Publishers Weekly
10/28/2019
Northeastern University journalism professor Leff (Buried by the Times) unsettles the prevailing narrative of American higher education as a refuge for European scholars fleeing the Holocaust in this harrowing, deeply researched account. Leff explains that, though professors with university job offers weren’t subject to immigration quotas, fewer than 1,000 individuals received special “non-quota” visas from 1933 to 1941. Successful applicants had to be world-class, well-connected scholars, Leff writes, who weren’t “too old or too young, too right or too left, or, most important, too Jewish. Having money helped; being a woman did not.” Leff details the fates of eight academics, including Polish-German musicologist Mieczyslaw Kolinski, who was forced to go into hiding in Belgium despite having an offer to teach at Northwestern University, and Austrian zoologist Leonore Brecher, who was deported from Vienna to the Maly Trostinec extermination camp in Belarus and was never heard from again. While some Americans worked to save colleagues and friends through individual channels or in coordination with such groups as the Emergency Committee in Aid of Displaced Foreign Scholars, others made a bad situation worse: anti-Semitic university officials and an obstructionist U.S. state department, Leff convincingly argues, required paperwork that was impossible to complete in a war zone. The book’s loose narrative structure sometimes makes it difficult to keep names and details straight, but scholars of the Holocaust, immigration policy, and higher education will find Leff’s exhaustive account enlightening. (Dec.)
From the Publisher
"Laurel Leff’s focused, well-researched book sheds new light. . . Leff’s book is an act of troubling remembrance."—Michael Roth, Washington Post"A sober and fair—but devastating—volume."—Martn Peretz, Wall Street Journal“Laurel Leff has turned out another powerful, meticulously researched, and groundbreaking work. As engaging as it is disheartening, Well Worth Saving significantly broadens our understanding of the inadequate response of important segments of American society to the Nazi persecution of European Jewry.”—Rafael Medoff, Israel Journal of Foreign Affairs"Leff unsettles the prevailing narrative of American higher education as a refuge for European scholars fleeing the Holocaust in this harrowing, deeply researched account. . . . Scholars of the Holocaust, immigration policy, and higher education will find Leff’s exhaustive account enlightening."—Publishers Weekly"Closely researched and absorbing. . . . I salute Leff for addressing this unwritten history with such a devastating book."—Helen Epstein, Arts Fuse"Particularly timely when immigration, refugees and anti-Semitism are much in the headlines."—Sandee Brawarsky, Jewish Week/Times of Israel“Entertaining and accessible, Heard’s discussion will appeal to both scientific and general audiences.” —Publishers WeeklyFinalist for the National Jewish Book Award, American Jewish Studies category, sponsored by The Jewish Book Council“This powerfully written, heartbreaking history exposes the terrible price that nativism, antisemitism, narrow-mindedness, and bureaucratic inertia exacted on some of Europe's most learned women and men."—Jonathan D. Sarna, author of American Judaism: A History“Leff asks us to grapple with a history that is more complicated and less triumphant than the version many of us think we know. The stories she tells of refugee scholars, their allies, and the obstacles they faced within American colleges and universities are important for us to understand.”—Peter Salovey, President of Yale University“Scrupulously researched, beautifully crafted, and passionately felt, Laurel Leff’s book provides a balanced and sobering account of how the United States, and especially the American academic community, failed to respond aggressively to the plight of European Jewish scholars between 1933 and 1942.”—Richard M. Freeland, author of Academia’s Golden Age“In this meticulously researched book, Laurel Leff recounts the dismal history of the many brilliant researchers who, unlike the Albert Einsteins and Hannah Arendts, were not rescued from the Nazis. Leff gives names, faces and biographies to these forgotten victims of the Nazi madness. Her beautifully written book is an act of belated rescue.”—David Biale, author of Gershom Scholem“Well Worth Saving is a disturbing book. While there were some heroes in the American academic scene during the 1930s and 1940s, there were many professors and university administrators who, despite knowing the consequences, turned their backs on European scholars who were desperately trying to escape from Europe. This book will leave many American academics shaking their heads in shame at the legacy of their institutions.”—Deborah E. Lipstadt, author of Antisemitism Here and Now
