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Saints and Liars

Audiobook
Nonfiction: History
Unabridged   6.25 hour(s)
Publication date: 01/14/2025

F O R T H C O M I N G ! Available January

Saints and Liars

The Story of Americans Who Saved Refugees from the Nazis

Available from major retailers
Digital Download ISBN:9781696618182

Summary

A gripping history that plumbs the extraordinary stories of American relief and rescue workers during World War II.

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Product Description

Long before their country officially joined the war, American aid workers were active in rescue efforts across Europe. Two such Americans were Martha and Waitstill Sharp, who were originally sent to Prague as part of a relief effort but turned immediately to helping Jews and dissidents after the 1939 invasion by Germany.

They were not the only ones. Renowned historian Debórah Dwork follows the story of rescue workers in five major cities as the refugee crisis expanded to Vilna, Shanghai, Marseille, and Lisbon. Followed by Nazi agents, spiriting people across borders, they learned secrecy.

Others negotiated with government representatives, like Laura Margolis, who worked with the Japanese, to get enough food and warm shelter for the refugees in Shanghai. Yet, the women also often faced lack of support from their agencies; if part of a couple, they fought to get paid even at a low salary despite working as long and hard as their husbands.

Moving and revelatory, Saints and Liars illuminates the unpredictable circumstances with which these aid workers contended, while revealing the moral questions they encountered and the devastating decisions they had to make.

Author Bio

Debórah Dwork is director of the Center for the Study of the Holocaust, Genocide, and Crimes Against Humanity at the Graduate Center–CUNY. Author (with Robert Jan van Pelt) of Flight from the Reich, Holocaust, and Auschwitz, among other works, she lives in New York.