War Refugee Board - Activity

Activity

The board developed and implemented various plans and programs for:

• Rescuing, transporting, and relieving victims of enemy oppression
• Establishing of havens of temporary refuge for such victims

The board enlisted the cooperation of foreign governments and international refugee and rescue organizations in carrying out these functions. Such neutral countries as Switzerland, Sweden, and Turkey were of particular importance, serving as bases of operation for the rescue and relief program. The Vatican rendered some assistance, mostly towards the very end of the war, primarily as a channel of communication to enemy regimes, such as the fascist government of Slovakia. The board obtained the cooperation of the Intergovernmental Committee on Refugees, the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration, and the International Committee of the Red Cross in rehabilitating and resettling refugees, finding temporary shelters for rescued victims, transporting these victims to the shelters and providing for their maintenance in transit, and making relief deliveries inside enemy territory.

The board worked closely with private U.S. relief agencies in formulating, financing, and executing plans and projects. A Treasury Department licensing policy that permitted established private agencies to transfer funds from the United States to their representatives in neutral countries aided in financing the rescue of persecuted peoples living under Nazi control. Under this licensing policy, it was possible to communicate with persons in enemy territory and to finance rescue operations with certain controls designed to bring no financial benefit to the enemy. Approximately $20 million in private funds was made available in this way. The board obtained blockade clearances for food shipments of private relief agencies for distribution by the International Red Cross to detainees in German concentration camps and supplemented these private projects with a food-parcel program of its own financed from the emergency funds of the president.

Through the efforts of the board, refugee camps were prepared in North Africa and safe haven was arranged in Palestine, Switzerland, and Sweden. The Fort Ontario Emergency Refugee Shelter in Oswego, New York, housed one thousand refugees permitted to enter the United States outside the immigration laws.

By attracting international attention to the Hungarian government and putting pressure on them, the WRB was able to stop—for a while—the deportations of Jews from Hungary, saving some Jews of Budapest. The board sent the Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg, and others to protect the Jews of Budapest. The WRB funded Wallenberg's rescue work there.

In August 1944 the WRB brought 982 Jewish refugees from Italy to Fort Ontario in New York. The board intended to create other such places of asylum, and thus also influence other countries to provide sanctuary for World War II victims. President Roosevelt, however, disabled one of the board's most important rescue programs by refusing to establish any other havens. The board lobbied Roosevelt to publicly condemn the mass murder of Jews by the Nazis. This, however, was never done.

By the end of the war in 1945 perhaps as many as 200,000 Jews had been rescued by the War Refugee Board. About 15,000 Jews and more than 20,000 non-Jews had been evacuated from Nazi domain. At the very least, about 10,000 Jews were protected within Nazi-controlled territory by underground programs funded by the WRB. The board removed 48,000 Jews in Transnistria to safe areas of Romania. About 120,000 Jews from Budapest also survived due in part to the WRB's activities. However, near the end of his life, WRB director Pehle described the work as "too little, too late".

With the close of the war in Europe, the work of the board was at an end. By the terms of Executive Order No. 9614 the board was abolished on September 15, 1945.