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.