Victor Gollancz
Encyclopedia
Sir Victor Gollancz was a British publisher, socialist
, and humanitarian.
, 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.
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.
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. He wrote critical articles and letters to British newspapers after a visit to the British zone in October and November 1946, and subsequently published them in a book with a series of photos he took, In Darkest Germany (London, 1947).
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 reconciliation.
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.
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.
Socialism
Socialism is an economic system characterized by social ownership of the means of production and cooperative management of the economy; or a political philosophy advocating such a system. "Social ownership" may refer to any one of, or a combination of, the following: cooperative enterprises,...
, and humanitarian.
Early life
Born in Maida ValeMaida Vale
Maida Vale is a residential district in West London between St John's Wood and Kilburn. It is part of the City of Westminster. The area is mostly residential, and mainly affluent, consisting of many large late Victorian and Edwardian blocks of mansion flats...
, London, he was the son of a wholesale jeweller and nephew of Rabbi Professor Sir Hermann Gollancz
Hermann Gollancz
Sir Hermann Gollancz was a British rabbi and Hebrew scholar. Gollancz was the first Jew to earn a doctor of literature degree from London University and the first holder of the degree to be ordained as a rabbi...
and Professor Sir Israel Gollancz
Israel Gollancz
Sir Israel Gollancz was a scholar of early English literature and of Shakespeare. He was Professor of English Language and Literature at King's College, London, from 1903 to 1930....
; after being educated at St Paul's School, London and taking a degree in classics at New College, Oxford
New College, Oxford
New College is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom.- Overview :The College's official name, College of St Mary, is the same as that of the older Oriel College; hence, it has been referred to as the "New College of St Mary", and is now almost always...
, 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
Repton School
Repton School, founded in 1557, is a co-educational English independent school for both day and boarding pupils, in the British public school tradition, located in the village of Repton, in Derbyshire, in the Midlands area of England...
Junior Officers' Training Corps. In 1917 he became involved in the Reconstruction Committee, an organisation that was making plans for post-war Britain
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
. There he met Ernest Benn
Ernest Benn
Sir Ernest John Pickstone Benn, 2nd Baronet was a British publisher, writer and political publicist. His father, John Benn, was a politician, who had been made a baronet in 1914. He was an uncle of the Labour politician Tony Benn.-Biography:Benn was born in Oxted, Surrey...
, who hired him to work in the publishing
Publishing
Publishing is the process of production and dissemination of literature or information—the activity of making information available to the general public...
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 companyVictor Gollancz Ltd
Victor Gollancz Ltd was a major British book publishing house of the twentieth century. It was founded in 1927 by Victor Gollancz and specialised in the publication of high quality literature, nonfiction and popular fiction, including science fiction. Upon Gollancz's death in 1967, ownership...
in 1927, publishing works by writers such as Ford Madox Ford
Ford Madox Ford
Ford Madox Ford was an English novelist, poet, critic and editor whose journals, The English Review and The Transatlantic Review, were instrumental in the development of early 20th-century English literature...
and George Orwell
George Orwell
Eric Arthur Blair , better known by his pen name George Orwell, was an English author and journalist...
(though Orwell went to Secker and Warburg
Secker and Warburg
Harvill Secker is a British publishing company formed in 2004 from the merger of Secker and Warburg and the Harvill Press.Secker and Warburg was formed in 1936 from a takeover of Martin Secker, which was in receivership, by Fredric Warburg and Roger Senhouse...
from Homage to Catalonia
Homage to Catalonia
Homage to Catalonia is political journalist and novelist George Orwell's personal account of his experiences and observations in the Spanish Civil War. The first edition was published in 1938. The book was not published in the United States until February 1952. The American edition had a preface...
on). While Gollancz published The Red Army Moves by Geoffrey Cox
Geoffrey Cox (journalist)
Sir Geoffrey Sandford Cox, CNZM, CBE was a New Zealand-born newspaper and television journalist. He was a former editor and chief executive of ITN and a founder of News at Ten....
on the Winter War
Winter War
The Winter War was a military conflict between the Soviet Union and Finland. It began with a Soviet offensive on 30 November 1939 – three months after the start of World War II and the Soviet invasion of Poland – and ended on 13 March 1940 with the Moscow Peace Treaty...
in 1941, he omitted some criticisms of the USSR.
Gollancz was one of the founders of the Left Book Club
Left Book Club
The Left Book Club, founded in 1936, was a key left-wing institution of the late 1930s and 1940s in the United Kingdom set up by Stafford Cripps, Victor Gollancz and John Strachey to revitalise and educate the British Left. The Club's aim was to "help in the struggle For world peace and against...
. He had a knack for marketing
Marketing
Marketing is the process used to determine what products or services may be of interest to customers, and the strategy to use in sales, communications and business development. It generates the strategy that underlies sales techniques, business communication, and business developments...
, 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
Eleanor Rathbone
Eleanor Florence Rathbone was an independent British Member of Parliament and long-term campaigner for women's rights. She was a member of the noted Rathbone family of Liverpool.-Life:...
, 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
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
and Italy
Italy
Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...
in 1945, and recruited Peggy Duff
Peggy Duff
Peggy Duff was a British political activist who was principally known for her contribution to the peace movement as the organiser of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament.-Background:...
to organise it; she also worked with him on the National Campaign to Abolish Capital Punishment
Capital punishment
Capital punishment, the death penalty, or execution is the sentence of death upon a person by the state as a punishment for an offence. Crimes that can result in a death penalty are known as capital crimes or capital offences. The term capital originates from the Latin capitalis, literally...
in the 1950s.
In 1960, he received the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade
Peace Prize of the German Book Trade
The Peace Prize of the German Book Trade is an international peace prize given yearly at the Frankfurt Book Fair in the Paulskirche in Frankfurt am Main, Germany...
, 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 occupation of Germany and 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 IIExpulsion of Germans after World War II
The later stages of World War II, and the period after the end of that war, saw the forced migration of millions of German nationals and ethnic Germans from various European states and territories, mostly into the areas which would become post-war Germany and post-war Austria...
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
Sudetenland
Sudetenland is the German name used in English in the first half of the 20th century for the northern, southwest and western regions of Czechoslovakia inhabited mostly by ethnic Germans, specifically the border areas of Bohemia, Moravia, and those parts of Silesia being within Czechoslovakia.The...
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
Bergen-Belsen concentration camp
Bergen-Belsen was a Nazi concentration camp in Lower Saxony in northwestern Germany, southwest of the town of Bergen near Celle...
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. He wrote critical articles and letters to British newspapers after a visit to the British zone in October and November 1946, and subsequently published them in a book with a series of photos he took, In Darkest Germany (London, 1947).
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 reconciliation.
War on Want
In February 1951 Victor Gollancz wrote a letter to The GuardianThe Guardian
The Guardian, formerly known as The Manchester Guardian , is a British national daily newspaper in the Berliner format...
asking people to join an international struggle against poverty. Gollancz's, which called for a negotiated end to the Korean War
Korean War
The Korean War was a conventional war between South Korea, supported by the United Nations, and North Korea, supported by the People's Republic of China , with military material aid from the Soviet Union...
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
War on Want
War on Want is an anti-poverty charity based in London, England. It seeks to highlight the needs of poverty-stricken areas around the world and lobbies governments and international agencies to tackle problems as well as raising public awareness of the concerns of developing nations while...
In May 1951, Gollancz invited Harold Wilson
Harold Wilson
James Harold Wilson, Baron Wilson of Rievaulx, KG, OBE, FRS, FSS, PC was a British Labour Member of Parliament, Leader of the Labour Party. He was twice Prime Minister of the United Kingdom during the 1960s and 1970s, winning four general elections, including a minority government after the...
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 GollanczRuth Gollancz
Lady Ruth Gollancz née Lowy was a British artist and wife of Sir Victor Gollancz.-Life and work:Ruth was the daughter of Ernest Daniel Löwy, a stockbroker. Ruth Gollancz studied art at the Slade school of art from 1909-12 under the direction of Henry Tonks. Her contemporaries at the Slade included...
née Lowy - an artist who had studied at the Slade School of Art under Henry Tonks. They had five daughters including Vita Gollancz
Vita Gollancz
Vita Gollancz was a British painter, printmaker, illustrator and draughtsman.-Life and work:Born in 1926, Vita Gollancz was the fourth daughter of the publisher Victor Gollancz and his wife Ruth Gollancz née Lowy - an artist who had studied at the Slade School of Art under Henry Tonks...
, 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", London Victor Gollancz LTD, 1947
- A Year of Grace: Passages chosen & arranged to express a mood about God and manA Year of GraceA Year of Grace is an anthology compiled by Victor Gollancz, consisting of passages concerning religious and spiritual life, taken from a variety of different sources....
(1950) - 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)