Ethical Struggles in Catastrophic Times: Quakers' Responses to the Holocaust, 1933-1945

“In this project, David Harrington Watt examines Quakers the remarkable—and highly controversial—tactics that Quakers used to try to provide assistance to people who were being persecuted by the Nazis. ”

Team Members/Contributors

David Harrington Watt Haverford College Contact Me

About this sabbatical grant for researchers

The question at the heart of this project is: what tactics did Quaker organizations such as the American Friends Service Committee use to respond to the Nazis’ genocidal campaign against European Jews? A secondary question is: what can contemporary Christians living in the United States learn from the tactics Quaker groups such as the AFSC used to respond to the Nazi genocides of the 1930s and 1940s? I believe that looking at those tactics will demonstrate that when Christian pacifists are responding to genocidal campaigns, they—like their co-religionists who embrace the just war tradition—inevitably find themselves enmeshed in compromises, complexity, and moral quandaries. War is complicated. So is pacifism.

Image Title Year Type Contributor(s) Other Info
The Creation of Modern Quaker Diversity, 1830–1937 (The New History of Quakerism) 2023 Book David Harrington Watt