What do you think?
Rate this book
Rescue Board: The Untold Story of America's Efforts to Save the Jews of Europe
Featured historian in the Ken Burns documentary The U.S. and the Holocaust on PBS • WINNER OF THE NATIONAL JEWISH BOOK AWARD • In this remarkable work of historical reclamation, Holocaust historian Rebecca Erbelding pieces together years of research and newly uncovered archival materials to tell the dramatic story of America’s little-known efforts to save the Jews of Europe. “An invaluable addition to the literature of the Holocaust.” —Andrew Nagorski, author of The Nazi Hunters and Hitlerland“Brilliantly brings to life the gripping, little-known story of [a] transformative moment in American history and the crusading young government lawyers who made it happen.” —Lynne Olson, New York Times bestselling author of Last Hope Island For more than a decade, a harsh Congressional immigration policy kept most Jewish refugees out of America, even as Hitler and the Nazis closed in. In 1944, the United States finally acted. That year, Franklin D. Roosevelt created the War Refugee Board, and put a young Treasury lawyer named John Pehle in charge. Over the next twenty months, Pehle pulled together a team of D.C. pencil pushers, international relief workers, smugglers, diplomats, millionaires, and rabble-rousers to run operations across four continents and a dozen countries. Together, they tricked the Nazis, forged identity papers, maneuvered food and medicine into concentration camps, recruited spies, leaked news stories, laundered money, negotiated ransoms, and funneled millions of dollars into Europe. They bought weapons for the French Resistance and sliced red tape to allow Jewish refugees to escape to Palestine. “A landmark achievement, Rescue Board is the first history of the War Refugee Board. Meticulously researched and poignantly narrated, Rescue Board analyzes policies and practices while never losing sight of the human beings the officials who sought to help and the victims in desperate need. Top-notch original and riveting.” —Debórah Dwork, founding director of the Strassler Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies, Clark University, and coauthor of Flight from the Refugee Jews, 1933–1946
344 pages, Kindle Edition
Published April 10, 2018
49 people are currently reading
1532 people want to read
About the author
Rebecca Erbelding
2 books27 followersRebecca Erbelding is an archivist, curator, and historian at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C. She has a Ph.D. in American history from George Mason University. She and her work have been profiled in The Washington Post, The New York Times, The New Yorker, the History Channel, NPR, and other outlets.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 35 reviews
August 15, 2019
One of the most contentious debates pertaining to World War II deals with Franklin D. Roosevelt’s role in trying to mitigate the horrors of the Holocaust and the role of the American government in general. Many argue that Roosevelt was a political animal who based his position on the plight of world Jewry on political calculation and did little to offset Nazi terror; others argue that FDR did as much as possible based on conditions domestically and abroad. Some authors reach the conclusion that FDR’s views were consistent throughout the war and according to historian, Richard Breitman he was “politically and emotionally stingy when it came to the plight of the Jews-even given that he had no easy remedies for a specific Jewish tragedy in Europe.” Many authors argue that “FDR avoided positions that might put at risk his broader goals of mobilizing anti-Nazi opposition and gaining freedom to act in foreign affairs,” for example dealing with the refugee crisis, the issue of Palestine, immigration, and organizing the defeat of Nazi Germany. Historians stress the fear of domestic anti-Semitism, especially in the State Department; the inability of American Jews to present a united front; the role of the War Department; and presidential politics. Overall, this is an important issue that dominates the headlines today; what is the “appropriate response of an American president to humanitarian crises abroad and at home?”
The signature effort of the United States in dealing with the Holocaust and trying to mitigate Nazi deportations and saving Jews was the War Refugee Board which was created on January 16, 1944 which according to Rebecca Erbelding, an archivist and curator at the U.S. Holocaust Museum’s eye opening recent book, RESCUE BOARD:THE UNTOLD STORY OF AMERICA’S EFFORTS TO SAVE THE JEWS OF EUROPE finally created an official government policy to rescue Jews. Erbelding covers a great deal of material that has been mined previously by David Wyman, Richard Breitman, Henry Feingold, Martin Gilbert, Walter Laqueur and many others. What separates her effort is her focus on American refugee policy from 1944 onward. She mines over 19,000 documents dealing with the War Rescue Board as she displays the bureaucratic infighting, the ideological shifts, the out and out racism and anti-Semitism that existed in the State Department under the aegis of Secretary of State Cordell Hull and his minions like Breckenridge Long. A number of heroes emerge from Erbelding’s narrative, the most important of which is John Pehle, the Assistant Secretary to Secretary of the Treasury Henry Morgenthau, Roswell MacLelland who ran the War Refugee Board in Switzerland, and Secretary of the Treasury Henry Morgenthau, Jr.
The underlying theme of the monograph that has been portrayed by others was the bureaucratic war between the State and Treasury Departments over American immigration policy beginning in the 1930s. By the summer of 1942 news of the ongoing massacre of European Jewry was known in Washington. However, helping Jews escape Europe was never a priority for the American government nor its people. Bigger problems loomed; the Great Depression, war in Europe, war in Asia, all stole the focus of most Americans. Erbelding provides a nice synthesis dealing with the immigration battles throughout the 1920s and 30s that limited immigration under the Johnson-Reed Act of 1924. She provides the link between anti-immigration sentiment that emerged during World War I, due in part as Daniel Okrent argues in his new book, THE GUARDED STATE to the role of eugenics, economic fears, and national security among other concerns. By 1941 public opinion, Franklin D. Roosevelt’s proclivity to measure which way the political winds were blowing, anti-immigration sentiment in Congress, and out and out anti-Semitism in the State Department had already taken hold.
By August 1942, Pehle concluded that it should be the role of the American government to try and save the Jews of Europe, and it was his responsibility as Director of Foreign Funds Control to do his best to achieve this momentous goal. He was able to gain the cooperation of Morgenthau to liberalize the Treasury Department’s foreign funds policies to implement his strategy. Erbelding spends a great deal of time narrating and analyzing how Pehle and his allies went about their task. Pehle’s strategy focused on transferring funds to relief organizations that the State Department had blocked for two years; Gerhardt Riegner’s plan to save Jewish children, funding for the International Red Cross, assistance to the World Jewish Congress, assist underground movements, among many more. Further, he created the protection of “paper,” issuing as many visas and passports with as much neutral power support as possible. He instituted a licensing policy to satisfy the Nazis and their allies to consider releasing their captives. He played a game of “charades” as a strategic approach to negotiations employing bluffs, lies or anything that might bring about the rescue of Hungarian Jews. In addition, he was responsible for the creation of an Emergency Refugee Shelter in upstate New York, planting articles in newspaper and other publicity about the plight of refugees, and even went so far as trying to get the Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company to launder money through its Swedish headquarters.
Pehle and his allies’ work did not stop with these strategies. He worked assiduously to purchase and/or lease shipping for Jews, locating safe havens, and considered the most outrageous possibilities to save lives. Erbelding delves into the Brand Mission which involved a Nazi attempt to ransom the Jews of Hungary. Brand was a member of the Zionist Relief and Rescue Committee in Budapest who was seen as a spy by the British who actually imprisoned him during negotiations with Adolf Eichmann. The offer of Hungarian dictator Admiral Horthy to release Jews under his auspices, as well as the work of Raoul Wallenberg, Ira Hirschman and others was under Pehle’s purview. As Erbelding correctly points out, the time and effort in most cases proved fruitless, but the War Rescue Board members at least tried.
Erbelding points to the British as a major roadblock because of its refusal to accept refugees in Palestine. But London had company in creating obstacles or just plain refusal like Turkey, Spain, Portugal and others in trying to gain passage for Jews to safe havens. They could all point to Roosevelt’s policies which after constant pressure from Jewish leaders and the State Department finally produced a declaration on March 24, 1944 warning Holocaust perpetrators and their axis allies of the punishment that awaited them once the war ended. Pehle would employ that warning throughout Europe, but in most cases to no avail.
Erbelding goes along with numerous others in arguing no matter how many Jews the War Rescue Board might have saved had it been created two years earlier the end of the war was the only solution to the Nazi terror. Despite its late creation the Board did save lives, how many is open to conjecture. But the work of people like Daly Mayer, Iver Olsen, Peter Bergson, Florence Hodel and many others cannot be discounted as the United States for the first and only time in its history worked to save lives and endeavor to employ humanitarian approach to a worldwide refugee problem. If there is a lesson to garnered from Erbelding’s work it is that even in the midst of war, governments can achieve humanitarian successes. Perhaps the current administration should shelve its political agenda and consider what the War Refugee Board accomplished at the end of World War II and create a humanitarian approach to the refugee crisis it now confronts at its southern border.
The signature effort of the United States in dealing with the Holocaust and trying to mitigate Nazi deportations and saving Jews was the War Refugee Board which was created on January 16, 1944 which according to Rebecca Erbelding, an archivist and curator at the U.S. Holocaust Museum’s eye opening recent book, RESCUE BOARD:THE UNTOLD STORY OF AMERICA’S EFFORTS TO SAVE THE JEWS OF EUROPE finally created an official government policy to rescue Jews. Erbelding covers a great deal of material that has been mined previously by David Wyman, Richard Breitman, Henry Feingold, Martin Gilbert, Walter Laqueur and many others. What separates her effort is her focus on American refugee policy from 1944 onward. She mines over 19,000 documents dealing with the War Rescue Board as she displays the bureaucratic infighting, the ideological shifts, the out and out racism and anti-Semitism that existed in the State Department under the aegis of Secretary of State Cordell Hull and his minions like Breckenridge Long. A number of heroes emerge from Erbelding’s narrative, the most important of which is John Pehle, the Assistant Secretary to Secretary of the Treasury Henry Morgenthau, Roswell MacLelland who ran the War Refugee Board in Switzerland, and Secretary of the Treasury Henry Morgenthau, Jr.
The underlying theme of the monograph that has been portrayed by others was the bureaucratic war between the State and Treasury Departments over American immigration policy beginning in the 1930s. By the summer of 1942 news of the ongoing massacre of European Jewry was known in Washington. However, helping Jews escape Europe was never a priority for the American government nor its people. Bigger problems loomed; the Great Depression, war in Europe, war in Asia, all stole the focus of most Americans. Erbelding provides a nice synthesis dealing with the immigration battles throughout the 1920s and 30s that limited immigration under the Johnson-Reed Act of 1924. She provides the link between anti-immigration sentiment that emerged during World War I, due in part as Daniel Okrent argues in his new book, THE GUARDED STATE to the role of eugenics, economic fears, and national security among other concerns. By 1941 public opinion, Franklin D. Roosevelt’s proclivity to measure which way the political winds were blowing, anti-immigration sentiment in Congress, and out and out anti-Semitism in the State Department had already taken hold.
By August 1942, Pehle concluded that it should be the role of the American government to try and save the Jews of Europe, and it was his responsibility as Director of Foreign Funds Control to do his best to achieve this momentous goal. He was able to gain the cooperation of Morgenthau to liberalize the Treasury Department’s foreign funds policies to implement his strategy. Erbelding spends a great deal of time narrating and analyzing how Pehle and his allies went about their task. Pehle’s strategy focused on transferring funds to relief organizations that the State Department had blocked for two years; Gerhardt Riegner’s plan to save Jewish children, funding for the International Red Cross, assistance to the World Jewish Congress, assist underground movements, among many more. Further, he created the protection of “paper,” issuing as many visas and passports with as much neutral power support as possible. He instituted a licensing policy to satisfy the Nazis and their allies to consider releasing their captives. He played a game of “charades” as a strategic approach to negotiations employing bluffs, lies or anything that might bring about the rescue of Hungarian Jews. In addition, he was responsible for the creation of an Emergency Refugee Shelter in upstate New York, planting articles in newspaper and other publicity about the plight of refugees, and even went so far as trying to get the Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company to launder money through its Swedish headquarters.
Pehle and his allies’ work did not stop with these strategies. He worked assiduously to purchase and/or lease shipping for Jews, locating safe havens, and considered the most outrageous possibilities to save lives. Erbelding delves into the Brand Mission which involved a Nazi attempt to ransom the Jews of Hungary. Brand was a member of the Zionist Relief and Rescue Committee in Budapest who was seen as a spy by the British who actually imprisoned him during negotiations with Adolf Eichmann. The offer of Hungarian dictator Admiral Horthy to release Jews under his auspices, as well as the work of Raoul Wallenberg, Ira Hirschman and others was under Pehle’s purview. As Erbelding correctly points out, the time and effort in most cases proved fruitless, but the War Rescue Board members at least tried.
Erbelding points to the British as a major roadblock because of its refusal to accept refugees in Palestine. But London had company in creating obstacles or just plain refusal like Turkey, Spain, Portugal and others in trying to gain passage for Jews to safe havens. They could all point to Roosevelt’s policies which after constant pressure from Jewish leaders and the State Department finally produced a declaration on March 24, 1944 warning Holocaust perpetrators and their axis allies of the punishment that awaited them once the war ended. Pehle would employ that warning throughout Europe, but in most cases to no avail.
Erbelding goes along with numerous others in arguing no matter how many Jews the War Rescue Board might have saved had it been created two years earlier the end of the war was the only solution to the Nazi terror. Despite its late creation the Board did save lives, how many is open to conjecture. But the work of people like Daly Mayer, Iver Olsen, Peter Bergson, Florence Hodel and many others cannot be discounted as the United States for the first and only time in its history worked to save lives and endeavor to employ humanitarian approach to a worldwide refugee problem. If there is a lesson to garnered from Erbelding’s work it is that even in the midst of war, governments can achieve humanitarian successes. Perhaps the current administration should shelve its political agenda and consider what the War Refugee Board accomplished at the end of World War II and create a humanitarian approach to the refugee crisis it now confronts at its southern border.
July 5, 2018
An important and obscure historical topic, to be sure, but not particularly well-written or exciting. Much of the book focuses on bureaucratic infighting between the State and Treasury Department which, while interesting, does not make for the most exhilarating of reads. Not much action to be found here, and the actual details of specific rescue operations are left to the imagination.
April 8, 2018
I received a free Kindle copy of Rescue Board by Rebecca Erbelding courtesy of Net Galley and Doubleday, the publisher. It was with the understanding that I would post a review on Net Galley, Goodreads, Amazon, Barnes and Noble and my fiction book review blog. I also posted it to my Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Google Plus pages.
I requested this book as I have read a number of books on World War II, but none devoted solely to efforts by the United States to help save the Jews from the Holocaust. It is the first book by Rebecca Erbelding that I have read.
This book is well researched and well written. The author's writing style makes this book easy to follow and hard to put down. She covers the United States involvement in helping Jews escape Nazi Germany from the early days of World War II were littl to nothing was done to the rush near the end of the war to help at least some escape. She does a very good job of protraying the frustration and patience that the Rescue Board and others had to endure to accomplish assistance to those trapped in Naxi Germany. She also outlines the creativity that they utilized to assist those who were trapped.
I strongly recommend this book to anyone who has an interest in the role that the United States played in helping to free some of the Jews who were destined for elimination in the concentration camps.
I requested this book as I have read a number of books on World War II, but none devoted solely to efforts by the United States to help save the Jews from the Holocaust. It is the first book by Rebecca Erbelding that I have read.
This book is well researched and well written. The author's writing style makes this book easy to follow and hard to put down. She covers the United States involvement in helping Jews escape Nazi Germany from the early days of World War II were littl to nothing was done to the rush near the end of the war to help at least some escape. She does a very good job of protraying the frustration and patience that the Rescue Board and others had to endure to accomplish assistance to those trapped in Naxi Germany. She also outlines the creativity that they utilized to assist those who were trapped.
I strongly recommend this book to anyone who has an interest in the role that the United States played in helping to free some of the Jews who were destined for elimination in the concentration camps.
June 15, 2018
No matter what your interest in history, this book is must read for two main reasons. First, for writers and students of history, it's an exceptional example of how to write nonfiction. The writing is clear and the storytelling is vibrant. Second, Erbelding's argument that we have tragically underestimated the impact of the War Rescue Board, and by extension, cast the United States as callously failing to act to mediate Nazi atrocities and thereby somehow becoming complicit, is necessary to a complete understanding to the United States' involvement in WWII. As Erbelding notes in her afterword, if we ignore the WRB, we fail to learn from them, which would be a tragedy in an age again beset by refugee crises at home and abroad. How might we apply the lessons of the WRB to help aid refugees today? In all, an enjoyable, important book.
August 3, 2018
Review title: Fighting the second war
It is such a widely-accepted presumption (even amongst those like myself who consider themselves widely-read in American and world history) that the United States turned a blind eye to Hitler's deliberate and methodical murder of European Jews that I was surprised when I saw the subtitle of this book on my library's new book shelf. In this first book-length history of the US War Refugee Board, Erbelding sets out to correct that misconception. In fact, Americans did, as unknown individual heroes and as a nation founded on ideals, take action to try to save as many people as possible from the Nazi killing camps.
Of course the first war, in Erbelding's term, was a military war to defeat the German armies who had overrun most of Europe. The second war was a battle fought on diplomatic, intergovernmental cooperation, and relief and rescue grounds to stop Hitler's war against the Jews. While the US joined the first war officially on December 7, 1941, it would take almost three years to start fighting the second. While the 1930s had seen a rapid demonization and legal, financial, and cultural attacks on Jews, it was only in 1942 that word started to leak out of Germany and occupied territory like Poland that Hitler had defined and was acting on his final solution to systematically imprison and murder Jews and some other "undesirables." Because of the dedication of resources to fighting the first war, the difficulty of communication between the US and those closest to the endangered populations, and the bureaucratic inertia built into the hastily assembled wartime government, it took nearly a year from its first proposal in 1943 until the War Refugee Board was established in January 1944.
The agency was hosted out of the Treasury Department with sponsorship by Secretary Henry Morganthau, who was joined by the Secretaries of State and War as the Cabinet level board. The staff came primarily from those agencies, and the approximate count of 60 staff members is hard to nail down because some staff were paid for by other departments and seconded in to the WRB, while others were in occupied Europe for the entire time of the board's existence and only communicated with Washington via telegram or letter. The total spent by the Board in its 18 months of existence: $3.3 million; even in 1945 dollars, it is a small amount, and less than the $4 million budgeted ($635,000 was returned to the federal government when the Board disbanded).
What did the WRB accomplish with the little time, money, and resources it had?
But perhaps the most important thing the WRB did, in November 1944, was to release the first written first-hand reports from inside of German death camps. The existence, translation, preservation, and transportation of these reports out of Germany to occupied Europe to the Allies and finally to the WRB was itself nearly miraculous; then, when Pehle made the decision to release them as is to the press, over the objections of the Office of War Information and without consulting the State Department, the response around the nation and the world was immediate and the condemnation of Nazism powerful. The second war had a new name: the term "genocide" was first used in the Washington Post to describe the systematic murder of a group of people. (see p. 213-222)
What did the WRB accomplish? It is impossible to count the number of people saved; as Erbelding points out a Jew could only be murdered once, but saving a Jewish life might take many little rescues. The WRB final report estimated 126,000 lives saved, another historian credits 200,000, either number miniscule next to the six million Holocaust victims. Yet the unsung heroes of the WRB acted on the best of American ideals, for no ulterior military, economic, or political motive. They did what they could without taking resources away from the first war, the military victory that ultimately was the only way to stop the Hitler killing factories. As Erbelding eloquently concludes:
Erbelding, an archivist and curator at the US Holocaust Memorial Museum, writes her history in a stripped down, straight forward, and unemotional style which gives the account the immediacy and impact of a breaking news story. It is exhaustively researched (it is worth taking a minute to read her notes on the sources to understand how exhausting that research was!) and documented. And it is vitally important for Americans to learn when and why we have and must continue to act on our ideals.
It is such a widely-accepted presumption (even amongst those like myself who consider themselves widely-read in American and world history) that the United States turned a blind eye to Hitler's deliberate and methodical murder of European Jews that I was surprised when I saw the subtitle of this book on my library's new book shelf. In this first book-length history of the US War Refugee Board, Erbelding sets out to correct that misconception. In fact, Americans did, as unknown individual heroes and as a nation founded on ideals, take action to try to save as many people as possible from the Nazi killing camps.
Of course the first war, in Erbelding's term, was a military war to defeat the German armies who had overrun most of Europe. The second war was a battle fought on diplomatic, intergovernmental cooperation, and relief and rescue grounds to stop Hitler's war against the Jews. While the US joined the first war officially on December 7, 1941, it would take almost three years to start fighting the second. While the 1930s had seen a rapid demonization and legal, financial, and cultural attacks on Jews, it was only in 1942 that word started to leak out of Germany and occupied territory like Poland that Hitler had defined and was acting on his final solution to systematically imprison and murder Jews and some other "undesirables." Because of the dedication of resources to fighting the first war, the difficulty of communication between the US and those closest to the endangered populations, and the bureaucratic inertia built into the hastily assembled wartime government, it took nearly a year from its first proposal in 1943 until the War Refugee Board was established in January 1944.
The agency was hosted out of the Treasury Department with sponsorship by Secretary Henry Morganthau, who was joined by the Secretaries of State and War as the Cabinet level board. The staff came primarily from those agencies, and the approximate count of 60 staff members is hard to nail down because some staff were paid for by other departments and seconded in to the WRB, while others were in occupied Europe for the entire time of the board's existence and only communicated with Washington via telegram or letter. The total spent by the Board in its 18 months of existence: $3.3 million; even in 1945 dollars, it is a small amount, and less than the $4 million budgeted ($635,000 was returned to the federal government when the Board disbanded).
What did the WRB accomplish with the little time, money, and resources it had?
The War Refugee Board sent warnings into enemy territory. It helped relief agencies send money, which was used for food, clothing, medicine, weapons, and bribes. It supported protective paper schemes, even persuading the State Department to reissue American visas. Yet none of it was certain. All was intangible; all were guesses. To all the people writing to [WRB director John] Pehle, pleading for the lives of their loved ones, he could only respond by promising that the War Refugee Board was trying everything. (p. 129)
But perhaps the most important thing the WRB did, in November 1944, was to release the first written first-hand reports from inside of German death camps. The existence, translation, preservation, and transportation of these reports out of Germany to occupied Europe to the Allies and finally to the WRB was itself nearly miraculous; then, when Pehle made the decision to release them as is to the press, over the objections of the Office of War Information and without consulting the State Department, the response around the nation and the world was immediate and the condemnation of Nazism powerful. The second war had a new name: the term "genocide" was first used in the Washington Post to describe the systematic murder of a group of people. (see p. 213-222)
What did the WRB accomplish? It is impossible to count the number of people saved; as Erbelding points out a Jew could only be murdered once, but saving a Jewish life might take many little rescues. The WRB final report estimated 126,000 lives saved, another historian credits 200,000, either number miniscule next to the six million Holocaust victims. Yet the unsung heroes of the WRB acted on the best of American ideals, for no ulterior military, economic, or political motive. They did what they could without taking resources away from the first war, the military victory that ultimately was the only way to stop the Hitler killing factories. As Erbelding eloquently concludes:
The Holocaust did not occur because the United States stayed silent; rather, the Holocaust happened because the Nazis wanted to kill Jews and had more access, control, and will over and against them than the Allied nations had to protect them. The War Refugee Board tried everything in its power to prevent atrocities, provide relief, and rescue potential victims. The staff worked ceaselessly to save lives during the final months of the Holocaust. (p. 278)
Erbelding, an archivist and curator at the US Holocaust Memorial Museum, writes her history in a stripped down, straight forward, and unemotional style which gives the account the immediacy and impact of a breaking news story. It is exhaustively researched (it is worth taking a minute to read her notes on the sources to understand how exhausting that research was!) and documented. And it is vitally important for Americans to learn when and why we have and must continue to act on our ideals.
January 4, 2020
How little I knew. The War Refugee Board ending in executive Order 9614 its report, the volume of its work and its decision making is worth reviewing. WRB's decision making influenced by other factors is there to question. Worth the read but it takes time to absorb.
Of new knowledge to me is. " The War Refugee Board's creation was -- and remains -- the only time in american history that the U. S. government founded a government agency to save the lives of non-Americans being murdered by a wartime enemy."
Of new knowledge to me is. " The War Refugee Board's creation was -- and remains -- the only time in american history that the U. S. government founded a government agency to save the lives of non-Americans being murdered by a wartime enemy."
December 29, 2018
Insightful, but I disagree with the thesis. The silence of America and Allies in the face of credible reports of genocide as well as opposition to increased immigration quotas (conveniently decreased in the 30s and 40s) condemned millions of innocent people to death.
October 15, 2019
Great subject matter. I normally love to hear of efforts to rescue the Jews of the Holocaust. However, this book seemed a bit dry and very hard to get through. There were a lot of names and government departments and other groups to try to remember. I did not actually get all the way through it.
September 1, 2018
This is an important work on a topic that historians have not researched in detail. It is both readable and informative and shows that the United States did respond to the Holocaust. Erbelding is fair in her analysis and explains controversial decisions, such as the decision not to bomb Auschwitz, and how the Rescue Board dealt with them.
July 16, 2018
This book was a fascinating look at a relatively unknown piece of WWII history. I've read lots about this time period and WWII/Holocaust history and this is the first I had read about the WRB, so I enjoyed learning all about it. The book was really well written and I enjoyed it immensely.
February 24, 2023
Impeccably researched and very well written, this is the story of the War Rescue Board. It operated out of the Treasury and State Departments in 1944 and early 1945 to attempt to save Jews from the Holocaust.
September 7, 2019
via audiobook: I couldn't finish. It was written very dryly focusing on facts. Even in audiobook while monotonously driving I could not focus on it which is a shame as I was excited to learn more from this book.
October 4, 2022
Erbelding provides a valuable, extremely detailed account of the War Refugee Board, formed in January 1944, whose purpose was to rescue refugees, mainly Jews, during World War II. The WRB funneled funds to relief agencies and resistance groups and made overt rescue attempts of Jews in Hungary, Bulgaria, Romania, Spain, Portugal, and other countries. Heroes of the WRB are John Pehle, Ross McClelland, Florence Hodel, Iver Olsen, and other people discarded by history. The WRB was miraculously formed and operated in the United States, a country where a large majority of people were anti-immigration and antisemitic. While the number of Jews helped or rescued by the WRB is vanishingly small compared to the millions slaughtered by the Nazis, Erbelding makes a positive case for its existence in the final chapter “Afterward”.
The reluctance to accept Jewish refugees is maddening. The anti-immigration barriers set up in the 1920’s dashed most hopes. During the war, the U.S. was not prepared to accept extra Jews or even to acknowledge attempts at helping Jews by name for fear of questions raised about who our sons are dying for in this war. A miniscule solution was an emergency refugee shelter in August 1944 for about 1000 people at Fort Ontario, Oswego NY. Why could there not have been 500 of these shelters? After all, the U.S. was able to house 120,000 Americans of Japanese descent in more than 10 relocation camps and 425,000 German POW’s in 700 camps.
While Erbelding is generally meticulous, she studiously avoids giving the names of the two Slovakian Jewish escapees from Auschwitz whose reporting in the Auschwitz Protocols in spring 1944 documented the murder of an estimated 1,500,000 Jews in the gas chambers there. Their report was published in U.S. newspapers on November 26, 1944, through the efforts of McClelland and Pehle. Finally, the eyes of the Americans were opened! The two men were Rudolf Vrba and Alfred Wetzler. Erbelding refers to them three times as “two Slovak Jews” (pp.157, 214, 215). Vrba’s name is not in the index; Wetzler’s name is, but the citation is incorrect (p.320, not p.318). Only in footnote 157 on p. 320 are Vrba’s and Wetzler’s names given. Are these two names “disappeared” because they fought against the Hungarian Jewish hierarchy at the time?
The reluctance to accept Jewish refugees is maddening. The anti-immigration barriers set up in the 1920’s dashed most hopes. During the war, the U.S. was not prepared to accept extra Jews or even to acknowledge attempts at helping Jews by name for fear of questions raised about who our sons are dying for in this war. A miniscule solution was an emergency refugee shelter in August 1944 for about 1000 people at Fort Ontario, Oswego NY. Why could there not have been 500 of these shelters? After all, the U.S. was able to house 120,000 Americans of Japanese descent in more than 10 relocation camps and 425,000 German POW’s in 700 camps.
While Erbelding is generally meticulous, she studiously avoids giving the names of the two Slovakian Jewish escapees from Auschwitz whose reporting in the Auschwitz Protocols in spring 1944 documented the murder of an estimated 1,500,000 Jews in the gas chambers there. Their report was published in U.S. newspapers on November 26, 1944, through the efforts of McClelland and Pehle. Finally, the eyes of the Americans were opened! The two men were Rudolf Vrba and Alfred Wetzler. Erbelding refers to them three times as “two Slovak Jews” (pp.157, 214, 215). Vrba’s name is not in the index; Wetzler’s name is, but the citation is incorrect (p.320, not p.318). Only in footnote 157 on p. 320 are Vrba’s and Wetzler’s names given. Are these two names “disappeared” because they fought against the Hungarian Jewish hierarchy at the time?
November 30, 2018
After World War I, immigration to the United States sank to its lowest level. While more than ten million people emigrated to the U.S. in the decade before WWI, due to postwar isolationism, eugenic theories, and of course the effects of the Great Depression, that number plunged to about 154,000 per year after the Johnson-Reed Act of 1924. This act placed quotas in place which restricted applicants from various locations and "national origins", including persons from southern and eastern Europe. Now flash forward to August, 1942, eight months after Pearl Harbor. Gerhart Riegner, a young German Jew and the representative of the World Jewish Congress, had just heard indirectly from a prominent German businessman than the Nazis had a plan to exterminate all people of Jewish origin. He passed this on, but it took a long time for the U.S. and the other Allies to believe this, or even to respond, but on January 22, 1944, President Roosevelt signed the War Refugee Board into existence - the only time in American history that the U.S. government founded a government agency to save the lives of non-Americans being murdered by a wartime enemy. Rebecca Erbelding is an archivist, curator, and historian at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C., and this book is basically her doctoral dissertation for George Mason University. Not much is known about the War Refugee Board by this date, but, in Ms. Erbelding's words: "The WRB's existence is an anomaly, an unexpected deviation, a sudden and surprising altruistic moment at a time when the world war was all-consuming and official American efforts to assist persecuted European Jews had been halfhearted or nonexistent for a long time. People who point to the 1930's and 1940's with outrage that the United States did not do more to save the Jews of Europe neglect the context of the period. The uncomfortable truth is that the United States could have "saved" the most Jews only by preemptively loosening immigration restrictions - by enlarging and filling the quotas when Nazi persecution became clear but before the murders began. And for myriad reasons, that was unlikely to happen." This is excellent, well-researched work set against a sharp historical background.
April 25, 2020
Rescue Board: The Untold Story of America’s Efforts to Save the Jews of Europe is by Rebecca Erbelding. I don’t remember why I purchased this book; but I did and then put it aside because I thought it would be another dry history book that would take me forever to read. However, I was pleasantly surprised to find it very readable and interesting when I finally started it. It brought a section of Holocaust history alive for me and one which I knew relatively nothing about.
I was aware that late in the war, the United States finally put a program into place designed specifically to safe Jews. I thought it was even later in the war than it was and that the Board really didn’t do much. I was right and wrong on my assumptions. The Rescue Board was put into effect late in the war in late 1944. The process of setting the Board up was crooked and took a rather long time to cut through the red tape and the different departments of government to make sure they did not step on any other department’s shoes or crossed any lines. Still, a lot of what they did was repetitious . When Treasury and State began to work together, things change a little.
Several of the directors went their own ways with the money and got the results they wanted. This didn’t work well for all of them because they were limited in what they could do.
I do have to say that the book frustrated me. You would think that grown men would act better; but some of these men acted like little boys trying to play with the same ball. They wanted their own special project and for it to be handled exclusively and better than the others.
It amazed to see in print all the different activities they did to try to help the Jews. They actually did a lot and they freed a lot of Jews; but they weren’t a bunch of men to look to the future very well.
I was very impressed with the book and the way it flowed. It made a difficult subject easy to understand and to read.
I was aware that late in the war, the United States finally put a program into place designed specifically to safe Jews. I thought it was even later in the war than it was and that the Board really didn’t do much. I was right and wrong on my assumptions. The Rescue Board was put into effect late in the war in late 1944. The process of setting the Board up was crooked and took a rather long time to cut through the red tape and the different departments of government to make sure they did not step on any other department’s shoes or crossed any lines. Still, a lot of what they did was repetitious . When Treasury and State began to work together, things change a little.
Several of the directors went their own ways with the money and got the results they wanted. This didn’t work well for all of them because they were limited in what they could do.
I do have to say that the book frustrated me. You would think that grown men would act better; but some of these men acted like little boys trying to play with the same ball. They wanted their own special project and for it to be handled exclusively and better than the others.
It amazed to see in print all the different activities they did to try to help the Jews. They actually did a lot and they freed a lot of Jews; but they weren’t a bunch of men to look to the future very well.
I was very impressed with the book and the way it flowed. It made a difficult subject easy to understand and to read.
July 9, 2020
This was a well written book that documents the work of the War Refugee Board and their efforts to save the Jews being exterminated in Europe by the Nazis. Though informative and helpful in understanding the infighting that often hindered the board, it was not as expected for me as I had little knowledge of this area of US history and had never heard of the WRB and naively thought it might be a bit more direct involvement, ie missions into the areas of the concentration camps and more info on helping Jews set to be deported escape to safety etc.
It makes sense though that in an age without cell phones and in which the information in even coded cables could be compromised forcing the necessity of letters which took weeks to arrive that things would not move quickly and information would be spotty and hard to act on. What surprised me most was how reluctant many countries around the concentration camps were willing to ship off Jews, but how few were willing to get involved in saving them. In addition to hitting heads with our own state department it seemed the WRB also was constantly hitting heads with other allies or neutral countries on how to help those in concentration camps. Given the obstacles, their persistence and focus on saving lives is inspiring.
Overall an informative book, but given it documented more of the work done in the actual offices of the WRB it was by necessity a bit more dry of a read that would likely appeal to historians and history students or history buffs, but less so the average reader.
It makes sense though that in an age without cell phones and in which the information in even coded cables could be compromised forcing the necessity of letters which took weeks to arrive that things would not move quickly and information would be spotty and hard to act on. What surprised me most was how reluctant many countries around the concentration camps were willing to ship off Jews, but how few were willing to get involved in saving them. In addition to hitting heads with our own state department it seemed the WRB also was constantly hitting heads with other allies or neutral countries on how to help those in concentration camps. Given the obstacles, their persistence and focus on saving lives is inspiring.
Overall an informative book, but given it documented more of the work done in the actual offices of the WRB it was by necessity a bit more dry of a read that would likely appeal to historians and history students or history buffs, but less so the average reader.
March 27, 2021
This book is a history of the War Refugee Board formed in January.1944 with the purpose of attempting to save Jews from the Nazi genocide. The immediate catalyst was the report of a man named Reigor, who smuggled out reports of the extermination camps written by escaped prisoners. At first the reports were greeted with skepticism and disbelief. Then board was the result of the efforts of people in the treasury department. The prime mover was John Pehl who took the cause as his personal mission. Once FDR was convinced to establish the WRB, it had to formulate plans on how to save prisoners in the camps.
The board faced a myriad of problems to rescue the prisoners. There were many Jewish organizations that each had different ideas on how best to save their fellow Jews. The problem of where to shelter the rescued. Safe passage through neutral countries, which countries would accept the refugees and how to feed and clothe them. One of the biggest hurdles was the general anti Semitic feeling in the world. Many countries, including America, were reluctant to admit the refugees. The British were recalcitrant about letting the refugees into Palestine.
The book details the various schemes attempted or proposed to rescue the Jews and the people involved in the efforts make for a fascinating story. The United States has often been severely criticized for their efforts to rescue the Jews, but this book shows how difficult the problem actually was to to solve.
This book sheds light on a little known aspect of our history during the war.
The board faced a myriad of problems to rescue the prisoners. There were many Jewish organizations that each had different ideas on how best to save their fellow Jews. The problem of where to shelter the rescued. Safe passage through neutral countries, which countries would accept the refugees and how to feed and clothe them. One of the biggest hurdles was the general anti Semitic feeling in the world. Many countries, including America, were reluctant to admit the refugees. The British were recalcitrant about letting the refugees into Palestine.
The book details the various schemes attempted or proposed to rescue the Jews and the people involved in the efforts make for a fascinating story. The United States has often been severely criticized for their efforts to rescue the Jews, but this book shows how difficult the problem actually was to to solve.
This book sheds light on a little known aspect of our history during the war.
July 20, 2021
This was a well-researched and informative read, but very bland and hard to get through. There was a lot of ins and outs of history and little details that were definitely enlightening. It gives an insight to the antisemitic workings of the State Department at the time of the Holocaust, and the goals and mission of the War Refugee Board. It has a lot of details and minutiae, which doesn't make for a captivating read. The book is about behind the scenes work and the actual rescue operations are left for the reader to fill in the blank.
Erbelding, in my view, was arguing that America did everything they can to save the Jews from Nazi persecution. However, I think the book's details proves that in reality it was a handful of people behind the scenes that wanted to make things right, but as a whole the American government as well as the American public took too long to put in the effort for a multitude of reasons: optics, upcoming elections, refusal to acknowledge how bad it was, etc. I found it interesting that the details of the book showed all of that, yet the wrap-up argument at the end was insinuating something different.
With that said, I do think this would be a good read for history buffs and people who don't mind reading slow paced, extremely detailed books with a lot of different narratives and threads to follow. It does read like a history book though, so know that going into it. I also think it's good for people to know about the War Refugee Board since I don't think they teach that in most schools, I just wish this book was a little shorter.
Erbelding, in my view, was arguing that America did everything they can to save the Jews from Nazi persecution. However, I think the book's details proves that in reality it was a handful of people behind the scenes that wanted to make things right, but as a whole the American government as well as the American public took too long to put in the effort for a multitude of reasons: optics, upcoming elections, refusal to acknowledge how bad it was, etc. I found it interesting that the details of the book showed all of that, yet the wrap-up argument at the end was insinuating something different.
With that said, I do think this would be a good read for history buffs and people who don't mind reading slow paced, extremely detailed books with a lot of different narratives and threads to follow. It does read like a history book though, so know that going into it. I also think it's good for people to know about the War Refugee Board since I don't think they teach that in most schools, I just wish this book was a little shorter.
March 14, 2020
This is an important topic and as such I really wanted to finish it. But TBH it was quite a slog. It was really hard to keep track of all the names and organizations involved . I switched over to the audio version to get through it quicker. But I really only finished it to hear about whatever successes they had.
This story was about the bureaucratic struggles the board encountered while trying to do a noble task, rescue Jews from Nazi Germany. Actually quite a commentary on how very sluggish a government can be, even with an agency tasked with cutting through red tape.
I guess I was hoping for more of the boots-on-the-ground kind of story. Maybe I'll look into a book on Raoul Wallenberg.
This story was about the bureaucratic struggles the board encountered while trying to do a noble task, rescue Jews from Nazi Germany. Actually quite a commentary on how very sluggish a government can be, even with an agency tasked with cutting through red tape.
I guess I was hoping for more of the boots-on-the-ground kind of story. Maybe I'll look into a book on Raoul Wallenberg.
June 24, 2019
Rescue Board is a seemingly well-researched and well-written book; however, it is apologetica of the worst sort. Erbelding obviously has a political agenda and plays it out well. Even if what she writes is true (I did not check any of her sources), America's efforts were too little too late. Especially in light of her apparent endorsement of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's recent comments on concentration camps, it is clear that Erbelding is trying very hard to be politically correct and curry favor with someone. It is just not clear with whom. She may want to clarify her motives.
October 3, 2022
Watched Rebecca being interviewed for the Ken Burns documentary America and the Holocaust. She was fantastic, so I wanted to read her book on this. While it's quite interesting, I see the difference between what I like, and what a "historian" is interested in. Erbelding takes in the details to such an extent that while I have no doubt she knew everything that was going on, I was wishing for some editing and decisions which could have made this story more digestible to me. I guess I'm just not such a detail guy.
October 3, 2020
I read about half, then ended up skimming. Interesting, but really, really dry and a bit confusing as far as timing of what happened when and who was doing what when goes. There were just too many different narrative threads to follow, and too many references to things that would happen or had already happened made it that much harder to follow; a more chronological telling might have worked better.
I really wish this had been told better, because the content itself was fascinating.
I really wish this had been told better, because the content itself was fascinating.
December 18, 2019
Fascinating read. Definitely good history here that they do not teach in grade school. I had always heard how anti-semitic the state department is/was. Morganthau and others really had to work hard to try to counter Nazi atrocities, government red tape, and bias against immigration within our own government and that of bureaucrats in England.
February 24, 2023
This book was long and sometimes very boring. I want to learn about all aspects of the time of wwii. I mostly read holocaust Survivor stories. But from time to time I do delve into other types of books. I have not learned a lot, yet regarding the US government’s involvement overall. So, This did help me learn about some of the things the government was trying to do.
August 24, 2025
An amazing story about how the USG tried to save the Jews of Europe. We did too little, too late, of course. The WRB should have been set up in the 1930s and should have been bullying allies all along to take in as many Jews as possible, especially those in Latin America and Africa who would stand to benefit the most from a massive influx of God's chosen people.
October 14, 2025
I didn't know anything about America's efforts to save people from the Nazi genocide. This book shows how difficult it was to coordinate any actions among the many players involved in WWII. It's sad how people's viewpoints ended up delaying efforts to save Jewish and other prisoners in Nazi-controlled territory.
April 11, 2019
Wow... I never knew!!!
April 23, 2019
2.5 Rounded Up.
Read
January 31, 2023Worth reading to gain insight into War Refugee Board.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 35 reviews