Victor Gollancz

Sir Victor Gollancz (April 9 1893–February 8 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 organization that was making plans for postwar 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; the writers he published included George Orwell and Ford Madox Ford. He was also one of the founders of the Left Book Club. He had a knack for marketing, sometimes taking out full-page newspaper adverts for the books he published, a novelty at the time. He also used eye-catching typography and book designs.

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. 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 organize it; she also worked with him on the National Campaign to Abolish Capital Punishment in the 1950s.

He received the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade in 1960, and he was knighted in 1965.

On the expulsion of Germans

In 1945 Gollancz turned his attention to crimes against the defeated Germans. On the expulsion 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 moving book, "Our Threatened Values," (London 1946) Gollancz described the conditions Sudeten German prisoners were faced with 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. Gollancz pointed 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. He organized 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 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.

elected 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)
* [http://library.fes.de/fulltext/sozmit/1947-104-1.htm "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

* [http://www.waronwant.org/Our+History+1345.twl War on Want's history page]