The War Refugee Board, established by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in January 1944, was a U.S. executive agency created to aid civilian victims of the Nazi and Axis powers. Created largely at the behest of Roosevelt's Secretary of the Treasury Henry Morgenthau, Jr., Roosevelt "stressed that it was urgent that action be taken at once to forestall the plan of the Nazis to exterminate all the Jews and other persecuted minorities in Europe".
The board was created when a young treasury lawyer, Josiah E. DuBois, Jr., learned about the State Department's blocking of Jewish refugees; the policy had been written in 1940 by Assistant Secretary of State Breckinridge Long, and disseminated to staff members directly involved with immigration.
When DuBois learned how the United States was hindering the efforts of refugees from entering the country, he wrote a report entitled Report to the Secretary on the Acquiescence of this Government to the Murder of the Jews, which he sent to Morgenthau and then directly to the President. The result was the establishment of the War Refugee Board. Subsequently credited with rescuing as many as 200,000 Jews from Nazi-occupied countries, through the efforts of Raoul Wallenberg and others, the commission has nevertheless received mixed praise because of the failure of the United States to act sooner despite evidence of ongoing atrocities in Europe.
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