Rescue Board

February 19, 2018
Erbelding, an archivist, curator, and historian at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, sifted through almost 19,000 archival documents to tell the story of the War Refugee Board, created by F.D.R. in January 1944 to help save European Jews. She describes how Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau Jr. pushed for the WRB’s creation after a long battle against the State Department’s anti-refugee policies. Led by Treasury official John Pehle, the WRB placed officials in neutral countries, including Switzerland and Turkey. The board’s activities included working to save Jewish Hungarians (who formed by far the largest remaining European Jewish community), paying for thousands of fake French identity cards, and supporting the Czech underground, thus contributing to the partisan liberation of camps in that country. Erbelding’s book would benefit from a final summary of the WRB’s strengths and weaknesses. Still, this first book-length history of the board marks an important contribution to the history of the Holocaust, particularly as it relates to America’s belated but vital efforts to stop it. Agent: Anna Sproul-Latimer, Ross Yoon Agency.

March 1, 2018
Intriguing history of the only U.S. government agency ever founded with the express purpose "to save the lives of civilians being murdered by a wartime enemy."America's closed-door immigration policy, the product of an intractably isolationist Congress, did not budge during much of World War II, even after Hitler's program of annihilation became a known reality. As U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum archivist and curator Erbelding writes, it was largely thanks to a German American lawyer named John Pehle that formerly private efforts at rescue became official ones. Firmly committed to an activist sense of justice, Pehle worked at the Treasury Department, leading efforts to freeze the assets and accounts of the nation's enemies--and thus "economically fighting the war long before Pearl Harbor." His office also monitored relief funds to Jewish refugees, and it was from that starting point that Pehle eventually organized the War Refugee Board, which, beginning formally in January 1944, provided such funding. Moreover, the WRB was its own clandestine operation on a par with the OSS, funding Resistance fighters in France, paying smugglers, bribing officials, and even floating efforts to negotiate with the Nazis directly to ransom European Jews. The last proved controversial and fell apart thanks to institutional resistance. As the author writes, "Great Britain refused any bargain designed to stave off Germany's defeat, nor could it care for a million released prisoners, which would undoubtedly force the Allies to call a temporary halt to the war." Even WRB efforts to make the Holocaust known to American soldiers and those on the home front were quashed. But many of the WRB's efforts were more successful overall, including opening diplomatic pathways to allow Jews to enter and settle in British Palestine, saving thousands of lives in the bargain. The denouement of the story is satisfying, too, for Pehle helped prosecute Nazi war criminals, while one of his colleagues became mayor of New York.A fine work of scholarly detection, turning up a story that deserves to be much better known.

COPYRIGHT(2018) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

April 1, 2018
Erbelding, archivist and curator at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, conveys the mostly forgotten story of dedicated U.S. Treasury agents who ran covert operations to save European Jews from mass murder at the end of WWII. Under increasing domestic pressure to save Jewish victims of the Nazis and with countries reluctant to accept sufficient numbers as refugees, President Roosevelt funded the War Refugee Board in 1944. Erbelding writes vividly of intrigue and espionage, secret negotiations, money laundering, ransoming of victims, and rescue ships. She describes WRB director John Pehle's international network and how one agent, Raoul Wallenberg of Sweden, became a martyr to the cause. After the Allied liberation, the board helped coordinate relief efforts before dissolving. Criticism of the U.S. responses as too little, too late may be valid, but 100,000-plus lives were saved through the WRB's efforts, and Erbelding's history is an important and timely contribution to understanding America's humanitarian efforts during and after WWII, given questions about today's world crises.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2018, American Library Association.)

April 1, 2018

Erbelding, a historian, archivist, and curator at the U.S. Holocaust Museum, tells the largely forgotten story of the War Refugee Board (WRB), America's effort to save the remaining European Jews toward the end of World War II. Initially, the United States was slow to respond to the Nazis' genocide as the country was primarily focused on winning the war militarily. Moreover, Congress' strict immigration policy made it extremely difficult for Jews to immigrate. In January 1944, John Pehle, an assistant to the secretary of the treasury, initiated a plan. Franklin D. Roosevelt accepted Pehle's proposal and soon created the WRB by executive order. Under Pehle's leadership, the WRB assembled a team to run operations in several countries and rescued a number of European Jews through creative methods. Erbelding argues against the narrative that the United States was negligent in helping victims of the Holocaust yet agrees that more could have been done (particularly, a less restrictive immigration policy), making the case that the WRB saved thousands. VERDICT Erbelding researched this book for more than ten years, discovering a great deal of lost archival materials in the process. For all interested in untold stories from history.--Dave Pugl, Ela Area P.L., Lake Zurich, IL

Copyright 2018 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

April 1, 2018

In January 1944, with Treasury Department staff having discovered that the State Department was blocking dissemination of information about the Holocaust even as it refused to grant relief funds that could help save Europe's remaining Jews, Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau Jr. met with President Franklin Roosevelt, who immediately created the War Refugee Board. Ultimately, tens of thousands of lives were saved. From a scholar associated with the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC, which will open a major exhibit on the subject in April 2018.

Copyright 2017 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.