Giuseppe Motta, "Jewish Refugees and the International Community Between the Two World Wars: Beyond the State" (Routledge, 2026)

September 16, 2026

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5 min read

In 1919, as the old empires collapsed and new nation-states were carved across Europe, millions of people found themselves on the wrong side of a border. Among them were hundreds of thousands of Jewish refugees, fleeing pogroms, revolution, and the collapse of the Russian, Ottoman, and Austro-Hungarian empires. Giuseppe Motta, associate professor of history of international relations at Sapienza University of Rome, argues in his new book Jewish Refugees and the International Community Between the Two World Wars: Beyond the State that this crisis was not just a humanitarian emergency—it was a crucible for modern international law, human rights, and the very concept of the refugee.

The Nation-State Creates the Refugee Problem

Motta’s core argument is that the refugee crisis of the interwar period was a direct consequence of the nation-state system itself. Before World War I, borders were porous and empires governed diverse populations without requiring strict national identity. After the war, the League of Nations oversaw the creation of new states built on the principle of national self-determination. This meant that minorities—especially Jews—who did not fit the dominant national identity of the new states suddenly became problems. Citizenship became tied to ethnicity, and those who lost their old imperial passports often found themselves stateless.

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What you'll learn

1 (00:00) **Introduction and Guest Welcome** - Host Jerko Stanovievich introduces Professor Giuseppe Motta, Associate Professor of History of International Relations at Sapienza University of Rome, and his new book *Jewish Refugees and the International Community Between the Two World Wars: Beyond the State* (Routledge, 2026).
2 (01:21) **The First Refugee Crisis After World War I** - Motta explains the book’s first dimension: the collapse of the Russian, Ottoman, and Austro-Hungarian empires created a geopolitical settlement with new frontiers, leading to massive refugee flows from evacuations, revolutions, and shifting borders.
3 (03:31) **Why “Beyond the State”?** - The second part of the book focuses on how the refugee crisis, particularly for Jewish refugees after 1933, pushed the development of international law and institutions beyond the nation-state framework.
4 (08:11) **The Role of Jewish Organizations and Transnational Networks** - Motta highlights the essential role of Jewish organizations and private groups (forerunners of NGOs) in resolving refugee emergencies, even without formal recognition as international actors.
5 (13:24) **How the Interwar Period Shaped the Modern Refugee System** - The interwar period served as an “antechamber” for post-1945 developments, teaching the international community that the refugee question was not temporary but central to the contemporary world.
6 (18:00) **Today’s Antisemitism in Historical Perspective** - Motta connects the current surge in antisemitism to latent, deeply rooted xenophobic and nationalist sentiments in European and American society that periodically flare up.
7 (22:20) **Why Conspiracy Theories About Jews Persist** - Motta responds to the host’s question about persistent anti-Semitic tropes, such as Jews being seen as a “Satanic organization” or the Talmud being portrayed as horrifying.

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Show Notes

In this episode of New Books Network, Željko Stanojević speaks with historian Giuseppe Motta about Jewish Refugees and the International Community Between the Two World Wars: Beyond the State (Routledge, 2026), a study of Jewish displacement, statelessness, humanitarian action, international law, and international institutions between the First and Second World Wars.

Drawing on extensive archival research in the records of the League of Nations and the Joint Distribution Committee, Motta reconstructs the political and legal environment in which Jewish refugees from East-Central Europe struggled to find protection after the collapse of empires and the redrawing of national borders. The book follows the refugee question from the aftermath of World War I through the rise of Nazism and the Évian Conference of 1938, asking how states, international organizations, humanitarian agencies, and Jewish institutions responded to people increasingly left outside effective national protection.

A central theme of the conversation is the tension captured in the subtitle, Beyond the State. The interwar refugee crisis exposed a basic contradiction: refugees required protection that crossed national borders, while international law remained dependent on the sovereignty and political choices of individual states. Motta explains how the Jewish refugee question became connected to statelessness, minority protection, humanitarian responsibility, migration control, legal identity, and international cooperation across Europe.

The discussion also explores the wider forces surrounding Jewish displacement: the legacies of World War I, new states in Central and Eastern Europe, nationalism, antisemitism, Bolshevism, Zionism, migration policy, and the restrictive political climate of the 1920s and 1930s. Particular attention is given to the League of Nations and the Joint Distribution Committee, whose archives reveal both institutional debates and the practical difficulties faced by refugees seeking safety and legal recognition.

Rather than treating Jewish refugees only as a prelude to the Holocaust, Motta places the interwar period in its own historical and legal context. This perspective helps explain how ideas later central to international refugee law and human rights developed through earlier crises, experiments, failures, and negotiations.

Giuseppe Motta is Associate Professor of History of International Relations at Sapienza University of Rome and a member of the Editorial Board of the European Hebrew Journal (EHJ).

Motta will also speak at the European Hebrew Journal International Online Conference, New Discoveries and New Directions in Biblical, Hebrew, and Theological Studies. On 7 November 20