War Refugee Board

(WRB)

   The board was created by an executive order from President Franklin D. Roosevelt in January 1944 for the purpose of rescuing Jews from German-occupied Europe. The circumstances under which the president established the board emanated from a threat, made by officials in the United States Treasury Department, to release to the press a statement that accused the administration of “acquiescing” to the German extermination program. Officials in the Treasury were incensed by their discovery that the Department of State was reluctant to carry out a July 1943 presidential directive to plan the rescue of thousands of Romanian Jews. The report was written by the assistant of Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau Jr., Josiah Dubois Jr., and was titled “Report to the Secretary on the Acquiescence of This Government in the Murder of the Jews.” Prepared for the secretary of the Treasury, the report accused the State Department of a “willful failure” to pass on information or use its authority to offer aid to the victims of the Nazi extermination program. After Morgenthau changed the document’s title to “A Personal Report to the President,” he presented it to Roosevelt. Reacting to the politically explosive charges detailed in the report, the president, by executive order, created the War Refugee Board.

   The War Refugee Board was the only Allied agency specifically established during the war to save the lives of the Jews still remaining in German-occupied Europe. The success of WRB rescue operations in Europe remains a subject of controversy among historians, but the best estimates regarding the number of Jews saved by the government agency range from 20,000 (William D. Rubenstein) to 200,000 (David Wyman).

   See also Hungary; Wallenberg, Raoul.