Rescue Board: The Untold Story of America’s Efforts to Save the Jews of Europe




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ClassGraphic Reading Rescue Board: The Untold Story of America’s Efforts to Save the Jews of Europe by Holocaust historian Rebecca Erbelding (Doubleday, 2018), we will explore the harsh Congressional immigration policy that kept most Jewish refugees out of America, even as Hitler and the Nazis closed in. In 1944, Franklin D. Roosevelt created the War Refugee Board, and put a young Department of the Treasury lawyer John Pehle in charge. Pehle led a team of D.C. pencil pushers, international relief workers, smugglers, diplomats, millionaires, and rabble-rousers across four continents and a dozen countries. Together, they forged identity papers, maneuvered food and medicine into concentration camps, recruited spies, leaked news stories, laundered money, negotiated ransoms, and funneled millions of dollars into Europe tricking the Nazis. They bought weapons for the French Resistance and sliced red tape to allow Jewish refugees to escape to Palestine. In this remarkable work of historical reclamation, Rebecca Erbelding pieces together years of research and newly uncovered archival materials to tell the dramatic story of America’s little-known efforts to save the Jews of Europe. Please join us as we explore this fascinating historical episode.
 

Class Details

7 Session(s)
Weekly - Thu

Location
TBD

Instructor
Multiple

Tuition: 

$0.00

Email olli@northwestern.edu for more information. Send to Friend »

Schedule Information

Date(s) Class Days Times Location Instructor(s)
3/5/2026 - 4/16/2026 Weekly - Thu 01:15 PM - 03:15 PM TBD Neal Goodfriend  ; Michael Sirota  ; Nancy Tarpey Cole 

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