Operation Texas was an undercover operation to relocate European Jews to Texas, USA, away from Nazi persecution.
In 1938, Lyndon Baines Johnson (LBJ), then a Congressman and later the 36th President of the United States of America, worked covertly to establish a refuge in Texas for European Jews fleeing Nazi Germany. Johnson helped hundreds of European Jews enter Texas through Cuba, Mexico and South America.
In part, Johnson was influenced in his attitude towards the Jews by the religious beliefs that his family, especially his grandfather (Samuel Ealy Johnson, Sr.), who was a member of the Christadelphian church, shared with him. Christadelphians believe that the Jews are God's chosen people, and LBJ's grandfather once said to him, "Take care of the Jews, God’s chosen people. Consider them your friends and help them any way you can." In reference to Operation Texas, Texas historian James M. Smallwood commented that LBJ "apparently took seriously his grandfather's charge."
Famous quotes containing the words operation and/or texas:
“It requires a surgical operation to get a joke well into a Scotch understanding. The only idea of wit, or rather that inferior variety of the electric talent which prevails occasionally in the North, and which, under the name of “Wut,” is so infinitely distressing to people of good taste, is laughing immoderately at stated intervals.”
—Sydney Smith (1771–1845)
“Fifty million Frenchmen can’t be wrong.”
—Anonymous. Popular saying.
Dating from World War I—when it was used by U.S. soldiers—or before, the saying was associated with nightclub hostess Texas Quinan in the 1920s. It was the title of a song recorded by Sophie Tucker in 1927, and of a Cole Porter musical in 1929.