The Saving Remnant: An Account of Jewish Survival

Plot

The book jacket describes this work as follows:
"This book is a sympathetic account by a non- Jew of Jewish suffering and survival since the World War I. Inevitably, it is a story of horror and disaster, it ia also a shining example of steadfastness in the face of tragedy, and of faith in a living tradition."
It is the story of the American Joint Distribution Committee whose efforts at sustaining and rescuing Jewish communities throughout the world are chronicled in this book. It especially has to do with the efforts made by the Joint during and in the aftermath of the greatest disaster the Jewish people have ever known.
Agar essentially begins his story with the efforts of the Joint in the First War. But he also includes background information on Jewish history over the past two- thousand years.
A great part of the work deals with the efforts to bring those Jews who survived the Shoah, to the land of Israel. The saving remnant of the title is taken from a sentence of Chaim Weizman in 1933. "If before I die, there are a half- million Jews in Palestine I shall be content because I know that this "Saving Remnant" will survive."
Agar tells us that between 1930 and 1932 the Joint felt it would soon be able to resign from business. Agar says this 'illusion' was soon dispelled by the events of history. He speaks of historical anti- Semitism and points out places where Jews have been persecuted , but says that nothing compares to the
In so ably telling the story of what were often heroic rescue efforts Agar also tells the story of the Joint after the war. ,"in promoting the birth and fostering the childhood of Israel, in lending hoe to the inaccessible Jews behind the Iron curtian, and in protecting the victims of a new political anti- Semitism which has swept the Moslem world. Meanwhile the surviving Europe had not only to rekindle its moral purpose after years of degradation but to rebuild the physical plant from the smoke and rubble which the Germans left behind."

With so much that has been written about the history of the Jews during the 20th century, it is amazing that the details that are found in Herbert Agar's book appear to be new and fascinating.

There is within his book the material which can serve as the basis for further investigative study and which can be the material for additional books and even movies.

Perhaps because it was written in 1960 (now 43 years ago), and is out of publication, the subjects it covers, while generally well-known and documented, have been forgotten in so many of their details. Examples, besides the unheralded role of the JDC, are the heroic individual works of characters like the Capuchin monk Father Marie-Benoit or the Swiss Jew from St. Gallen, Saly Mayer.