My first debt is to Heather McCallum at Yale University Press in London, who suggested that I write this book. Heather and her associate editor Rachael Lonsdale read the manuscript carefully and I have benefitted greatly from the encouragement and constructive criticism that they provided.
Martin Kolinsky, whom I have known since childhood, generously gave me some of his late wife Eva's papers. Her book After the Holocaust was an inspiration for my own research and I am very grateful to Martin for the material he passed on to me. I would also like to thank Ilana Ben-Sasson for granting me permission to cite from her grandfather Yakow Rabinowicz's unpublished memoir, and Yad Vashem (Jerusalem), the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (Washington, DC), the International Tracing Service (Bad Arolsen) and the Jewish Historical Society of Greater Washington for permission to reproduce photographs and documents.
Once again, this book could not have been written without the resources of the Wiener Library, London. My heartfelt thanks go to all the staff there and, in particular, to director Ben Barkow, head librarian Kat Hübschmann, archivist Howard Falksohn and, for her assistance with the ITS collections, Christine Schmidt.
Many people discussed this book with me, offered tips and suggestions, or shared their own research. My thanks to: Ruth Balint, Daniel Beer, Paul Betts, Suzanne Brown-Fleming, Marc Buggeln, David Cesarani, Greg Claeys, Alon Confino, Martin Dean, Bob Eaglestone, Geoff Eley, Lara Feigel, Matthew Feldman, Yoav Galai, Amos Goldberg, Helen Graham, Eliana Hadjisavvas, Ştefania Hirtopanu, Becky Jinks, Rafael Kropiunigg, Tony Kushner, David Kustow, Ferenc Laczó, Christine Lattek, Bernard Levy, Florin Lobonţ, Edward Madigan, Jens Meierhenrich, Dirk Moses, Rudolf Muhs, Jessica Reinisch, Suzanne Rutland, Paul Salmons, Adam Seipp, Paul Shapiro, Simon Sparks, Jonathan Webber, Helen Whatmore, Daniel Wildmann, and my colleagues in the History Department at Royal Holloway. I'm especially grateful to Mark Donnelly, Margarete Myers Feinstein, Simone Gigliotti, Jeremy Hicks, Rowan MacAuslan, Ewa Ochman, Barbara Rosenbaum, Christine Schmidt, Anna Solarska, Nikolaus Wachsmann, and Yale University Press's anonymous readers who read some or all of the text, made many improvements and picked up a number of errors. Any that remain are of course my own.
The biggest thank you is for my wonderful family, Libby, Greta and Clem, and of course Hilary.