Ep. 4: America's Rescue of Jews during the Holocaust with Rebecca Erbelding

                  What did the US do to rescue Jews from the clutches of the Nazis?  This week we talk with Rebecca Erbelding about the War Refugee Board and American efforts to help those targeted by the Nazis.

                  In this discussion, we touch on a lot of important topics including American immigration policy as well as what the US government and public knew about the Holocaust and when.  But, most importantly, we talk about the War Refugee Board and the remarkable ways in which it sought to fight for refugees and against the Nazis.]

Rebecca Erbelding is an historian at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.  She can be found on Twitter @rerbelding and on BlueSky at @rerbelding.bsky.social.

Her award-winning book is Rescue Board: The Untold Story of America’s Efforts to Save the Jews of Europe.

Follow on Twitter @holocaustpod.
Email the podcast at holocausthistorypod@gmail.com

The Holocaust History Podcast homepage is here

You can find a complete reading list with books by our guests and also their suggestions here.

Transcript

Waitman (00:00.982)
Hello everybody. Welcome back to the Holocaust history podcast. I'm your host, Whiteman Bourne. And today I'm super excited because I have a friend of mine. I was a great scholar in her own right. Um, Becky Arboding, um, who works at the Holocaust Museum. She tells more about that, but I also, I wanted to say this and I didn't say this in our earlier conversation. Um, but she, um, is also, or was also an archivist slash curator. And I just want to point out how amazingly important those people are.

to what we do in history. So be kind to them. And today we're gonna be talking about on the podcast, we're gonna talk about the question of rescue and particularly the question of America's role or and or lack thereof in responding to the Holocaust and responding to the plight of Jews. So Becky, welcome.

Rebecca Erbelding (00:36.531)
Thank you.

Rebecca Erbelding (00:40.885)
Peace.

Rebecca Erbelding (00:52.713)
Yeah, thanks so much for having me. Hey, wait, man.

Waitman (00:54.974)
Yeah, it's great. I love catching up with folks. So can you tell us, give us a brief introduction. Tell us about yourself. What do you do? What are you working on? What have you worked on? What are you working on now? Because you're doing so many amazing things.

Rebecca Erbelding (01:08.129)
Yeah, it's been kind of busy. So as you said, I am a historian. I'm a historian at the US Holocaust Memorial Museum, but the stuff we're gonna talk about is my own scholarship today, not representing the museum. I gotta give that disclaimer. But I focus on US response to the Holocaust. So that was the topic of my doctoral work and it's the stuff that I still work on now. So looking at what people knew, what they did, and I think they're...

At least when I was coming up and doing kind of my initial scholarly work, there was a sense that the United States had one reaction to the Holocaust, like the US just didn't do anything. And I always found that really weird because Americans don't speak with one voice on anything. And so I started to look into that and that kind of became what I do now.

So I have one book out called Rescue Board, which is the story of the war refugee board, which I think we'll probably talk about. And then I'm in the very early stages of my second book, which is a really exciting moment to be in for me.

Waitman (02:17.038)
Cool. And yeah, and so how did you get into, I mean, I always ask our guests, how did you get into the Holocaust as a topic, but how'd you get into this particular topic?

Rebecca Erbelding (02:25.418)
Mm-hmm.

Well, I'll give you the kind of Holocaust origin story first, which is that when I was 12, I visited the Holocaust Museum in D.C. with my Girl Scout troop. And that was kind of the moment for me when I first really started to learn about it. I realized how vast this topic is. And I went home to my little like library by the farming community where I grew up and I read every book that I could find and then started writing papers. Like, every time you could choose a topic in high school, it was a Holocaust related

And then I came down to the DC area for college and I got an internship at the museum the summer after my junior year and I never left. So I've been working at the museum for 21 years now, which is kind of wild to think about. And so because I had that job at the museum and because I was always interested in American history, I didn't really want to go away for graduate school. I didn't wanna give up my job.

to then go to a university somewhere, get my degrees, come back with a lot of student loan debt, and try to get a job at the museum again. And so I stayed local. I went to George Mason, which is a great school, and a local school, and one where I could get in-state tuition, which I really recommend to people if you can do it. And so because I couldn't go away, I didn't have the opportunity to do in-depth archival research in Europe.

And so I was looking around, I loved American history. I saw this kind of gap opening up and I went to historians that I knew and I said, what should I write about? Like, where can I make a difference? And they pointed out that nobody had written a book on this government agency, the War Refugee Board, which really ran the US policy of rescue and relief once that began in 1944. So.

Rebecca Erbelding (04:22.188)
That was the topic of my doctoral work, and that's how I got into this mess. And here we are.

Waitman (04:25.834)
And here we are, and here we are. Right, so let's start with maybe thinking more broadly about the American response to the Holocaust, right? Because as you point out, the War Refugee Board, which is the subject of your book, only comes into fruition really in 1944. So can we talk a little about, gosh, it's such a big topic, about American responses, perhaps first to...

mounting pressures on Jews in Europe and in Germany before the United States gets involved in the war and then moving on into sort of the, I suppose, active measures period.

Rebecca Erbelding (05:08.013)
Sure. So one of the things that I think is really important to point out to people is that the U.S. doesn't pass any new laws in the 1930s and 1940s to let more Jews in or to keep Jews out. We have this 1924 Johnson Reed Immigration Act that sets up immigration quotas. We also do not have a refugee policy in the United States. So you cannot come as a refugee, an asylum seeker, or a migrant. And so when the U.S.

is going through the 1930s and the refugee crisis is kicking off in Europe, people who are trying to flee do not have any sort of refugee protection or the ability to come to the US as a refugee, and they're limited by this really complicated quota system that goes into place in the 1920s and doesn't change. When Hitler is appointed Chancellor of Germany in 1933, it's only about five weeks before

Franklin Roosevelt takes the oath of office. So Hitler's appointed on January 30th, and at that point in time, the presidential inauguration is March 4th. So Roosevelt becomes president March 4th, and immediately Americans are paying attention to Hitler, and they're paying attention to this new Nazi party, and this initial wave of anti-Jewish legislation. So you have Jews being kicked out of the civil service, you have the Enabling Acts, you have...

the boycott of Jewish-owned businesses on April 1st, 1933, a book burning on May 10th. And it's huge news in the United States, like right next to the New Deal, right next to the end of Prohibition. There are huge headline news about what the Nazis are doing. And because there were so many good reporters in Germany watching what was happening, often the news is reported in advance of it happening. And so you can be in the last week of March, 1933.

and know that in a couple of days on April 1st, the Nazis are going to boycott Jewish owned businesses. It was reported in advance. Same thing with book burning. Book burning timed to a wave of protest marches in the United States that were timed because they were going to march on the day that pro-Nazi students were burning books. And so in New York City, there's about 100,000 people marching in the streets down Broadway on May 10th.

Rebecca Erbelding (07:31.777)
The New York Times estimated that over the course of the spring, about a million people took part in some sort of march or protest. And so it's huge news in the United States what's happening. The problem is the Roosevelt administration is still staffing up. They don't have an ambassador in Germany. They're concerned about the German war debt from World War I that American businesses had purchased and that Hitler could just unilaterally cancel that debt, which was about $2 billion.

in 1933 money, like just a massive amount of money. And they're concerned about hypocrisy. They're concerned that since, you know, the Nazis, it wasn't illegal what the Nazis were doing under international law. You could persecute your own citizens if you wanted to. And so if the US made any sort of official response to this, any sort of diplomatic response, all the Nazis had to do is turn around and say, well, look at what white Americans are doing to black Americans in the South.

Waitman (08:31.54)
Right.

Rebecca Erbelding (08:32.637)
And so to avoid that charge of hypocrisy, and I also think it's really important to always point out how domestic concerns and international concerns merge together. They are really woven and we often talk about them as if they're two separate things and they're not. And so the Roosevelt administration basically waits out the protests. And this is a time when the Great Depression is still,

all over the United States, we're at 25% unemployment here in the US at that point. And so it's very easy for them to just kind of wait this out. And so Americans pay attention again over the course of the 30s, they discuss whether or not to boycott the Olympics in Berlin in 1936. The US goes by just, I think, a slim margin of votes from the amateur athletic union.

And then, you know, when the Anschluss happens, I think Americans are more concerned about staying isolated and staying out of, you know, whatever is happening in Europe.

Waitman (09:38.922)
And is there, is there, because you mentioned earlier, I think it's a good point that, you know, there's no such thing as the American position on anything, right? And are there differences in the early period between the Jewish American communities response and perhaps public or, you know, behind the scenes mobilization and sort of the general mood? You know, like are people protesting the Nazis, for example, out of a sort of

support of liberalism and democracy, or to what extent are they also recognizing the very specific anti-Jewish nature of what the Nazis are doing?

Rebecca Erbelding (10:17.161)
Yeah, it's a great question. In the early period, in like 1933, they're very much focused on the Jewish issue, like very much focused on getting the Nazis to stop over there, whatever it is that they're doing. So all of the petitions, all of the rallies, all of the speeches, they tended to be interfaith. They tended to have a Protestant representative, a Catholic representative, the mayor of the town, and then members of the Jewish community.

I think they're generally organized by Jewish groups, but attended by everybody. And then the really interesting piece of it though is that this is also a time when the Jewish community is split over what to do. And so the very public part is interfaith, and then behind the scenes Jewish organizations are fighting amongst themselves.

in part because the American Jewish immigrant experience is very different between different groups. So in the 1850s, prior to the US Civil War, you have a lot of German Jews coming to the US. So they have been here for several generations now by 1933, have generally assimilated, are much more secular, and have achieved positions of wealth and power, right? And then you have people who come,

as part of the immigrant waves in the 1900s and 19 teens, who tend to be from Eastern Europe, much more orthodox, much more religiously observant, and often much more liberal or leftist, socialist, communist, people who are organizing labor unions, right? And so they are the ones who are trying to get out into the streets.

and protest that way and the people who are kind of the old guard are saying like no, no We need to work through the system. We need to quietly talk to the State Department we need to quietly work with Roosevelt and Hitler's watching this and he's basically like it reinforces his anti-semitism and the anti-semitism of Nazi ideology either way because if People are out in the streets. Well, that's just a show that you know in the Nazi anti-semitic, right, right?

Waitman (12:34.786)
Jews are Bolshevists and yeah.

Rebecca Erbelding (12:37.405)
And if they're working behind the scenes, that's because they're pulling the strings of power. Exactly. Like, anti-Semitism is water and rocks. You can find... There's no logic to it, and it'll just get in wherever it's gonna go.

Waitman (12:39.138)
they're pulling the strings. Yeah, yeah.

Waitman (12:48.446)
and is this is this foreshadowing the is i remember reading somewhere that there's also that even the amongst the jewish community of the united states there's a worry that if they are too vocal put too much pressure on the government then not only hitler which the opposite early cares much about but uh... american will say american anti-semites will view that from the american perspective as jews pulling the strings or

Rebecca Erbelding (13:18.205)
It's both. And so if they're out in the streets, Hitler can punish his captors or his captives, which are the Jews of Germany at this point. He can he can punish them. And in fact, if you look at images of the boycott of Jewish owned businesses, this is just in early April. A lot of the signs for the boycott that are put up on storefronts in Germany are in English. And that's because they're aimed at an American and British audience saying.

Waitman (13:42.123)
Mm.

Rebecca Erbelding (13:47.389)
you are in the streets, that is propaganda, we are going to take this out on your co-religionists in Germany. And so the people who are saying like, we need to be quieter and behind the scenes, they are saying like, this is what you in the streets are causing. And of course, no, they're not causing this. Hitler is taking advantage of it. And there is a legitimate fear of rising antisemitism. Like this is still a time in the US where

colleges have quotas for Jews, where country clubs and hotels have like Gentile only policies and so that fear is real And no one's quite sure what to do about it

Waitman (14:30.894)
Cool. And so, I mean, so that brings us to, you know, the, I suppose, can we, can we see this as something that changes after 1939? How does America, does American policy begin to change? You know, if we're looking, I suppose at eras, we can sort of have the 33 to 39, perhaps a 39 to 41, 41 to 44, and then a 44, you know, on. Is that, is that a good periodization for an amateur?

Rebecca Erbelding (14:57.245)
I think it's pretty good because I think you go from 1933 to Kristallnacht at the end of 1938 and then the ramifications of Kristallnacht and also the preparation for war. After the Anschluss in March 1938, after Kristallnacht in November 1938, it's clear that the Nazis are expanding territorially.

that they're not going to just kind of stop over there, which is what people are asking for in 1933, that this is a crisis and the Jews need to get out. And so then it becomes a response to a refugee crisis. Then it becomes, and that is kind of woven at the same time with preparation for what Roosevelt sees as an inevitable war and fights in the US over what our role in the world is going to be and whether we should stay an isolationist nation.

or join the allied cause or support the allies in some sort of way, then you get the early war period. And then at the end of 1942, that's when the United States learns about the final solution. And so during the refugee crisis, you actually get quite a lot of debate in the US. You get...

a lot of aid organizations, many of whom are still around and still work with refugee resettlement today. But groups like the Joint, like HIAS, like the American Friends Service Committee, the Quakers, which is a non-Jewish organization, you get all of those groups trying to get as many people out as possible, trying to help.

people who we would call refugees, even though they're not coming under any sort of refugee policy, help them understand the very complicated immigration system in the US, how it's changing because of all of these other factors because of the war, or because of the coming war and all of that sort of thing. So you have like a situation in which a lot of people are getting out, but not nearly as many as the need is. So by June, 1939,

Rebecca Erbelding (17:05.996)
there's about 300,000 people on the waiting list to come to the United States. And a legal quota for Germany of 27,370. And so not even, like, and there's no appetite in the United States to raise the quotas. So even after Kristallnacht, something like 71, 72% of Americans say,

Waitman (17:16.193)
Right.

Rebecca Erbelding (17:30.581)
Yes, we're very sympathetic, but we are not interested in bringing any more Jewish exiles from Germany to come to the U.S. And that's consistent.

Waitman (17:36.51)
Yeah, and there's also this double jeopardy, right? And maybe you can talk about this a little bit, the fact that, I think it bears mentioning for our audience that I would argue certainly that the Nazis in 1939 or 33 are not planning to murder all the Jews of Germany or of Europe and their solution to their so-called Jewish question is emigration.

And what they're trying to do is to drive German Jews out of Germany. But there is a paradox, which is that they don't want anybody, any Jews from Germany to take any wealth or, you know, significant amounts of money with them. And then this comes up against American immigration policy about what you need to have and be to enter the United States. Can you talk, maybe talk a little about that?

Rebecca Erbelding (18:30.029)
Sure, yeah, and this is true not just of the United States, it's true of other countries too that the Depression is still going on throughout the 1930s, the Worldwide Depression. And so there are a lot of countries, including the United States, that either say you need to have so much money to be able to get an immigration visa or an entry visa, or you need a financial sponsor, you need somebody who is going to vouch for you. And that becomes a huge barrier to a lot of European Jews who are trying to come to the U.S.

They need somebody here who's going to vouch for them. And so we have collections and examples of people who are just going down phone books and writing letters to complete strangers and saying like, I need a sponsor. I don't have any relatives in the United States. Here is my CV. I promise I won't be a burden on you if you will just sponsor me.

And I will say that still exists in many places in terms of immigration. You still need a sponsor or a job or something to prove to the new country that you are not going to be any sort of financial burden. But when the Nazis are stripping your wealth before you can leave, that makes the financial sponsor even more important to the immigration officer who is reviewing your case. They can't just look at the fact that you are a lawyer in Berlin.

and say, okay, well, he's gonna have enough money to come. He has been impoverished by the regime. And so that it just makes it more difficult. And again, there's never any exceptions made.

Waitman (20:03.978)
And of course, it also bears mentioning that the decision to emigrate for anybody, anywhere, I say to somebody who emigrated to the UK, it's a big deal, even in the best of times. And certainly in the context of the Holocaust, German Jews and other countries didn't know what's going to happen. And it's a big deal, even if you have the sponsors and everything else.

you know, to give up large amounts of your personal wealth and security to move to another country. You know, that's a huge, huge decision. And then, you know, is one in which you're never going to know you're right until you've made the right decision until, you know, things get worse.

Rebecca Erbelding (20:50.805)
Well, and what is the right decision? So a lot of people who leave early on are not going to the United States, they're going to Belgium, they're going to the Netherlands, they're going to France. Think about the family of Anne Frank. They become refugees in late 1933, early 1934, moving to the Netherlands, and then they're safe. And so that's the right decision for them in the 30s, and then 1940 happens. And so you have these cases of what we would call successful immigration.

when, especially when the countries of Western Europe are relatively open to allowing people to come, and they have the idea, the refugees, that Hitler won't last and then we'll go home. This is a temporary move for many people. And then not only once the refugee crisis begins and it becomes clear that Germany is intent on getting its Lebensraum, its living space, what they called it.

Then you have people who, it's not just Germany, it's not just Austria, it's not just the Czech lands, it is people from all over Europe who are now desperately trying to get out. And the US immigration was based on where you were born, it wasn't based on where you were living. And so as Germany expanded, all of the people born in Germany who had fled to the Netherlands are still on the German list for immigration. And so

Waitman (22:17.467)
Alright.

Rebecca Erbelding (22:19.421)
That German list just expands massively and the State Department, which is responsible for doing the interviews and granting the visas, are trying to navigate this from all over Europe before the age of computers. Who is getting what visa? And if people are fleeing, what does that mean for their place on the waiting list? It's a bureaucratic nightmare for everybody. For...

the people who are trying to flee, especially, because they don't have the language capabilities, many of them, the regulations keep changing, they keep having to move from city to city to try to find a safe place for their families. And you're still trying to collect paperwork that this government is requesting of you before you can get a visa. It's awful.

Waitman (23:12.066)
is this may be too much of a specific niche question but it uh... i used to just popped in my head because i know sort of after the war if you were for example a german jew and displaced persons camp depending on the time period you could be still classified as an enemy alien right because you're you were technically german citizens so after the war starts will say after maybe after forty one in the united states and there's if you are if you again if you were had even had the opportunity to emigrate

Was there some sort of immigration cap on essentially enemy nationals that caught up refugees as well?

Rebecca Erbelding (23:52.481)
I mean, you'd have to register in the US as an enemy alien, but immigration from Nazi territory really ends in the summer of 1941, because in June 1941, the US orders all German consulates in the US to close. They were legitimately hotbeds of spying and sabotage, and the US declared it a security threat.

And so they ordered all of these consulates to close and in retaliation, Germany and Italy ordered all US consulates in their territories to close. And so in the summer of 1941, if you're not already out, there is now no place for you to go for your interviewer to get a visa. So you need to have gotten to a neutral and that neutral really needs to be Spain or Portugal. That's gonna be, or North Africa, that's gonna be your hope of getting out. And so.

If you remember the movie Casablanca, it's all about getting exit paperwork to get to Lisbon because from there, that's where you can get to the United States. So that becomes a huge factor. But they never really stop admitting people under the German quota. They just make it really difficult and make it so that you have to prove why you are not a threat to the US.

And how does one go about proving that you're not a threat to the US? Because if you say, no, I'm not, that's exactly what someone who's a threat would say. And so around that same time in the summer of 1941, they start what is called the Interdepartmental Visa Review Committee. And so suddenly all of the paperwork is not just reviewed in the consulate prior to you getting a visa, it's also sent to Washington where an interdepartmental group...

Waitman (25:25.496)
Right.

Rebecca Erbelding (25:44.841)
with representatives of different security and military agencies come, they build a special building for this on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., and they basically hold hearings on every single case. And often your sponsor has to come to Washington and testify that they do mean it, that they are going to sponsor you. And so it adds weeks and months to a really difficult thing. And so basically, if you're not out by 1941, it's...

Waitman (26:12.926)
And something that you just brought up, I had never thought about it before, but between 39 and 41, is there a U.S. consulate in Warsaw, in occupied Poland? And are they able to do stuff for Polish Jews that want to emigrate?

Rebecca Erbelding (26:14.261)
Really.

Rebecca Erbelding (26:25.653)
Great question.

Rebecca Erbelding (26:30.813)
No, great question. Immigration, when we talk about the refugee crisis and we talk about who's able to come, we're really talking about central and Eastern, central and Western Europe. We are not talking about Eastern Europe. So the role of diplomats is to be the representative of your country to the government of the country in which you're stationed. And so when the Polish government goes into exile in London, American diplomats follow them to London.

Waitman (26:56.583)
Hmm, okay.

Rebecca Erbelding (26:57.833)
And so the last consulate in Poland closes in March 1940. And that was one that was basically run by a Polish national employed by the Americans. And so he flees with his family. And so when he flees with his family, there's no longer any sort of American representative in Poland, either to grant visas or to act as a witness to what's happening.

And so that's why, you know, I'm skipping ahead a little bit in the story, but that's why it takes until 1942 for Americans to realize that mass murder is happening is because we don't have representatives. We don't have journalists. We don't have anybody watching.

Waitman (27:37.169)
Well, this is a good segue anyway, because yeah.

Waitman (27:43.358)
This is a great segue to sort of the very difficult question of how much does the US know about the Holocaust? And when I mentioned this before, we started talking, of course, this is a question that has multiple caveats, which is when we say, what did the US know, we're saying, what did who know and what did who know when? Because clearly over time, more and more information comes out.

Rebecca Erbelding (27:57.779)
Mm-hmm.

Who's the US?

Rebecca Erbelding (28:04.329)
Yeah.

Waitman (28:10.43)
But in the British case, for example, we know that they're reading the Einsatzgruppen reports. So a good question, I suppose, if we consider that the systematic extermination of Jews really begins in the summer of 1941, which that's a different argument for a different day, but we'll use that for purposes of today, how much does the United States know? And then you can answer all the questions, make all the caveats you want about who and when.

Rebecca Erbelding (28:26.977)
Mm-hmm. No, let's go with that.

Waitman (28:39.05)
And how are we learning about what's happening? And what are the challenges in some sense in verifying or believing what's coming out of Europe?

Rebecca Erbelding (28:50.045)
Okay, so you are very right to say that it is a massive challenge. So we don't have diplomats who are sending missives back about what they're witnessing. There aren't journalists who are reporting what they're seeing in Eastern Europe, which is where mass killing is happening at this point. And so what you get is you get these small newspaper articles that often appear on the inside of the paper.

that begin with something like, sources out of the Soviet Union say that people in, like the population of this town has been wiped out, or has been taken out and shot, or sources from the Polish government in exile say that this town has been wiped out. And particularly in the final six months of 1941, after the Soviet Union is invaded, after mass murder has begun, under our construction.

Those are sources that Americans do not trust. This is pre-Pearl Harbor. This is the height of the America First movement. This is as Americans are debating, are we isolationist or are we going to participate in the world? And so Americans are very quick to chalk all of these stories up to propaganda. They are looking back to World War I and thinking about anti-Nazi, or I'm sorry, anti-German propaganda about, you know, the Huns and the rape of Belgium and that sort of thing.

from World War I, and they're saying, well, it doesn't make sense for the Nazis to devote resources to murdering innocent people. That doesn't make any sense. Even with all of the knowledge of persecution, the evolution to murder is still a leap, right? Especially for Americans to think about. And they think this is all the hallmarks of propaganda. You're talking about innocent people, you're talking about cold-blooded murder, you're talking about women and children. And so Americans are very quick to dismiss

all of that as propaganda. It takes a really uncomfortably long time for Americans to realize that mass murder is happening.

Waitman (30:55.566)
And so when we say, on a pause here for a second, because when we say Americans, are we now distinguishing between the general public and the government? You know, what, and of course the government is in and of itself is kind of a vague term because who in the government is getting reports and what are the reports are getting and who, where are they coming from and do they take them seriously or not?

Rebecca Erbelding (31:05.771)
Yeah.

Rebecca Erbelding (31:16.829)
Yeah, the US doesn't have anything like the Einsatzgruppen reports in our history. No, and those are not being shared with the United States. And so what you get is that in the summer of 1942, Gerhard Rigner, who was the secretary of the World Jewish Congress in Switzerland, so not an American, but the head of his organization, the head of the World Jewish Congress, was Stephen Wise, who was probably the most famous and influential rabbi in the US.

Waitman (31:20.75)
Okay. And those aren't being shared with the United States.

Rebecca Erbelding (31:45.861)
And Rigner hears third hand from a German businessman that the Nazis are deporting and shipping to the East and mass murdering with gas as part of a plan to murder all of the Jews of Europe. And so he tries to send this through the State Department to Stephen Wise. He's in Switzerland. Switzerland is entirely surrounded by Nazi territory and Axis territory.

And so the State Department has a secure communications channel out. So Rigner tries to send it to WISE through that secure communications channel. When it gets to Washington, State Department officials, and this is the European desk here at the State Department, they dismiss it as a war rumor. They say that's just, that's just people being riled up. There's no sense in letting anybody know about this. There's no sense in passing this on to WISE. I mean, this is also really cynical and it reflects their own.

anti-Semitism, it reflects their nativism and xenophobia, it reflects their own indifference, I think you could say. But it also shows that they at this point think it's probably a war rumor. The message gets to Stephen Wise anyway. It gets to him through Sidney Silverman, who is a member of parliament, because Rigner had also gone to the British Foreign Office in Switzerland.

And the British Foreign Office did the same kind of debate of, we really shouldn't deliver this message. This doesn't like, let's not even rile people up about this. This shouldn't be public information. But because the recipient was a member of parliament, not an American rabbi, they, they deliver it. And Sidney Silverman, the member of parliament sends it to Stephen Wise via Western Union. So not on a secure communications channel. So.

Wise then goes back to the State Department and asks them to verify the information. He goes to Sumner Wells, who is the U.S. Undersecretary of State, and Wells doesn't know that his colleagues have dismissed this as a rumor. And so Wells actually investigates. It takes him a couple of months, but he talks to the Swiss and he talks to the Red Cross. He sends Myron Taylor, who was FDR's representative to the Holy See.

Rebecca Erbelding (34:06.197)
He sends him into the Vatican. This is when the US does not have a presence in Italy, sneaks him into the Vatican to talk to representatives of the Vatican about what they're seeing and what they're hearing from occupied territory. And they also take a look at reports that are coming. Yeah.

Waitman (34:24.298)
And sorry, this is really fascinating.

Waitman (34:29.154)
what is that does the vatican know things that it's that tells him and so this gets back to the whole how much is does the vatican know but it's a different question for different day but so that they have been receiving reports from their sources which is that they had shared with myron taylor

Rebecca Erbelding (34:31.369)
Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Rebecca Erbelding (34:40.609)
They have. Yes, yes they do. And the US still has diplomats in Southern France, in Vichy. So the US maintains diplomatic relations with Vichy until November 1942. So this is the unoccupied area of Southern France. And that is where deportations have already begun. And so there are American diplomats, there are American aid workers who are watching deportations begin from camps like Gors and Roussel.

North Drancy.

Waitman (35:12.271)
And there's a nice connection to what you talked about already, which is that many of these first deportees from France are refugees from Germany. They're the first ones that the French sort of send with them as well. Anyway, sorry, continue.

Rebecca Erbelding (35:21.833)
Yes, yes, they send the, yeah, they send the quote unquote foreign Jews. So people who had immigrated earlier are the ones who get imprisoned first as enemy aliens when France is part of the war in 1939 and then when France is invaded, they are still considered enemies, but this time because they are largely Jewish. So

So they put together kind of these reports that they're getting about deportations. And the deportation reports that the American diplomats are sending are saying things like, you know, they say this is for work, but they're taking the elderly and they're taking children. And that doesn't make any sense. And so all of the puzzle pieces start to fit together. And then finally, in November 1942, Sumner Wells, according to Stephen Wise, Sumner Wells brings him to the State Department.

and says that all of the information that they've collected confirms the fears and that it does appear that the final solution is being carried out. And so Wise talks to a reporter and it's in American newspapers the next day. So November 25th, 1942, that is the day from which this information is treated as happening and accurate by the vast majority of the Americans.

And so more and more information starts coming out and now it is not treated as sources out of the Soviet Union say. It is treated as something that is almost certainly happening.

Waitman (37:00.958)
And just before we move on to the refugee board, because that's the most important part of our conversation, but to what level of specificity would you say becomes accepted knowledge, either at the governmental or public level?

Rebecca Erbelding (37:20.882)
The news reports always say that it's in the millions. Americans do not necessarily believe that it is in the millions, but that is what the reporting generally says.

Waitman (37:31.47)
But they're reporting concentration camps with gas chambers murdering people on arrival, kind of that level of detail.

Rebecca Erbelding (37:35.805)
Yes. There's an amazing full-page photo spread with charts in a magazine called PM. It was a kind of daily news magazine out of New York City. Very liberal leaning, didn't accept ads, which is why it only lasts for like 10 years. But they were very good about reporting on the Holocaust. And in the summer of 1943, they do this full...

page saying called What Has Happened to the Jews of Europe? And they have a chart by country of what they think the death toll is. And at that point, they're estimating about five million. And then they're not wrong. Like, it's pretty accurate what they have at that point. And then photos, because the Polish government in exile had been able to smuggle some photos out from ghettos. And so those are printed in American newspapers.

It is pretty clear that there is some sort of mass murder facility, but the details of like gas chamber, how gas chambers worked and how killing centers worked, isn't top of mind for Americans that comes later.

Waitman (38:53.122)
Right. Okay. Yeah. So then we have this moment, right? This November moment that you mentioned where essentially we can say that officially the United States government and most of the people that read know about the Holocaust as defined as the mass extermination of Jews. So then what happens with people pressuring the government to do things and what does the United States government do with this information, with this knowledge?

Rebecca Erbelding (39:23.837)
think a lot of people are looking at the war as their response. So if they're reading about this, if they're concerned about this, you know, what the average person would say that they are doing if asked is, I'm working in a factory and my son is fighting. Like that is what we are doing to help quote-unquote the poor people in Europe, not specifically any sort of rescue for Jews. And I mean for a while

Nobody is quite sure what to do. You know, November 1942, when this information comes out, is only about three weeks after the Allies invade North Africa. So the Allied forces are not on the continent. They are not anywhere near the killing centers, which is where most people are being murdered. Now, that changes over 1943, and I think that's a crucial thing. When we're talking about rescue, we have to look at the war as well. You know, what is possible?

where are the armies? Because the trajectory of where the borders are between Nazi territory and non-Nazi territory changes and so escape becomes a different thing. You know, planes can fly in different ways and so that makes a huge difference. So in 1942, I don't think there's a conception that there's anything that can be done other than win the war. And then over the course of 1943,

There are some groups that start trying to pressure the government to do something. And it's kind of like 1933. Nobody's quite sure what. So in 1933, you have we wanted to stop over there what the Nazis are doing, this persecution, it gets it up. In 1938, the obvious solution is immigration and nobody's really pushing for increased immigration. So you don't see protests or rallies or marches. You see it pop up a little bit again in 1943.

Because the solution is not immigration at this point. The solution is we have to do something, some amorphous thing to get the Nazis to stop. And so by the end of the year, there's been enough public pressure that there are resolutions in both the House of Representatives and in the Senate asking Roosevelt to form kind of a committee to study the issue and see what can be done in terms of rescue. Like that's the extent of the bill.

Rebecca Erbelding (41:46.765)
is like, let's have some sort of commission. And the State Department sends Breckenridge Long, who was the Assistant Secretary of State, to testify in the House hearings on that resolution. His testimony is in closed session, so it's not available to the public. And he basically spends a couple of hours trying to convince congressmen that we do not need this.

resolution, we do not need this committee, that the State Department has been doing such a good job with immigration and trying to rescue people, and they've just been keeping it secret. And yeah, and he thinks his testimony is really convincing. You know, even some of the sponsors of the bill, after his testimony, like come up and thank him, we didn't even know, all of that sort of thing. And so he decides, without talking to anybody, that

Waitman (42:23.262)
Yikes.

Rebecca Erbelding (42:41.965)
he will release his testimony to the press, because maybe he will get the activists who are pressuring the US to do more to stop pressuring. And so he releases it to the press. He prints it himself and sends it out to newspapers. And within 24 hours, he's called out for lying to Congress. Like it's just this massive self-own. And so he's...

Waitman (43:05.545)
Wow.

Rebecca Erbelding (43:08.481)
This is now December 1943. He's incredibly vulnerable. He had been the head of the visa division, responsible for granting immigration visas. And at the same time, the Treasury Department has started to investigate the State Department. The Treasury Department had been wanting to send humanitarian aid into Europe. They had been reading the same reports and they thought, we've got economic sanctions against these countries, but we can afford to send small amounts of money.

humanitarian aid and even if the Nazis take the money the Allies are still going to win the war. And the State Department consistently tries to stop that humanitarian aid from going and it takes months and months and the aid still hasn't gone through and so the Treasury Department starts to investigate why is the State Department holding this up and one Treasury Department lawyer sneaks into the State Department and goes through their files

Waitman (44:06.99)
Hahaha

Rebecca Erbelding (44:07.505)
and discovers that Breckinridge Long, the same guy who's in the newspapers for lying to Congress, had personally instructed American diplomats in Switzerland to stop sending information about the Holocaust to the United States. That that information, those reports that he was receiving in Switzerland, were getting out to activists and that the State Department thought, well, if Americans don't know what's happening, they won't pressure the government.

Waitman (44:31.63)
And so was Breckenridge Long just an anti-semite?

Rebecca Erbelding (44:36.269)
He's almost certainly an anti-Semite. He is definitely a nativist and a xenophobe. And it's really hard to divorce xenophobia from anti-Semitism when most of the immigrants you're dealing with are Jewish. In 1939, more than half of all immigration to the United States are people who are Jewish, self-identified as Jewish. So that's really hard. But he is.

Waitman (44:44.95)
those things from each other.

Waitman (44:50.207)
Right.

Rebecca Erbelding (45:02.705)
certainly unwilling to do more or to conceive of the US as doing more. He sees this as a headache and he doesn't want to deal with it. And so I think we should also chalk up his laziness to a lot of this too, is that he just doesn't want, like his prime directive in life is to not be bothered. And these are...

This is a topic that bothers him and people knock on his door and ask about it and that bothers him. And so he is annoyed by it and he does not think about why they would possibly be asking for this. Like, or the dire situation in which European Jews are in. He is unbothered by that, but feels very bothered by the fact that other people are bothered by it.

Waitman (45:53.23)
And so then how do we get to the War Refugee Board existing?

Rebecca Erbelding (45:57.909)
The Treasury Department puts all of their investigations long into the State Department about the humanitarian aid, about the cover-up, into a report. The original title of the report is The Acquiescence of This Government in the Murder of the Jews of Europe. And yeah, and it basically says, and this is almost a direct quote, we leave it to you as to whether the State Department is full of war criminals. And it says, the US will always be responsible.

will be forever responsible for the murder of the Jews of Europe unless we act now. And so they go to President Roosevelt with this, and he looks around and makes the calculus of this solves a lot of problems for me. This solves the problem in Congress. This solves the headache battle between the State Department and the Treasury Department. And he was also someone who liked to create agencies and make problems go away by kind of saying like, yes, you can have that agency, and then just kind of leaving it to people to deal with.

the fallout of that. And so that's what he does in this case too. So it's really hard to tell whether FDR was actually kind of sympathetic and wanted this to happen, or if he was just trying to make the problem go away. But the people that he assigned to work on this happened to be incredibly dedicated and like took the ball and ran with it and actually tried to rescue people.

Waitman (47:25.086)
Right. And so there's a particular person that's really important in the War Refugee Board that you write about. And so maybe you can use him to introduce us to the War Refugee Board and what it actually is able to accomplish. Because as you point out, you know, there are some very real physical challenges to helping anybody based on, you know, everything from, you know, the old why didn't we bomb Auschwitz regarding sort of aircraft radiuses to the fact that, you know,

most of the victims of Nazis are behind Nazi lines. And so how do you, how do you help? So what, tell us more about this guy and also about sort of what the Borg FG board is able to accomplish.

Rebecca Erbelding (48:05.565)
Yeah, so the board is directed by a man named John Paley, who was a 35-year-old Treasury Department lawyer, really smart, very dedicated guy who really believed this was happening and really believed that the US government could be a force of good in the world. They tried everything that they could think of. And so one of the first things that they did is they welcomed back into the US government

their offices, all of these people that the State Department had been ignoring, all of the aid organizations that had been working to get refugees out, the Joint and the HIAS and the Quakers, like everybody I mentioned earlier, they bring them into the offices and they say, like, what do you think we should do? And that I think is an important thing for governments to do, is to bring in experts from the outside. And it was something the State Department was always unwilling to do.

least under Breckenridge Long, we are the experts, we do not need you. And the War Refugee Board...

Waitman (49:04.946)
And just really quick, so who owns a war refugee board? Is it the State Department or is it independent or who?

Rebecca Erbelding (49:11.569)
It is independent under the office of the president. It is largely staffed by Treasury Department people though. And so John Paley had been in charge of the U.S. sanctions program and then comes over to be the director of the board. So they put representatives in all of the neutrals. So in Switzerland, in Sweden, in Spain, in Portugal, in Turkey, the U.S. has people who are reporting on the ground.

Waitman (49:17.707)
Okay.

Rebecca Erbelding (49:36.957)
and also pressuring the neutral governments to pass on information and to protest what the Nazis are doing and to allow more refugees into their territory. They streamlined the process of humanitarian aid. And so they end up sending or approving the equivalent of about $200 million in humanitarian aid into Europe in the final 17 months of the war.

Waitman (49:59.935)
And how does that get theoretically behind Nazi lines? Or does it? Or does it go to these people in neutral countries?

Rebecca Erbelding (50:08.765)
It generally goes into, most of the money goes into Switzerland and then gets distributed out through the underground to southern France, to the French resistance where it's used to buy guns. They actually get in trouble because they have to report on how they're using the money and they say we are using it to punish people who are murdering our comrades. And the US is like, you should not, don't put that in writing. We should not.

Waitman (50:16.001)
Okay.

Rebecca Erbelding (50:37.905)
Don't say that our humanitarian aid is going towards that, even if it's right. Please not targeted assassinations. But food for children and hiding, the creation of false papers, bribes for border guards to let people escape. The money that goes into Turkey gets sent to the joint, which still has representatives, the American Geo-Strength Distribution Committee, a aid organization.

Waitman (50:40.63)
targeted assassinations is not like on the.

Rebecca Erbelding (51:06.017)
They still have representatives in Romania and Bulgaria, and they use them to buy boats and to get those boats, to fill the boats with Jews from Romania and Bulgaria and get them to land in Istanbul. And then the War Refugee Board representatives, a representative there has negotiated with the government of Turkey, with the French pieces who control what is now Syria, and the Brits to get people into Palestine. And so...

They get to land in Istanbul and board a train and get into pre-state Israel. And so, yeah, about 8,000 people get out that way.

Waitman (51:44.11)
And so is Turkey generally for Eastern European Jews or people that end up in Eastern Europe, Turkey is the route. And then for Western European, it's Sweden, Switzerland or Spain, Portugal.

Rebecca Erbelding (51:52.641)
Turkey is throughout.

Rebecca Erbelding (51:58.205)
Yes, generally you want to get from France into Spain or into Switzerland. It's very hard to get into Switzerland geographically and because the Swiss have border guards. And so in both cases, bribes are important and the War Refugee Board funds those bribes and also has been pressuring those governments, you know, saying you have been playing both sides this entire war. We are going to win. We are an emerging superpower.

don't you want to get on our good side?

Waitman (52:29.902)
That's kind of an amazing little vignette there of official US government money going to sort of non-governmental organizations in a neutral country to bribe officials of said neutral country to circumvent the law of said neutral country.

Rebecca Erbelding (52:37.771)
Mm-hmm.

Rebecca Erbelding (52:49.181)
Oh, my favorite is one that I actually figured out by going through their records. So in the War Refugee Board's financial ledger, there was an indication that said, good year tire $50,000. And I became obsessed with trying to figure out what good year tire $50,000 meant. And it turns out that the War Refugee Board had almost certainly scrubbed their own records of any documents related to this. But they forgot to scrub the records of the Secretary of the Treasury, who also got copies of some of their...

correspondence. And so when I was going through his records, I was able to piece it together. And in the summer of 1944, the War Refugee Board is trying to get people out of Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia. And they decide that if they buy speedboats and guns, they can give them to partisan groups, underground groups who have made it to Sweden, and those groups can take them, the boats, from the islands off the coast of Sweden across

the North Sea to land on the beaches in Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia and get people out. This is the plan. Yes, but they don't want Sweden to know that the US is funding unregulated refugee entry into their country. And so what happens is the War Refugee Board tells the headquarters of Goodyear Tire in Akron, Ohio that they are putting $50,000 on their books.

Waitman (53:55.534)
This already sounds amazing.

Waitman (54:04.758)
Right.

Rebecca Erbelding (54:15.837)
and in exchange, their factory in Norrköping, Sweden, is going to give the equivalent of $50,000 worth of Swedish Kronor to the board's representative in Sweden. And so that's how they do it. They launder money to do it, and they do it. Like, that's what happens.

Waitman (54:25.046)
So they're laundering money through.

Waitman (54:31.862)
and so then this operation comes off and that these this should be a movie but

Rebecca Erbelding (54:35.593)
I mean, it comes off in the sense that the North Sea is quite rough, people are breaking arms on the speedboats, they're getting, in one case the Nazis find one of the boats and pick them up, in another case the Swedes do, but by the end of August it starts to work and they get about 3,000 people out. Now, these people are not Jewish. There's no evidence that... And that is, again, in large part because...

Waitman (54:41.099)
Oh yeah.

Waitman (54:57.102)
are these all right okay

Rebecca Erbelding (55:04.809)
and the war refugee board is starting to realize this, the people and the Jews in those countries are gone. Yeah, and they haven't for years. Mass murder happened there early, but there are still people who have been in hiding in those countries. And those people in hiding are not willing to emerge from hiding in the final months of being occupied by the Nazis to go to a beach.

Waitman (55:09.938)
exist anymore. Yeah.

Rebecca Erbelding (55:34.305)
to board a speedboat and then try to get across the North Sea. Like, they've been in hiding safely, or at least successfully, for a couple of years. And so, like, let's just wait it out. The Soviets are coming. And then the Soviets come. And so it kind of seems like the people who are getting out are escaping both the Nazis and the Red Army. And so I think that's—those are the people who are making it out. But they do.

Waitman (55:35.446)
Right.

Waitman (55:53.644)
Right.

Waitman (55:58.398)
And does this, because I think what's interesting it sounds like is that in some ways the war refugee board is, it's born because of the Holocaust vis-a-vis Jews. But then does it make a distinction in its efforts to try to get Jewish survivors of the Holocaust out or is it a sort of equal opportunity all refugees that we can get a hold of?

Rebecca Erbelding (56:26.613)
I mean, I think when in the actual official executive order, it says Jews and other minorities. Now, the US largely recognizes Jews as the primary victim, as they should, but they do not really recognize or publicize or talk about, and even internally, any of the other victims of Nazi persecution. And so there's no discussion of what's happening to Romani people.

There's very little discussion about people with disabilities. So the U S is not targeting efforts really towards anyone, but Jews. Um, even as they, in their publicity will say, we'll always say Jews and others. That is largely a domestic, um, ploy to make it clear to the American people that this is not an effort just for Jews, but behind the scenes, it is largely an effort for Jews.

Waitman (57:20.682)
Right, which is also a nod to sort of latent American anti-Semitism where they're trying to combat the idea that Jews are controlling American policy to benefit themselves, right?

Rebecca Erbelding (57:31.677)
Absolutely. Yeah. And the fact that the Secretary of the Treasury was the only Jewish Cabinet Secretary. And so he was very sensitive to the idea that his agency is the one who pushed for this, and he does not want to be seen as like the Jewish Cabinet Secretary pushing for special treatment for Jews.

Waitman (57:52.938)
Right. And so then does this organization continue into the post-war period or does it morph into like the UN refugee agency or what does it do?

Rebecca Erbelding (58:06.217)
They try. So when the war ends, of course, FDR has already died. FDR dies on April 12th. So when the war ends in May, the War Refugee Board tries to make the case to the new president, to President Truman, that they need to stick around. That this refugee problem, refugee is in their name, the War Refugee Board, the refugee problem has not been solved. In fact, there are millions of people who are displaced by the war.

Waitman (58:31.07)
and they have more access to them now.

Rebecca Erbelding (58:33.237)
They have access, they have the connections, they are in the neutrals. They have all of the infrastructure in place to give really good advice on this. They have also, by this point or around this time, tell Truman that the US needs to be investigating these newly liberated camps and these newly set up displaced persons camps. And so the War Refugee Board is actually one of the final things that they do is they support Earl Harrison.

who is a former immigration official and lawyer in the US who then tours displaced persons camps and makes recommendations to the Truman administration to set up new camps that are specific for Jewish survivors. And that's a really crucial thing that the US does and that the US pushes for at the end of the war because you have a situation in the summer of 1945 where Jewish survivors are with...

sometimes in displaced persons camps with people who had persecuted them. And so the War Refugee Board is influential in getting that situation to change, but they're not influential in getting anybody to allow them to stay as an agency. Truman says that he is closing all of the wartime agencies and that they are a wartime agency. And so the board shuts down on September 15th, 1945.

Waitman (59:59.818)
And so I want to come back to the board in the end. But before I get there, how does, how does the, how does the American response compare, I guess, really predominantly to the UK, because I suspect that the USSR isn't doing anything sort of some similar, but compared to what, what Britain is doing, or is the UK doing similar kinds of projects, um, cause we, the, the over here, you know, I'm in the UK now. And of course the kinder transport is the big thing.

that gets all the press. And it has its own problems, of course. The first and foremost is that it's only children and not the parents. And that it suffers from some of the same challenges that are inflicted by American policy, which is, you know, has to be self-funded, the government doesn't fund it, these kinds of things. But does it go through the same evolution towards a more proactive response or what?

Rebecca Erbelding (01:00:56.241)
Not really. I mean, my expertise is on US response, less so British response, but the UK does not have a similar agency. The UK is the headquarters of the Intergovernmental Committee, which is a committee that was set, it's obviously intergovernmental, but it was set up during

Waitman (01:00:59.722)
Sure. Yeah, yeah.

Rebecca Erbelding (01:01:26.153)
That was one of the outcomes of this conference on trying to address the refugee crisis is we will have this intergovernmental committee. And it worked as a committee to kind of try to find places for refugees to go. But it was so caught up in bureaucracy, it largely shut down at the outbreak of war. And then in 1943, when the Bermuda conference happened, when the US and the British got together and tried to make it look like they were doing something to avoid actually doing anything.

the thing that they said, like, we will point to this intergovernmental committee. So they reconstitute this committee, that is based in London. And so the UK largely says, like, our contribution is going to be through this intergovernmental committee, which we are the chair of and that is in our headquarters. But it's, again, caught up in bureaucracy. It works with the War Refugee Board a little bit, and the US is a member of that committee.

But the IGC, this Intergovernmental Committee, largely says, like, we don't need to do anything because the War Refugee Board's doing it. And so the UK, and I think it's also worth pointing out how much longer the British were in the war, how much closer they are to continental Europe than the United States. Like, there's a reason that it can happen in the US, and there are different structural factors that I think made

Waitman (01:02:30.606)
All right, okay, yeah.

Waitman (01:02:41.003)
Of course, yeah.

Rebecca Erbelding (01:02:54.065)
it more challenging from a British perspective. Not to make an excuse, but as part of the explanation, I think there are factors that made it more palatable in the US.

Waitman (01:03:01.922)
Yeah, yeah. No, that makes sense. I mean, I think one of the questions then, you know, the subtitle of your book says the untold story. And I often am often critical of anybody who says the untold story because it seems like a lot of popular history books are always, you know, the never before told story of this, you know, thing. But I think in your case, it certainly is an untold story. And maybe we can sort of round out the...

Rebecca Erbelding (01:03:21.459)
Mm-hmm.

Waitman (01:03:31.67)
the discussion by why didn't this get any traction, any interest? Because it's just based on a few of the examples you've given. I mean, it's a fascinating story and there's some really exciting stuff that seems to be happening with it. So why doesn't this get more, hasn't it had more attention?

Rebecca Erbelding (01:03:52.821)
Yeah, I was a little dubious about naming it the untold story, but then like they pointed out to me, you know, two chapters in a book that came out in 1984 does not make it a told story. Like, okay, well, that's fair. Yeah, I guess that's right. I think like there was a lot of scholarship about US response in the 1970s and 1980s. And a lot of it was, I think based on a lot of post Vietnam.

Waitman (01:03:55.99)
No, no, I get it. It's fine.

Waitman (01:04:05.426)
Right. For sure.

Rebecca Erbelding (01:04:22.493)
suspicion of the government and discussion of the government as failing, as cover-ups, like all of that sort of thing. And if you look at the long trajectory of US response, you do see a lot of failure or a lot of opportunities that were not taken, lack of change of immigration law, a lot of polling that showed Americans did not want this, this long trajectory of what you might call indifference.

to what was happening is real. It's not the only response. There are definitely people shouting from the rooftops beginning in 1933, doing everything they can to help. But the overall trajectory is one in which the US does not do very much. I think it's really crucial though to point out and to show that in the end, that trajectory changes and that the US embarks on a policy of rescue and that was a real policy that

people were trying to do something and it was official US policy to try. And by the end, they saved tens of thousands of lives and helped hundreds of thousands of people, most of whom have no idea that the War Refugee Board or the United States had any role in that survival or in their survival. So that's the other thing is like, they're working through all of these other agencies. And...

Waitman (01:05:36.244)
Oh, right, okay.

Rebecca Erbelding (01:05:44.209)
And any sort of money distribution, any sort of aid distribution is often third hand at best from the United States. One of the things they do is they hire Raoul Wallenberg, the now famous Swedish businessman who goes to Budapest and issues protective papers and sets up safe houses and works with other diplomats. And together they say, he is a household name, but he is hired by the United States who is putting pressure on Sweden.

Waitman (01:06:02.794)
And of course, he is a household name of some kind.

Rebecca Erbelding (01:06:12.097)
to send more diplomats into enemy territory. And they say, you can pick whoever you want. And they pick Raoul Wallenberg, and they hire him and they fund him. And he says, I am doing an American project that is a direct quote. This is an American project. But it's so much easier to just say the US didn't do enough than to get into these nuances. But I think the nuances matter. And I think it matters when we are looking at causes today and saying, it seems so bleak.

you know, to remember that the arc of history is really long and that if you keep working, it can't, American government policy can change. Like the reason that it changes is because of these activists and because of people who are paying attention and because of people who say, you know what, the end of the war might come soon, but let's see what we can do to help in the meantime. Who don't just say, well, the end of the war is imminent. Like, let's just wait. Let's just try to win the war as soon as possible.

Like, let's not bother with this rescue thing. We don't know what the future is going to hold. And so we don't know how long the war is going to last or whatever conflict that we're talking about now is going to last, but it is never too late to start a humanitarian program. And I think the War Refugee Board shows the importance of that and shows the possibility of that. And so when we forget that it ever happened, we lose the ability to learn from the fact of its existence, but also what they tried to do.

Waitman (01:07:41.078)
Well, I think that's a fantastic way to sort of summarize our discussion and end it, because this idea that it's never too late to try, it seems like a really useful piece of advice from the past to the present. And also, I always think that the government is kind of like an aircraft carrier, right? I mean, you can turn it around, but it takes time for you to do it because it's big and bulky, right? And so, but as you pointed out...

Rebecca Erbelding (01:08:04.288)
It's slow.

Waitman (01:08:10.07)
you know, in our discussion and also in the book, you know, it is possible if there are people willing to sort of stick their heads up and advocate for it, right? So I think that's a really great way to end. Before we officially end, wanted to ask as always, what's one book about the Holocaust that you found influential or inspirational or is important to you in your study of it?

Rebecca Erbelding (01:08:36.769)
The book that I always recommend to people who are coming to this topic is the book The Lost by Daniel Mendelson. It is his own family story of trying to find out what happened to his great uncle and to his second cousins who disappeared in a shtetl in the area of Poland where there was a lot of mass shootings.

And so he's trying, and in those areas, there often aren't a lot of records. And so he is trying to figure out what happened to them and what he discovers is out of the five family members, their stories are not the same. So it's this beautiful exploration of a family story. It is a love letter to archives and archivists.

and all of the collections that give you just one piece of the puzzle, and then you go over here and you find another piece, and then you realize you can talk to this person who was from the town or visited the town, and they knew this person. And so he is piecing together this world and this family that was lost. And it's just written beautifully. He's an academic but not a historian. He's a classicist. And so he writes really beautifully about religion and about Torah.

weaves that with the family story. And it's just a really beautiful introduction to the kind of work that we do, I think, in piecing these stories together, how hard it is, but also, you know, even just recapturing how a certain person wore their backpack is getting us a piece of what we lost back. And so that's, that's the one. Yeah.

Waitman (01:10:21.55)
I think that's a great recommendation. And of course, as I said at the outset, I will say at the closing, your archivists and curators and museum people are also partners in the endeavor that we call writing history. And we cannot, when I say we, meaning sort of historians that work on writing books and do research, we can't do that without those people. They are our peers, not...

sort of workers that work for us and without them, I mean, I could, we could spend another hour where I talk about all the amazing things that archivists have pointed me to or explained to me or gone and found for me. And I think that, you know, every opportunity I had to talk to the public is to mention archivists because while the writing of a history book may be a solitary endeavor, the research behind it is absolutely not. So Becky, thanks so much for coming on.

Rebecca Erbelding (01:10:54.647)
Mm-hmm.

Waitman (01:11:18.234)
and telling us about the War Refugee Board and about the American rescue effort.

Rebecca Erbelding (01:11:23.05)
Yeah, thanks for having me.

Waitman (01:11:24.498)
And for everybody else, again, thanks for listening. As I always say, please subscribe to the podcast. If you're finding it interesting, thought provoking, please leave a comment or rating. We are on the internet, on Twitter at Holocaust Pod, where you can find all of the relevant links to the website and those kinds of things. I will put in the show notes as always links to Becky's book.

that you should definitely check out because it contains a lot more amazing anecdotes and stories and discussions of this very difficult topic. So I highly recommend that. Once again, thanks so much and we will see you next time.