FDR+forms+WRB

Within a week of meeting with Henry **Morgenthau** and listening to the summary of his report, President **Roosevelt** formed the War Refugee Board (WRB) in January of 1944. He appointed Morgenthau to form and head it as well as a Treasury Department lawyer named John **Pehle** who had helped expose the State Department's cover-up of the severities of the Holocaust, as Director of the program. The goals of the WRB was to aid the victims and refugees from europe and persuade the Allies to take action against Germany. A late start, a lack of resources, and conflicts with the U.S. government limited the board's effectiveness. Though the success of the WRB isn't fully known, it's possible the organization saved up to 200,000 Jews. They also successfully provided some emergency shelters, identified Jews with false identities, and set up exchanges of Germans for Jews, as well as many other things. The War Refugee Board, when made, saved thousands of lives and helped with many other things. But if the Board had been established earlier, or even some other action had been taken, some of the other 6 million Jews may have been saved. The Director of WRB, John Pehle commented that "If only it [the WRB] had been set up earlier, things might have been different. Finally there was a place where rescue advocates could go; finally there was a claimant agency mandated to aid the victims of Nazism," and years later after reviewing the work of the WRB states, "What we did was little enough. It was late...Late and little, i would say."



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