War Refugee Board - Creation

Creation

The immediate cause for Roosevelt’s action was pressure from the staff of the Treasury Department’s office of Foreign Funds Control and its chief, John W. Pehle. Pehle’s office had authorized a number of charitable groups to use funds in the U.S. regulated under the Trading with the Enemy Act to pay for food, medicine, and other aid to refugees and other civilian victims of the war in Europe. Those efforts were systematically blocked by some officials in the U.S. State Department. Specifically, in July 1943, the Treasury Department issued a license to the World Jewish Congress to use funds in the United States to pay some of the costs of evacuating Jews from Romania. (This should not be confused with another initiative, by the Romanian government, to “sell” Jews for approximately $50 a head, with which it had no connection.)

Various State Department officials delayed the license for the next five months. Treasury officials, led by a staff lawyer, Josiah E. DuBois, Jr., investigated how and why the license had been held up. In their research, which was aided by some officials in the State Department, they discovered that in addition to blocking licenses for use of money to aid refugees, the State Department had also sent foreign missions orders not to forward information about Nazi atrocities—specifically about the Holocaust—to Washington. At the end of 1944, DuBois wrote a memorandum, “Report to the Secretary on the Acquiescence of This Government in the Murder of the Jews”, which said the State Department was “guilty not only of gross procrastination and willful failure to act, but even of willful attempts to prevent action from being taken to rescue Jews from Hitler".

DuBois took his memorandum to Treasury General Counsel Randolph E. Paul, who agreed to put his signature on it and forward it to Secretary Henry Morgenthau, Jr., who resisted Paul’s insistence that he forward it to President Roosevelt. According to a leading source, David Wyman, “There is even some evidence that Morgenthau finally agreed to press Roosevelt because Josiah DuBois threatened that if he did not do so he, DuBois, would resign from the Treasury, call a press conference in Washington, and rip the lid off the entire State Department refugee scandal". Morgenthau agreed to take DuBois’s memorandum to the President, but insisted on changing the title to: “Personal Report to the President”, and he, Paul, and Pehle took a copy with them when they met with President Roosevelt in the Oval Office on Sunday, January 16, 1944.

Roosevelt got an oral briefing on the facts and conclusions in the DuBois memorandum, and immediately agreed to deal with the issues by creating a War Refugee Board, consisting of three cabinet members, Secretary of State Cordell Hull, Secretary Morgenthau, and Secretary of War Henry Stimson (Morgenthau had suggested that instead of Stimson, Leo Crowley, Director of the Foreign Economic Administration be appointed, but Roosevelt decided to appoint Stimson instead.) On January 22, Roosevelt signed the Executive Order creating the Board.

Of course, the Treasury Department did not act in a vacuum. By the end of 1943, Roosevelt was also getting intense pressure to act on the issue from members of Congress, including Sol Bloom, Emanuel Celler, etc., and from Jewish organizations, most notably Stephen Wise and the American Jewish Congress.