1. Barring U.S.

Doors To Aliens/Refugees

Memo from Assistant Secretary of State Breckinridge Long to State Department Officials
dated June 26, 1940, outlining effective ways to obstruct the granting of U.S. visas
Letter from Margaret E. Jones, an American Quaker working with European Jews hoping
to emigrate to the U.S., expressing her distress at the impact of Breckinridge Long's
memo
Visa Application of U.S. State Department, Visa Division, January 1943
The visa application process was extremely complicated. The double-sided form
itself was more than four feet long.

2. News Of Extermination Reaches U.S.

U.S. State Department receives information from Switzerland regarding the Nazi plan to
murder the Jews of Europe
In August 1942, the representative of the World Jewish Congress in Switzerland,
Gerhart Riegner, heard about a German plan to annihilate the Jews of Europe. His
source was a German industrialist with access to top Nazi circles. Riegner
immediately took the information to the American consulate in Geneva, where he
asked the Vice-Consul Howard Elting Jr. to send the information to Washington
and other Allied governments.
Cable from London to Rabbi Stephen Wise regarding the "Final Solution"
The State Department decided that the information passed on by Gerhart
Riegner was nothing more than a "fantastic" war rumor. It did not pass the
telegram to American Jewish leaders. However, Riegner had also informed the
British consulate, who cabled the information to the Foreign Office in London,
where it was passed on to a member of Parliament, Samuel Sydney Silverman.
On August 28, 1942, Silverman sent it to Rabbi Stephen Wise.
Undersecretary of State Sumner Welles tells Rabbi Stephen Wise he has information
confirming that the Nazis plan to kill all of Europe's Jews
Stephen Wise was extremely distressed by Gerhart Riegner's information. Not
realizing the State Department had already received Riegner's message he
passed it on to Undersecretary of State Sumner Welles. Welles asked Wise not to
release the message to the press until the State Department had been able to
confirm it. This process took more than two months.
In January 1943, the American legation in Switzerland sends information to Sumner
Welles, Undersecretary of State, confirming reports of mass executions of Jews in
Poland

The State Department sends a memo to the American legation in Bern, on February 10,
1943, stating that in the future they not transmit reports to private citizens, since they
"circumvent neutral countries' censorship"
As more information about the progress of the Holocaust continued to arrive in
the U.S. from Switzerland, the State Department tried to prevent news of this sort
from reaching U.S. citizens. The ban on information from Europe imposed by this
memo lasted two months.

3. President Roosevelt's Apparent Reluctance To Help Europe'S Jews

Entry from Assistant Secretary of State Breckinridge Long's diary in which he notes that
President Roosevelt supports his policy of encouraging consulates to "postpone and
postpone and postpone" the granting of visas
A report written by Adoph Held, the president of the American Jewish Labor Committee
recounting President Roosevelt's 29-minute meeting on December 8, 1942 with a small
delegation of American Jewish Leaders
After the State Department confirmed reports that Hitler was planning to murder
all the Jews in territories under German control, several American Jewish leaders
including Rabbi Stephen Wise managed to arrange an audience with President
Roosevelt. At this meeting, the only one FDR had with Jewish leaders about the
Holocaust, the President was presented with a document outlining the Nazi plan
to annihilate European Jews. As this report of the meeting indicates, the president
was acquainted with details of the atrocities being committed by the Nazis.
Memorandum of Conversation by Mr. Harry L. Hopkins, Special Assistant to President
Roosevelt regarding a meeting with Anthony Eden March 27, 1943
Four months after the State Department confirmed the dimensions of the
Holocaust, British Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden met in Washington with
President Roosevelt, Secretary of State Cordell Hull and Undersecretary of State
Sumner Welles. At this meeting, Eden expressed his fear that Hitler might
actually accept an offer from the Allies to move Jews out of areas under German
control. No one present objected to Eden's statement.
"Washington Times Herald" report on the march of 400 Orthodox rabbis to the White
House
On October 6, 1943, 400 Orthodox rabbis marched to the Capitol where they
handed Vice-President Henry A. Wallace a petition for a government rescue
agency. Later that day they walked to the White House and handed the
document to a presidential secretary. The rabbis had tried for weeks to arrange a
meeting with FDR in person. The White House claimed the President was unable
to see them because of "pressure of other business." FDR's appointment diaries
show that he had a light schedule that day.

4. Bermuda Conference

Memorandum: "Views of the Government of the United States

Regarding Topics Included in the Agenda for Discussion with the
British Government" [March 1943]
The 12-day Bermuda Conference, which opened on April 19,
1943, grew out of concerns in the British public about news
reports that the Nazis were slaughtering Europe's Jews. The
U.S. agreed to hold a closed-door conference with Britain to
discuss the issue. But American delegates arrived with
secret directives from the State Department to accomplish
little or anything.
Excerpt from a plan for rescue of refugees that was submitted to the Bermuda
Conference by Jewish leaders
American Jewish leaders tried to push for a small Jewish delegation to make a
case at the Bermuda Conference, but this idea was rejected. As a final effort to
influence the conference, Jewish leaders sent a list of specific rescue proposals.
Excerpt from "Report to the Governments of the United States and the United Kingdom
from Their Delegates to the Conference on the Refugee Problem Held at Bermuda, April
19 -29, 1943"
The delegates to the Bermuda conference came up with almost no concrete
proposals. Perhaps because of this they decided to keep their report secret.

5. Something Can Be Done: War Refugee Board

"Report to the Secretary on the Acquiescence of this Government in the Murder of the
Jews," initialed by Randolph Paul for the Foreign Funds Control Unit of the Treasury
Department, January 13, 1944
In the summer of 1943 members of the U.S. Treasury Department became aware
of the State Department's obstructionist attitude towards rescuing European
Jews. Gerhart Riegner, the World Jewish Congress representative in Geneva, had
recently proposed a plan to save Rumanian and French Jews that involved Jewish
organizations in the U.S. transferring funds to frozen accounts in Switzerland.
When approached with this plan, the State Department took no action for 11
weeks. But when Treasury Department officials became aware of the plan, they
quickly issued the licenses that were required during World War II for funds to be
transferred overseas. Even so, for months more the State Department secretly
continued to hold up the licenses. Near the end of the year, Treasury Department
staffers discovered the State Department's obstructions, and they prepared the
following damning indictment, in which they asserted 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." A
condensed version of the report was presented to the President by Secretary of
the Treasury Henry Morgenthau, Jr. on January 16, 1944.
Executive Order No. 9417 Establishing a War Refugee Board

Within days of receiving the Treasury Department's indictment of the

Government's failure to rescue Jews from the Nazis, President Roosevelt
established the War Refugee Board. Among other things it was charged with "the
rescue, transportation, maintenance and relief of the victims of enemy
oppression," and with "the establishment of havens of temporary refuge for such
victims." Although the WRB was not adequately funded and some of its programs
met with very limited success, board representatives managed to help save the
lives of approximately 200,000 European Jews.

6. Bombing Railways And Auschwitz

Summary of the Auschwitz escapees report by Gerhart Riegner, World Jewish Congress,
Geneva, sent under cover of R.E. Shoenfeld, U.S. charg to Czech government in
London, to Cordell Hull, Secretary of State, July 5, 1944
On April 7, 1944, two Slovakian Jews escaped from Auschwitz. By the end of the
month they had reached the Jewish underground in Slovakia, where they gave a
detailed account of the mass murder operations at the camp. The two men also
warned that preparations were underway to murder the Jews of Hungary. Their
report initiated a series of requests that the U.S. bomb the crematoria at
Auschwitz and key rail links that would be used to transport Hungarian Jews to
Poland.
Henry Morgenthau, Jr., Secretary of the Treasury to Assistant Secretary of War, Jan 28,
1944, asking that Theater Commanders be advised to cooperate with WRB rescue
operations
Shortly after the establishment of the War Refugee Board, Henry Morgenthau, Jr.
Secretary of the Treasury asked the War Department to advise theater
commanders that they would be expected to cooperate with the Board in aiding
"Axis victims to the fullest extent possible." No message to this effect was ever
sent to military commanders.
Thomas T. Handy, Assistant Chief of Staff, Memorandum for the Chief of Staff, February
8, 1944, on reassuring the British that military forces will not be used to rescue
refugees
Cable from Switzerland to Agudas Israel World Organizations, New York June 12, 1944
describing situation of Hungarian Jews and calling for bombing deportation railways
As the Nazis began deporting Jews from Hungary to the Auschwitz death camp in
Poland, requests to bomb the deportation railways were sent to the United
States.
Jacob Rosenheim, Agudas Israel World Organization, New York, to Henry Morgenthau, Jr.,
Secretary of the Treasury, June 18, 1944, asking that deportation rail lines be bombed
Thomas Handy, Assistant Chief of Staff, War Department, to Director, Civil Affairs
Division, June 26, 1944, conveying the Operations Division's conclusion that bombing
the deportation railways is "impracticable"

In line with its undeclared policy not to aid in the rescue of refugees, the War
Department routinely turned down requests to bomb deportation railways. No
studies were ever conducted to check the feasibility of such bombing raids.
Benjamin Akzin, War Refugee Board, to Lawrence S. Lesser, War Refugee Board, June 29
1944, urging the bombing of Auschwitz and Birkenau
The World Jewish Congress in New York asks the War Department to bomb the
crematoria at Auschwitz, August 9, 1944. The War Department turns down the request
(August 14, 1944)
John J. McCloy, Assistant Secretary of War, explains to John W. Pehle, Director, War
Refugee Board, that the War Department cannot authorize the bombing of Auschwitz,
November 18, 1944
The War Department received several requests to bomb Auschwitz, but it turned
each down claiming that the raid would divert air support from the war effort.
The Department also claimed that the camp was beyond the maximum range of
bombers located in Britain, France or Italy.
These assertions were false: In July of 1944, the Allies began a series of air raids
on Germany's synthetic-oil industry which was based in Upper Silesia near
Auschwitz. On August 20, 127 Flying Fortresses dropped thousands of pounds of
high explosives on the factory areas of Auschwitz which were less than five miles
from the gas chambers. Three weeks later, the U.S. targeted those same sites.
This time two bombs accidentally fell near the killing installations and one
actually damaged a rail line leading to the gas chambers.
Extracts from the U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey, summarizing 15th Air Force bombing
attacks in August and September 1944 on Oswiecim (Auschwitz)