Deborah Dwork is an American historian who has specialized in the history of the Holocaust, and is the Founding Director of the Strassler Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Clark University. Throughout Dwork's career, she has published several in-depth studies for many university presses. All this to say, Saint and Liars: The Story of American Who Saved Refugees from the Nazis should be a competent and clearly written exploration of humanitarian aid work carried out by Americans to rescue the stateless religious and political refugees from Germany. The fact that the book is neither of those things, are among some of the frustrations with this too brief work.

Our narrative focuses on five cities (Marseille, Lisbon, Prague, Vilna and Shanghai) and the individuals or couples who were assigned to them to do the work of the Quakers, Unitarians or the Jewish Joint Distribution Committee. This could be running kitchens, funding travel or more focused efforts to save a certain number of children. Each chapter explores each city and the agent(s) dispatched to the location, ostensibly for a specific year, from 1939 to 1943, but this only seems an organization conceit as the chapters try to summarize the ebbs and flows of that city and the changing nature of the war and the winnowing of options. For each figure we get a brief biography, how and why they reached the city, their humanitarian work and often the internecine squabbling among aid organizations. Where women led the efforts, Dwork also discusses the gender disparities in both pay and respect.

Dwork had a wealth of materials to draw from, often including excerpts from letters or reports. Each chapter concludes with a summary of the highlighted agent's life. But instead of going in-depth, the narrative only touches on particular high points: especially fraught or challenging missions, the constant need for funding or continual efforts to be granted a higher level of authority. The reader doesn't get much of a sense for what life was like for the refugees or stateless outside of snapshots in the establishing of the setting or the number of peoples who directly benefited from this work.

Saints and Liars should be a book useful to scholars of world war II, especially those looking to research or learn more about the humanitarian efforts to aid the enemies of the Nazis, but it doesn't offer enough depth. It focuses on the roles of luck and a strong sense of purpose for the agents, but without addressing the humanitarian aid by US organizations was in opposition to a national policy of anti-immigration and isolationism.

Readers looking to learn about the complexities of refugees seeking an escape during world war II would be better served by Transit by Anna Seghers.

Deborah Dwork's book tells the stories of several Americans who traveled to Europe during the World War II to aid refugees fleeing from the NAZI regime. Sent by several religious organizations, Quakers, Unitarians and Jewish, they operated in Prague in 1939, Lithuania in 1940, Shanghai in 1941, Marseille, France in 1942 and Lisbon in 1943. Dwork's contribution to the works on Holocaust in this book lies in her focus on "the key role of two previously obscured factors...The unpredictable: luck, timing, chance, fortuitous circumstances. And the irrational: human sympathies and antipathies, drives, and desires." Sometimes this concentration sounds a bit academic, but one of the most appealing features of the book is actually Dwork's ability to select the stories in support of her thesis and tell them in such a way that you simply can't put the book down. It's an excellent book that offers a new perspective on the subject, and thanks to the author's storytelling skills, makes it attractive to the wider audience beyond academic circles.

Thank you to W.W. Norton and Company and NetGalley for an advance readers copy of this book.

Looking at the relief and rescue efforts for displaced people in World War II, Dr. Deborah Dwork, a specialist in Holocaust studies, offers some fresh and powerful insights about that time, and ours.

Focusing on the 1930’s and ‘40’s, she uses contemporary letters, diaries, and records to show how two factors, usually overlooked, affect efforts to help desperate people without resources: the unpredictable (luck, chance, timing) and the irrational (sympathies, antipathies, drive and desires). While it may seem such elements, by their very nature, cannot be helpful, she shows how awareness of them can inform and improve current and future efforts. Understanding their importance can help us devise better interventions in this fraught field.

To do this, she gives us riveting “case histories” of efforts in five cities between 1939 and 1944: Prague, Vilna, Shanghai, Marseille, and Lisbon. Detailing the motives and life situations of the agents involved, she also describes the complicated hurdles to be overcome by any attempt at relief and rescue. In addition, and grippingly Dwork also details the competition and rivalry between and within the agencies.

Three different organizations, representing three different religious groups, piloted these projects: The Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (“The Joint”), the American Friends Service Committee (Quakers), and the Unitarian Service Committee. Within the Jewish efforts, several sub-groups sought precedence.

Each agency focused in different measure on relief of refugees trapped in countries foreign to them vs. rescue to safer countries. Each also had different priorities in terms of whom they would rescue: political, intellectual, and artistic leaders vs. humanitarian need without regard to the victims’ status or potential for thriving in a new country. And each was more or less willing to engage in illegal transactions, if lives depended on that.

Unfortunately, the writing in this book is not conducive to reaching lay readers, even as its focus on the individual studies may not appeal to scholarly ones. There are so many acronyms and small details, plus repetitions of quotes and anecdotes, that one can get lost in following the narrative.

However, I hope that despite these flaws, the ideas in Saints and Liars will reach a wide audience.