Reviewing a biography of the famed British publishing magnate George Weidenfeld, Carl Rollyson writes:
In 1938, George Weidenfeld, an Austrian-Jewish refugee, landed at London. . . . The ebullient Weidenfeld, who seems to have hosted several parties a week for most of his 96 years, promoted free speech for everyone, including the Nazis he published after World War II—much to the shock of fellow publishers, the press, and the public.
Weidenfeld [later on] became Lord Weidenfeld and spoke in the House of Lords. He put up with a fair amount of sniggering British anti-Semitism, but that hardly fazed a man who could publish Nazis in order to understand their mindsets.
The magnificent thing about Weidenfeld is how he went his own way most of the time and brought along with him outstanding people like Isaiah Berlin and the historian Hugh Trevor-Roper.
More about: Anglo-Jewry, Anti-Semitism, Holocaust rescue