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The contributions to this collection were originally given at a conference held at the British Academy on 3–4 December 2008, to celebrate the 75th anniversary of the founding of the Academic Assistance Council in 1933, later the Society for the Protection of Science and Learning (1936–98), and now the Council for Assisting Refugee Academics. This introductory chapter discusses the story of the SPSL and the flood of European refugee scholars and scientists from Nazi-occupied Europe in the 1930s and 1940s, and their subsequent contribution to specific disciplines in the humanities and social sciences. An overview of the subsequent chapters is also presented.

This chapter highlights the extent to which media featured as weapons in Thomas Mann's struggle against Nazism. Mann benefited from government–industry collaborations, for example, by acquiring access to American studios to record propaganda broadcasts that were then carried into Nazi-occupied Europe. His main intermediary on the continent, however, was his old German publisher Gottfried Bermann Fischer, who fought a battle of his own to keep Mann's books available in those countries that had not yet been conquered by the Nazis. Both forms of transmission—the transmission of Mann's voice via radio waves and the transmission of his books via increasingly convoluted distribution networks—were beset by all sorts of difficulties during wartime. But both were essential in keeping the author's influence alive in a time when he was unable to personally connect to his readership.

This chapter explores how Jewish refugees found support while waiting for their visas. Separated from their former selves and from family and friends, refugees needed to find support during their indefinite stays in Portugal. Two approaches helped them maintain old relationships and create new ones: writing to and receiving letters from loved ones, and forming new friendships in cafés. Regular visits to cafés allowed them to reach out to one another to share moods and create caring communities. Letters to and from loved ones also ensured that bonds of family and friendship continued despite distances. However, café friendships proved transitory, and epistolary spaces could cause grief, especially when refugees in Portugal learned of the dangers and hunger facing Jews in Nazi-occupied Europe.

This chapter examines the altruistic behavior of moderately religious rescuers of Jews in Nazi Europe. The analysis reveals that that the moderately religious constitute a group that is a disproportionately low percentage of rescuers and a disproportionately high percentage of nonrescuers. This chapter compares the mildly religious and somewhat religious and also the moderately religious rescuers and nonrescuers. It also describes the stories of moderately religious rescuers and nonrescuers, including a mildly religious Italian man, a somewhat religious Polish woman, and a moderately religious French man.

This chapter examines the altruistic behavior of very religious rescuers of Jews in Nazi Europe. These include a nun, a Dutch Protestant male, and a church minister. This chapter compares the very religious rescuers with equally religious nonrescuers in terms of the five summary factors and their associated measures. The findings reveal that the nun and the Dutch Protestant became rescuers only when aroused by their religious leaders, which gives apparent credence to the hypothesis that if the church had taken a clear stand, the Holocaust might never have happened.

This chapter examines the altruistic behavior of Protestant rescuers of Jews in Nazi Europe. It analyzes qualities shared by the Protestant rescuers with other Protestants and how Protestants generally compare with Catholics. The findings reveal that Protestants were particularly strong on potency measures compared to Catholics and that both Protestant rescuers and bystanders scored significantly higher on personal potency than their Catholic counterparts. This chapter also shares the stories of Protestant rescuers and bystanders including that of a German Lutheran rescuer, a Norwegian Lutheran rescuer, and a Dutch Lutheran bystander.

This chapter examines the altruistic behavior of irreligious rescuers of Jews in Nazi Europe. It compares irreligious rescuers and irreligious nonrescuers including a Dutch rescuer, a Polish rescuer, and a French communist nonrescuer. It also compares religious and irreligious rescuers and suggests that while they differ in many important ways, they also share some common characteristics.

This chapter examines the altruistic behavior of Catholic rescuers of Jews in Nazi Europe. It compares the Catholic rescuers with their Protestant counterparts and the results reveal that Catholics are generally more marked by a sharing predisposition and that they scored significantly higher on the sharing factor and its associated measures. It suggests that Catholics owe their sharing dispositions to their religion and their tight collective culture. This chapter also explains that Catholics are united by their religious identification, their sense of patriotism, and their reliance on their religious and national institutions to reach their goals.

The Kindertransport was a voluntary movement organized by the British government in 1938 that brought 10,000 Jewish and other children from Nazi Europe to Britain. This chapter discusses narratives of the Kindertransport journeys, which allowed for the movement of refugee children from Germany, Austria, Czechoslovakia and Poland rescued from Nazi persecution. It highlights the generosity of the British people towards Jewish refugees during the Holocaust period, and explores the reasons why the Kindertransport was subjected to widespread public and media attention since its arrival in 1938.

This chapter deals with the world premiere of Jud Süss at the Venice Film Festival in 1940, where it is praised by the young critic Michelangelo Antonioni, and its subsequent box-office success in Nazi-occupied Europe. Several factors behind its success are analyzed, such as an ingenious publicity campaign aimed separately at men and women and Harlan’s use of genre motifs such as illicit love between a curious virgin and a seductive villain. Jud Süss raises questions about the seductive quality of films because various SS members would later claim, when put on trial, that the film influenced them negatively. Harlan follows Jud Süss with another historical epic, Der grosse König (The great king, 1942), and has to endure the mutilation and limited release of a more personal project, the Western comedy-drama Pedro soll hängen (Pedro must hang, 1941).

This introductory chapter discusses the theme of this volume, which is about religious culture, altruism, and the rescue of Jews in Nazi Europe. The volume examines the values and attitudes commonly associated with altruism, focusing on the religious cultural contexts from which individuals emerged. It compares the altruistically associated predispositions of people with different levels of religiosity and two denominations—Protestant and Roman Catholic. It also describes individual rescuers from different national contexts and provides intergroup and intragroup comparisons.

This chapter describes the rescuing of Jews in Nazi Europe to demonstrate that people really do stand up to do the right thing even when doing so puts them in great peril. Opposing the Nazis or opposing Nazi sympathizers was obviously extremely dangerous, but many Europeans did this. The World Holocaust Remembrance Center has identified nearly 27,000 people who put their lives at risk by rescuing Jews. It is difficult to know exactly how many Jews were saved by these heroes, but it is undoubtedly a large number. What distinguished the people who became rescuers from those people who did not? The rescuers were nonconformists; they did not just do what everyone else in their country was doing; they were agenda makers rather than agenda takers; and their agendas changed the world around them. Their independence gave them the willingness to ignore the majority when it was in the wrong. However, working as a deviant group was probably better. In the Netherlands, rescue work was concentrated among religious minorities: in Protestant regions of the Netherlands, Catholics did the rescuing; and in Catholic regions of the Netherlands, Protestants did the rescuing.