Churchill and the Jews - Hardcover

Winston Churchill was a young man in 1894 when Captain Alfred Dreyfus, a Jewish officer in the French army, was convicted of treason and sent to Devil's Island. Despite the prevailing anti-Semitism in England as well as on the Continent, Churchill's position was clear: he supported Dreyfus, and condemned the prejudices that had led to his conviction. From this brave moment on, Churchill's commitment to Jewish rights, to Zionism - and ultimately to the State of Israel - never wavered. In this revealing book, Churchill's official biographer, Sir Martin Gilbert, explores the origins, range, implications, and results of Churchill's determined commitment to Jewish rights.
In 1922, Churchill established on the bedrock of international law the right of Jews to emigrate to Palestine. Gilbert sheds new light on Churchill's support of the Jewish people around the time of the Holocaust and World War II. As late as 1960, during his meeting with David Ben-Gurion, Churchill presented the Israeli prime minister with an article he had written praising Moses.
Drawing on a wide range of archives and private papers, speeches, newspaper coverage, and wartime correspondence, Gilbert opens a window on an underappreciated and heroic aspect of the brilliant politician's life and career.

Martin Gilbert, the author of more than seventy books, is Winston Churchill’s official biographer and a leading historian of the modern world. In 1995 he was knighted “for services to British history and international relations” and in 1999 he was awarded a Doctorate of Literature by the University of Oxford for the totality of his published work. As a three-year-old Briton he was sent to Canada in the summer of 1940, returning to Britain in May 1944, just in time for Hitler’s V bombs. He now divides his time between London, Ontario, and London, England.