Sir Victor Gollancz (9 April 1893 – 8 February 1967) was a
British publisher,
socialist, and humanitarian.
Early life
Born in
Maida Vale,
London, he was the son of a wholesale jeweller and nephew of Rabbi Professor Sir
Hermann Gollancz and Professor Sir
Israel Gollancz; after being educated at
St Paul's School, London and taking a degree in classics at
New College, Oxford, he became a schoolteacher. Gollancz was commissioned into the
Northumberland Fusiliers in October 1915, although he did not see active service. In March 1916 he transferred to
Repton School Junior Officers' Training Corps. In 1917 he became involved in the
Reconstruction Committee, an organisation that was making plans for post-war
Britain. There he met
Ernest Benn, who hired him to work in the
publishing business. Starting with magazines, Gollancz then brought out a series of art books, after which he started signing novelists.
Publisher
Gollancz formed
his own publishing company in 1927, publishing works by writers such as
Ford Madox Ford and
George Orwell (though Orwell went to
Secker and Warburg from
Homage to Catalonia on). While Gollancz published
The Red Army Moves by
Geoffrey Cox on the
Winter War in 1941, he omitted some criticisms of the USSR.
Gollancz was one of the founders of the Left Book Club. He had a knack for marketing, sometimes taking out full-page newspaper advertisements for the books he published, a novelty at the time. He also used eye-catching typography and book designs, and used yellow dust-covers on books.
In addition to his highly successful publishing business, Gollancz was a prolific writer on a variety of subjects, and put his ideas into action by establishing campaigning groups. His 1943 pamphlet 'Let My People Go', which called for an attempt by the Allied powers to rescue Jews under threat of extermination in occupied Europe, reached a mass audience in 1943, following widespread coverage in the British media in December 1942 of the Nazi's extermination policy. A subsequent pamphlet, published by Gollancz later on in the war, failed to reach a mass audience. By then the British media had almost entirely ceased coverage of the story of the Nazi attempt to exterminate European Jewry, after it had become clear that the western powers were unwilling to respond to popular British sentiment at the end of 1942 and early 1943 in favour of an attempt to rescue Jews in occupied Europe, which would have meant siphoning resources from the war effort. Along with Eleanor Rathbone, Gollancz was the foremost British campaigner during the Second World War on the issue of the Nazi extermination of European Jewry.
After the war, he set up a campaign to send food and clothing from a Britain still subject to rationing to occupied Germany and Italy in 1945, and recruited Peggy Duff to organise it; she also worked with him on the National Campaign to Abolish Capital Punishment in the 1950s.
In 1960, he received the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade, being the first and, so far, only British person to receive this award. He was knighted in 1965.
1942 Prediction of 6,000,000 Jewish deaths
An article by Gollancz appeared in the 1943 book "The Massacre of a People: What the Democracies Can Do", published by the "Jewish Frontier Association". His article entitled "Let My People Go" "was written on Christmas Day, 1942" it reads: "Of the six million Jews or so who were living at the outbreak of the war in what is at present Nazi-occupied Europe, a high proportion—between one and two million—have been deliberately murdered by the Nazis and their satellites." It continues on the same page "Unless something effective is done, within a very few months these six million Jews will all be dead," This article by Gollancz was quoted from in the
Canadian Parliament in 1943, and in the The Advertiser (Adelaide) on Saturday 15 May 1943.
On the expulsion of Germans after World War II
In 1945 Gollancz turned his attention to crimes against the defeated Germans. On the
expulsion of Germans after World War II he said: "So far as the conscience of humanity should ever again become sensitive, will this expulsion be an undying disgrace for all those who remember it, who caused it or who put up with it. The Germans have been driven out, but not simply with an imperfection of excessive consideration, but with the highest imaginable degree of brutality."
In his book, Our Threatened Values, (London, 1946) Gollancz described the conditions Sudeten German prisoners faced in a Czech concentration camp: "They live crammed together in shacks without consideration for gender and age ... They ranged in age from 4 to 80. Everyone looked emaciated ... the most shocking sights were the babies ... nearby stood another mother with a shrivelled bundle of skin and bones in her arms ... Two old women lay as if dead on two cots. Only upon closer inspection, did one discover that they were still lightly breathing. They were, like those babies, nearly dead from hunger ..."
When Field Marshal Montgomery wanted to allot the Germans 1,000 calories a day and referred to the fact that the prisoners of the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp had received only 800, Gollancz wrote about starvation in Germany, pointing out that many prisoners never even received 1,000 calories. "There is really only one method of re-educating people," explained Gollancz, "namely the example that one lives oneself." Gollancz initiated a wave of generosity. He obtained offers of help from all over Great Britain. His campaigns and his critiques were reported in detail.
Gollancz organized a campaign for the humane treatment of German civilians and organised an airlift to provide Germany and other war torn European countries with provisions and books. "In the management of our helping actions should nothing, but absolutely nothing else, be decisive than the degree of need." Gollancz, together with other well known British personalities, led a massive campaign in December 1946, one and a half years after the end of the war, to persuade the British government to end the ban on sending provisions to Germany and asked that they pursue a policy of .
War on Want
In February 1951 Victor Gollancz wrote a letter to
The Guardian asking people to join an international struggle against poverty. Gollancz's, which called for a negotiated end to the
Korean War and the creation of an international fund "to turn swords into ploughshares," asked to send a postcard to Gollancz with the simple word 'yes'. He received 5000 responses. This directly led to the founding of international anti-poverty charity
War on Want In May 1951, Gollancz invited
Harold Wilson to chair a committee and write a pamphlet which was eventually called 'War on Want - a Plan for World Development', published on 9 June 1952.
Personal life
Victor married
Ruth Gollancz née Lowy - an artist who had studied at the Slade School of Art under Henry Tonks. They had five daughters including
Vita Gollancz, an artist and
Livia Ruth Gollancz, musician and later head of Victor Gollancz LTD.
Selected bibliography
The Making of Women, Oxford Essays in Feminism (1918)
Industrial Ideals (1920)
Is Mr Chamberlain Saving Peace? (1939)
Betrayal of the Left: an Examination & Refutation of Communist Policy from October 1939 to January 1941: with Suggestions for an Alternative and an Epilogue on Political Morality (1941)
"Let My People Go". Some Practical Proposals for Dealing with Hitler's Massacre of the Jews and an Appeal to the British Public (1943)
Leaving Them to Their Fate: the Ethics of Starvation (1946)
Our threatened Values (1946)
In Darkest Germany (1947)
Germany Revisited"">"Germany Revisited", London Victor Gollancz LTD, 1947
Capital Punishment: the Heart of the Matter (1955)
Devil's Repertoire: or, Nuclear Bombing and the Life of Man (1959)
Case of Adolf Eichmann (1961)
Journey Towards music: a Memoir (1964)
External links
War on Want's history page
References
Category:1893 births
Category:1967 deaths
Category:Royal Northumberland Fusiliers officers
Category:Officers' Training Corps officers
Category:Old Paulines
Category:Alumni of New College, Oxford
Category:English socialists
Category:People from Maida Vale
Category:British magazine publishers (people)
Category:English publishers (people)
Category:English schoolteachers
Category:Ethicists
Category:George Orwell
Category:Knights Bachelor
Category:Knight Commanders of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany
Category:Recipients of the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade
Category:English Jews
