noted that many of the leaders of these religious organizations display a degree of sexism that would be flatly rejected today by residents of most Western nations. While delivering at least 50% of the success described in this book, most female volunteers received little or no pay, even while risking their lives daily and becoming spies for the OSS. Male volunteers received money and respect. Dwork also delivers evidence of infighting, poor communication, lack of respect, and personality conflicts among the representatives, which the religious group leaders seemed unable to resolve.
An important aspect of this rescue effort was deciding which refugees to help and in which ways. Some of the American Gentile organizations pressured their representatives in Europe to rescue more Christian refugees, bringing them to America whenever possible. But many of the refugees in the greatest danger were Jewish families and they could only be safe in some countries. By 1941, Nazi trains were already delivering millions of Jewish men, women, and children to death camps in the East. Which ones in which nations can be saved? How to decide? And there was a concerted effort to save professionals, who could contribute immediately to the wartime science and technology needs of the Allies. Yet was this not unfair to everyone else? Didn’t all deserve to be saved, especially children?
These are amazing stories of lives saved, told expertly by the talented Holocaust author Deborah Dwork. She is a celebrated American historian and a highly acclaimed author of books about the Shoah, with numerous outstanding credits to her name. With a knack for sifting through mountains of data, drawing out the important stories, and filling our minds with tales of magnificent bravery, Dwork’s writing style is evocative as well as informative. She is concise, yet this important book is comprehensive in nature.
In Saints and Liars, we discover a portrait of the values and courage displayed by American activists who cared deeply enough to risk their lives, helping those in danger during World War II. To those Europeans hiding desperately from Nazi or Japanese troops and spies, to innocent Jews and others who have been incarcerated, these Yankees represent their last hope to survive. Had these brave Americans not risen to the occasion, many more thousands of innocent families would have been murdered by the Axis nations.
As the world currently faces a refugee problem like no other before it, can nonfiction books like this help us learn from the mistakes and successes of the past? Could this wonderful book present a path for the world to save contemporary refugees from the dangers of fascism, ultranationalists, and racists? For only when we learn to value the differences among us can we hope to achieve the true potential of the human spirit.