Cecilia Razovsky and the American Jewish Women's Rescue Operations in the Second World War

Although the Jewish-American campaign for European refugees before and during the Second World War is commonly perceived as having been spearheaded by male leaders, who weere credited with persuading the Roosevelt administration to open US doors to Jewish refugees, they were seldom recognized for their activities and certainly have not neen accorded the attention they deserve in contemporary historiography. In the tragic years before, during and after second World War, it was the vital role played by groups of ordinary Jewish women organization foundation that enabled refugee workers to execute their goals.

This long overdue book highlights Jewish women's activities in the 1930s and 1940s as they were reflected in one outstanding woman - Cecilia Razovsky. Her wide range of activities spanning more than fifty years, and her outstanding devotion to assisting refugees and refugee children, reveal her as a woman who dedicated her personal life and her professional skills to the Jewish people. She possessed integrity, assertiveness, a strong will and the courage to face higher authority in what she believed was a just moral cause, even if it meant taking an unpopular stand. American Jews were in a state of existential conflict, caught between American and Jewish loyalty. Given their fragile status, their considerations were first of all to safeguard their well-being. Cecilia Razovsky, a Jewish social worker involved in immigration and rescue operations, often without the backing of large Jewish organizations, proved an exception. But it is this kind of exception that is far more fascinating than the commonplace, since it demonstrates the independent moral conscience at work in humanbehaviour and provides a point of reference in our moral discourse. Without doubt, she stands as a representative for the thousands of anonymous American-Jewish women, who made a difference