This is a richly detailed work that explores the weighty topics of xenophobia, racism, and administrative conflict in the British West Indies, particularly in relation to the influx of Jewish refugees during World War II. Beyond the local, it also grapples with the broader issues of the vacillation of British power in deteriorating European and world politics, and the maintenance of Britain's crumbling empire within a changing global system. The work specifically seeks to determine the role played by Britain and its Caribbean territories in the exodus and relocation of Jews fleeing Europe during the war, and how effectively they adjusted to the shifting pace of this Jewish refugee crisis. The study ultimately makes a credible argument that, within the story of World War II and the fate of the Jewish diaspora, the region played a not always constructive, but significant role.
The book is divided into three parts with two chapters in each. Part 1 presents the history of the Jewish community in the West Indies since the seventeenth century and provides details of the complexity of the Jewry of different islands. It establishes a context for the broader discussion of the interactions of Jewish organizations and communities within the charged Caribbean space during the war.
Part 2 offers a solid background and charts the evolution of the developing Jewish refugee crisis in Europe in the 1930s and the associated European and specifically British response. Part 3 is focused on the arrival of the various waves of refugees in the West Indies and on their reception, via an examination of colonial policies and internment facilities like Gibraltar Camp in Jamaica and the repercussions of the Jewish refugee presence in the region. The work ends with an epilogue that highlights the lives, work, and contributions of various Jewish immigrants in the West Indies. Though this last section is a departure from the main narrative, it adds to the extensive primary-source data that is a strength of this study.
The work effectively outlines the significance of the West Indies to the British war effort, presenting this as justification for the Colonial Office's initial hesitance in demanding a greater response by the colonies to the Jewish migrant crisis. Its efforts not to alienate colonial governments and incite unrest in the colonies during wartime are clearly identified in the work. But, paradoxically, the book also indicates, to a lesser extent, the impotence of West Indian governments and that the response to the Jewish immigrant problem was more a reaction to British unwillingness to address the issues of poverty, racism, and political repression within these territories. It was clear that Jewish immigrants were entangled in a conflict between Britain and her colonies that predated their arrival.
The work is not simply one-dimensional—pitting Jewish immigrants and organizations against British imperial and colonial authorities—but highlights the interrelations of the diverse Jewish immigrant communities, revealing, for instance, the difference in the attitude of the refugees of Dutch and Polish ancestry, or the newly arrived versus the established communities. The diversity of these communities in relation to nationality, socio-economic classes, history, and ideology is aptly elucidated in the text. Furthermore, the book attempts an objective illustration of the role of Jewish organizations in trying to solve the Jewish immigrant crisis. It exposes the conflict within their operations, the ways in which their mandate to orchestrate opportunities for the Jewish refugees was frequently compromised by political and economic considerations.
Despite its obvious strengths, there are underexplored areas in the book. For instance, chapter 3 is touted as an exploration of “The British West Indies and the Refugee Crisis of 1938–1939” but focuses, except for a brief mention of British Guiana, almost exclusively on Trinidad. Moreover, it is evident that the work has been written for a specialized audience because there is, on occasion, a lack of explanations or definitions of persons and terms that would be unclear to those unfamiliar with the topic. For instance, reference is made to “Bletchley Park” (224), but no further explanation of its role in the war is provided. Additionally, the first mention of Cecilia Razovsky (109) and Councillor Richards (120) with no immediate clarification on who they may have been, is also of note. Though not formidable problems, these oversights disrupt the fluidity of the narrative at times.
The most striking omission within the analysis, however, is the voices of West Indians who worked and interacted with Jewish immigrants, particularly in the internment camps. The work has a clear objective to highlight the plight of the Jewish refugees and the generally harsh treatment of them by the West Indian authorities, despite its early acknowledgment of the fact that West Indians were subjugated colonial people whose lack of representation though the Crown Colony system left them with few alternatives to assert their rights. The omission of the voices of local workers somewhat skews the study's perspective and conclusions in this area.
Additionally, the inclusion of a glossary would have alleviated confusion generated by the numerous acronyms used in the work, particularly in relation to Jewish organizations. Though replete with images, the addition of statistical tables would have provided an alternative means of examining the numbers of refugees entering the region and their internment in West Indian camps.
Despite these issues, this book is a commendable piece of academic scholarship focused on an overlooked area in Caribbean, diaspora, and international war history. Inserting the history of the Jews in the Caribbean, it illuminates the impact of this diaspora community on the demographic, political, and socioeconomic spheres of the region. Whether intentionally or not, it presents the Jewish organizations and the British government as playmakers in attempts to alleviate the Jewish crisis by forcing small, troubled West Indian colonies to address an issue that other regions also found problematic. In turn, the negative treatment of the Jewish refugees was a reflection of an amalgam of problems faced by the British West Indian colonies in a period of crisis and that was shaped by ethnic, national, and class prejudices. The work adds significantly to the budding scholarship on World War II and the Caribbean and brings to light the history of a people who have made significant contributions to a challenged but developing region.
