Rescue the Perishing: Eleanor Rathbone and the Refugees

Rescue the Perishing is the first study to date of Eleanor Rathbone’s commitment to the ‘refugee question’ from 1933 until her death in 1946. It explains how, from a working life devoted to championing the cause of the disadvantaged, the impoverished and the underrepresented in British society, her humanitarian activism shifted towards Britain’s imperial colonies as well as Europe, before focusing on refugees, most of them Jewish, fleeing persecution in Nazi occupied Europe before and during the World War II. Susan Cohen highlights the challenges that Rathbone faced, especially from within government from officials who did not share her philosophy on rescue. The difficulties that she encountered in attempting to persuade the British government to act honourably towards refugees, whether they were in Czechoslovakia, had been deported to the Dominions, or were enemy aliens interned in Great Britain or on the Isle of Man, is an abiding theme throughout this book.