Victor Gollancz

Sir Victor Gollancz was a British publisher and humanitarian.Gollancz was often noted as a supporter of left-wing causes. His loyalties shifted between Liberalism and Communism, but he defined himself as a Christian Socialist and Internationalist. Although he gained high credibility by forecasting the Nazi extermination of Jews, he campaigned for friendship with both Germany and Soviet Russia. He used his publishing house chiefly to promote pacifist and socialist non-fiction, and also launched the Left Book Club.In the postwar era, he focused his attention on Germany and became noted for his promotion of friendship and reconciliation based on his internationalism and his ethic of brotherly love. He founded the organisation Save Europe Now (SEN) in 1945 to campaign for support of the Germans, and drew attention to the suffering of German civilians, especially children, and atrocities committed against German civilians. He received an honorary doctorate at the University of Frankfurt in 1949, the Großes Bundesverdienstkreuz of Germany in 1953 and the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade in 1960, and several streets in Germany, including the Gollanczstraße in West Berlin, and a school, the Victor Gollancz Elementary School, were named in his honour. Since 2000, the Society for Threatened Peoples has awarded the Victor Gollancz Prize. Gollancz once said: "I hate everything that is pro and anti (different peoples). I am only one thing: I am pro-humanity."