President Franklin D. Roosevelt established the War Refugee Board in January 1944, 14 months after the U.S. State Department had confirmed rumors of the German government’s campaign to commit genocide against the Jews of Europe.
The War Refugee Board was created in response to reports that the State Department had been halting efforts to rescue thousands of Jews in Romania and France, despite approval of these plans by other arms of the government. The U.S. government supplied the War Refugee Board with sufficient resources to plan and implement rescue operations. The Board was charged with fulfilling the U.S. government’s new policy, which was “to rescue the victims of enemy oppression who are in imminent danger of death.”
The War Refugee Board did help to save thousands of Jews, particularly in Hungary and Romania; but by this late date, millions of European Jews had already been killed. “What we did was little enough,” said John Pehle, director of the board. “It was late. Late and little, I would say.”
