Mothers Day card from Ruth Schneider, from Vienna, in Austria to her parents.
Bill Williams, from the University's Centre for Jewish Studies, has cast new light on the way Britons responded to the desperate plight of Jews fleeing Germany after the Nazis came to power. The migrants were, he says in his new book published by Manchester University Press, neglected across all sections of British society. Even the Jewish community themselves, he argues in Jews and Other Foreigners, were inhibited by fears of an anti-Semitic backlash caused by letting in 'alien' foreigners. Mr Williams, one of the country's leading scholars of Jewish migration to the UK, believes Government offers of help were half-hearted. The Quakers declared they would only support "non practicing Jews and Friends” - those with existing within the Quaker community - and the Catholic Church did virtually nothing, argues Mr Williams. He said: "Though both the British and Mancunians have strong humanitarian traditions, they they were often undermined by self-interest, government policy, the failure to challenge it and anti-semitism. "So these findings have a critical bearing on the notion of how in Britain we regard ourselves as a tolerant society.
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