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THE ABANDONMENT OF THE JEWS -- AMERICA AND THE HOLOCAUST, 1941-1945

[b]7. PAPER WALLS AND PAPER PLANS[/b]

State Department policymakers planned the Bermuda Conference in part to help check pressures for increased immigration to the United States. They also intended it to inject enough life into the Intergovernmental Committee to make it appear capable of taking over responsibility for the refugee problem. What were the State Department's immigration policies? What roles did the Intergovernmental Committee assume? Both questions are important to understanding America's response to the Holocaust.

[b]Paper Walls: American Visa Policies[/b]

In 1938, increased German persecution of the Jews led President Roosevelt to ease the extremely restrictive immigration policy of the Great Depression and open the European quotas for full use. This step did not, however, set off mass migration to the United States, for the combined quotas of the affected countries amounted to under 40,000 per year. Furthermore, in mid-1940 the policy was reversed. Claiming the Nazis were infiltrating secret agents into the refugee stream and forcing some authentic refugees to spy for Germany, Breckinridge Long, with the cooperation of the Visa Division, suddenly tightened the requirements for entry. This step slashed admissions by half. [1]

In July 1941, refugee immigration was cut again, to about 25 percent of the relevant quotas. Behind this decline was the "relatives rule," a State Department regulation stipulating that any applicant with a parent, child, spouse, or sibling remaining in German, Italian, or Russian territory had to pass an extremely strict security test to obtain a visa. The State Department explained that cases had come to light of Nazi and Soviet agents pressuring refugees to engage in espionage under threat of retaliation against their relatives. [2]

Another innovation in July 1941 required a systematic security review of all immigration applications by special interdepartmental committees. (Each committee included representatives of the Visa Division, the Immigration and Naturalization Service, the FBI, Army Intelligence, and Naval Intelligence.) Applications that received unfavorable recommendations from the special committees were rejected. For favorably recommended cases, the State Department sent "advisory approvals" to its visa-issuing consuls abroad. Normally, the consuls then granted the visas. But they were not required to do so; legally, the final decision was theirs. [3]

The President's Advisory Committee on Political Refugees met with Roosevelt to protest the sweeping new policies. It requested substantial modification of the "relatives rule" and the establishment of a review board to reevaluate cases rejected by the interdepartmental committees. No meaningful change was made in the "relatives rule," but a complex appeal process was instituted in December 1941. [4]

Under the new system, cases turned down by the interdepartmental committees were considered by Review Committees consisting of higher officials from the same live agencies represented on the original committees. The applicants' American sponsors were permitted to testify in person before the Review Committees. Cases rejected by the Review Committees went to the Board of Appeals, which consisted of two private citizens appointed by the President. If a Review Committee or the Board of Appeals ruled favorably, the State Department dispatched advisory approval to the consul nearest the applicant. [5]

After Pearl Harbor, visa procedures were even more stringently tightened for a large category of refugees, those who had been born in enemy countries or had been longtime residents there. Visa applications for these "enemy aliens" had to pass through all three security-screening levels. In addition, no enemy alien could receive a visa without proof that his admission would bring "positive benefit" to the United States. [i] [6]

Strict enforcement of these regulations led to severe difficulties for many refugees. A mother and her twelve-year-old daughter were stranded in Vichy France. The father, an Austrian, was in Cairo with the Allied military forces. The mother was an American citizen and wanted to take the daughter to safety in the United States. But the girl could not obtain a visa because her Austrian birth made her an enemy alien. [8]

Another incident involved a German refugee in France, who was sent to Auschwitz in the great deportations of 1942. Her visa had been approved in Washington in November 1941. But before she received it, the United States entered the war, and as an enemy alien she had to begin the procedure all over again. In October 1942, a Unitarian Service Committee report noted, "In spite of what seemed to be a favorable reception of her case when it was presented by her niece in Washington, the visa was refused and this meant her case could not be reopened for six months. There was nothing we could do. A few days ago came word of her deportation." [9]

By early 1942, private refugee-aid organizations had recognized that State Department stringency regarding visa issuance far surpassed legitimate concern for protecting the nation from subversion. Their observations were summarized by George Warren of the President's Advisory Committee, who described the immigration process as "one of incredible obstruction to any possible securing of a visa." He had earlier disclosed the source of arbitrary exclusion of refugees as "a group in the State Department ... which of itself sets up new tests for immigration visas." [ii] [10]

During 1943, it became dear to the private agencies, through their day-to-day contacts with the Visa Division concerning refugee cases, that the State Department had gone beyond the law in blocking immigration. The agencies did not publicize the point, for that would have ended their effectiveness in dealing with the State Department. They did press quietly, but unsuccessfully, for modification. And they recorded the situation in numerous documents still in their archives. In January, Warren pointed to a persistent effort to shut the doors, which he attributed to anti-alien attitudes in the State Department. He noted that "conditions are becoming tougher all the time" for obtaining American visas, especially for refugees in Spain. (At that time, German occupation of Spain looked quite possible.) Four months later, Warren confirmed that State Department opposition to refugee entry remained strong. By December 1943, he saw nearly no hope for much further immigration. He described it as "almost a frozen situation." A representative of the American Friends Service Committee reported a discussion he had with top officials of the Visa Division: "Everybody was very polite, but the resistance to be. overcome is evidently enormous." The records of the National Refugee Service, a leading Jewish aid agency, reveal continual anxiety about "the anti-immigration attitude of the State Department." [11]

Alongside official regulations such as the "relatives rule" and the special requirements for enemy aliens, the State Department raised additional obstacles. One was the unnecessarily long time, usually around nine months, required to move applications through the screening machinery. For those in the enemy-alien category, the wait was longer and approval unlikely. Furthermore, even when an applicant faced immediate danger, the State Department would not expedite the case. [12]

Another bureaucratic wall was the visa application form put into effect in July 1943. More than four feet long, it had to be filled out on both sides by one of the refugee's sponsors (or a refugee-aid agency), sworn under penalty of perjury, and submitted in six copies. It required detailed information not only about the refugee but also about the two American sponsors who were needed to testify that he would present no danger to the United States. Each sponsor had to list his own residences and employers for the preceding ten years and submit character references from two reputable American citizens whose own past activities could be readily checked. [13]

Two entirely arbitrary barriers were added in the fall of 1943. The presumption that a refugee was "not in acute danger" began to enter into visa refusals. Persons who had reached Spain, Portugal, and North Africa were considered to be in that category. This arrangement permitted the State Department to close the doors at will. Where Jews were in acute danger, in Axis-held territory, there were no American consuls to issue visas. But those who escaped to countries where consuls continued to operate were "not in acute danger" and for that reason could be kept out of the United States. [14]

After agreement was reached to establish a refugee camp in North Africa (but many months before it opened), the State Department attached a new restriction to some advisory approvals sent to consuls in Spain. It stipulated that a visa would be granted, but only if the refugee could not be included with those going to the camp. A Quaker representative in Lisbon reported that this step "practically suspended the granting of visas" to refugees in Spain. [15]

The State Department also plugged any holes the refugee-aid organizations might find in the barricades. In 1943, Quaker and HIAS [iii] personnel in Casablanca attempted to open a refugee outlet through that port. Despite the State Department's unremitting insistence that American ships were totally occupied in the war effort and could not possibly assist in moving refugees, the relief workers discovered that the military authorities in Casablanca thought otherwise. They were willing to take refugees on ships returning empty to the United States, provided they had visas and quota numbers. The American consulate in Casablanca agreed to cooperate. Fourteen refugees reached New York via military transport. Then the State Department's Visa Division halted this apparent breakthrough by refusing to dispatch quota numbers for people in North Africa until after they had assurance of transportation. The military in North Africa would not assure transportation until the refugees had their quota numbers. "So there we are," concluded a frustrated relief worker in Casablanca. [16]

Another tactic was used to hamper the prospects of reactivated visa cases. Unsuccessful visa applications were eligible for reconsideration six months after rejection. But the State Department would never give reasons for the original refusals. Sponsors and refugee-aid agencies were thus left to guess at how to revise the applications. Should one or both of the sponsors be changed? Were the financial guarantees insufficient? Or was the difficulty something unalterable, such as the applicant's birth in Germany? The private agencies expended considerable effort -- with little success -- trying to fathom State Department reasoning and to adapt reapplications to it. [17]

A constant obstacle to refugee admission was prejudice on the part of many members of the security-screening committees. The Review Committees openly displayed biased attitudes in the hearings they were required to grant to applicants' sponsors. An official of the National Refugee Service described these interviews as "a pretty bad experience, as some are very strictly prejudiced about letting anyone in." The Friends Committee learned that, frequently,

[quote]time is consumed heckling and questioning the affiant [sponsor] on his own personal affairs, his habits, the books he reads, his activities and friends, while the Board fails to learn the important facts regarding the prospective immigrant.[/quote]

 

The Review Committees also concentrated excessively on possible Communist or other leftist connections of the sponsors. [18]

Reliable people who testified before Review Committees as sponsors of refugees reported being asked:

[quote]Are you Jewish by race and faith?

Do you belong to any political group or organization in this country?

Have you read Tolstoy?

Did the Social Democratic Party want to change the government?

Would you call yourself a socialist?

What are your political convictions now?[/quote]

 

Some questions astonished the sponsors, as in this incident reported by Dorothy Detzer, executive secretary of the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom:

[quote]There was a Czech soldier who was at Dunkirk. His wife was in Southern France. When the British evacuated, he went with them and is now in England. His mother-in-law is in the United States and is trying to get a visa for her daughter who is still in France, and the military man on the committee asked: "Well, when your son-in-law left Dunkirk with the English, why didn't he get his wife to come up from-Southern France to go with him?" [19][/quote]

 

The private agencies concluded that several members of the screening committees were "making absurd interpretations of facts in individual cases." The President's Advisory Committee checked and found that representatives of the FBI and Army and Navy intelligence were especially difficult, seemingly following a "policy of excluding all the aliens that they can." But repeated efforts both to rectify this bias and to improve the conduct of the hearings achieved nothing. [20]

One moderating influence in the visa-screening system was the Board of Appeals. Its original members were Dr. Frederick P. Keppel, formerly president of the Carnegie Corporation, and Robert J. Bulkley, previously a senator from Ohio. Keppel, especially, worked hard to move the visa system away from excessive suspiciousness and toward the tradition of America as a haven for the oppressed. But the possibilities were limited, as Keppel noted in a memorandum regarding such talented refugees as scientists, writers, artists, scholars, and dramatists:

[quote]Case after case comes to our Board, with the unanimous recommendation of the Interdepartmental Review Committee, to exclude an applicant of the type I have in mind on the basis of vague and unsubstantiated charges of communistic, or less often, Nazi sympathies on the part of the applicant or his sponsors. We can and do reverse some of these recommendations, ... but we are naturally reluctant to run our percentage of-reversals too high.[/quote]

 

The Board of Appeals overruled about one-quarter of the negative recommendations made by the Review Committees. [21]

Case notes left by the Board of Appeals reveal some of the reasoning behind Review Committee decisions. One person was disapproved because he was born in Germany, although he had not been there for thirty years. A Socialist was rejected because a Review Committee saw an important similarity between Socialists and Communists. Another applicant was turned down because of a negative security report on a sponsor; but the sponsor was working for the Office of Strategic Services. [22]

The Board of Appeals managed to remove one obstacle from the path of visa applicants. Regulations stated that no enemy alien could be admitted without proof that his presence would be of "positive benefit" to the United States. Keppel and Bulkley opened the way for virtually any upright refugee to pass this test. They ruled that "the Board found benefit in maintaining the traditional American policy of providing a haven of refuge for decent people who are in distress and peril." Until his death, in September 1943, Keppel persisted in efforts to offset the anti-immigration bias that prevailed in the visa decision machinery. [23]

In mid-1944, visa procedures were simplified a little. In May, the State Department set up a new committee to screen the cases of applicants who were not enemy aliens. If a file contained "no derogatory information" and the new committee made a favorable recommendation, an advisory approval went directly to the consul, bypassing all three regular review committees. In July, a briefer application form was instituted. These changes expedited visa decisions. But refugee immigration did not increase. The modifications, though they made the procedure less onerous, were superficial. [24]

In justifying its stringent restrictions, the State Department stressed the necessity of keeping subversive elements out of the United States. The nation's security was, of course, essential. But the problem as it related to refugees was greatly exaggerated.

Nazi agents infiltrated among the refugees would have been found out and exposed by the many anti-Nazis who accompanied them. This did not have to be left to chance either. It was suggested at the time that applicants could be screened by committees of refugees, either overseas or in American detention centers. Questionable cases would go through more complete investigation. The Unitarian Service Committee, in fact, did this on its own in Lisbon. Refugees who came to the Unitarians for help in reaching the United States were screened by two Germans who, as former prisoners of the Nazis, were familiar with Gestapo methods. [25]

The other danger cited by the State Department was that the Nazis would force genuine refugees to spy for Germany under threat of harm to close relatives still in Axis territory. Keppel, Bulkley, and their legal adviser, Dean F. D. G. Ribble of the University of Virginia Law School, exposed the fallacy of that argument:

[quote]It does not seem likely that hostage pressure can be used as an effective means of compelling anti-Nazis in the United States actively to serve the Nazi cause. The reason lies in the simple fact that such service ordinarily would necessitate collaboration on the pan of Nazi agents. That collaboration, even though it might not completely reveal the identity of a Nazi agent, would necessarily give a clue to his identity. The anti-Nazi subjected to pressure and necessarily filled with hate of the Nazi power might readily turn his knowledge over to the proper American authorities. In other words, the chance that Nazi agents will disclose themselves by their use of hostage pressure to make persons in the United States cooperate in Nazi plans seems so great that a realistic appraisal indicates such methods would scarcely be used. [26][/quote]

 

It is not possible to analyze the information that government agencies collected about refugees suspected of subversive intentions. Intelligence records concerning private individuals are not available for research. But the examples that appear in State Department and other sources are exceedingly few and not convincing. [27]

In one celebrated case, a Jewish refugee arrested in Cuba possessed plans of a U.S. air base near Havana. The Cuban court, however, declared the plans valueless and found no connection with German operatives. Occasionally, American military intelligence abroad sent back reports of Axis agents disguised as refugees. But in the instances found in the records, all impostors were detected and dealt with overseas. [28]

Two German brothers, refugees who reached North Africa, applied for American visas. Despite the endorsement of American officials in the area, the support of the Quakers and the Joint Distribution Committee, and a clean report from American military intelligence in North Africa, the applications were turned down in Washington. The difficulty was a statement by the French administration in North Africa that the two might possibly be spies. This suspicion had arisen because a person with a grudge against one of the brothers had denounced them to French authorities. On such evidence, people were judged dangerous and kept out of the United States. [29]

A report by the U.S. Office of Censorship regarding three highly reputable Jewish refugee-aid organizations-the Joint Distribution Committee, HIAS, and HICEM (the European affiliate of HIAS) reveals some of the ignorance and dubious logic that fed State Department suspicions. 'The Censorship Office disclosed that "it is reliably reported" that HICEM "is extensively used by the Germans as a medium through which agents can be placed in any part of the world." This unsubstantiated assertion was contravened in the same report by a statement that British intelligence in Bermuda, which closely monitored HICEM-HIAS messages, was not suspicious. Yet the writer concluded that, because the Joint Distribution Committee and HIAS had close ties with HICEM, "it necessarily follows" that they "have been used in the same manner" and should be viewed "with no less suspicion." [30]

The chance that a refugee, or a Nazi agent disguised as a refugee, could have successfully carried out subversive activities once in the United States was extremely small. 'The American government was highly effective in controlling Nazi espionage and sabotage during World War II. In the famous case of the eight saboteurs landed by U-boats on Long Island and the Florida coast in June 1942, detection and capture came shortly after their arrival. The Nazis had no more success with the spy Herbert Bahr, an American citizen whom they sent to the United States on the exchange ship Drottningholm. Planted among other Americans being repatriated from Germany, Bahr was arrested before he left the ship. Throughout the war, reports by the attorney general and the FBI emphasized that no instance of foreign-directed sabotage had occurred in the United States and that enemy espionage was effectively throttled. [31]

The conclusion is that a legitimate need, guarding the nation against subversion, was used as a device for keeping refugee entry to a minimum. Many thousands were turned away who could have come in without risk to the war effort. When Treasury Department lawyers covertly looked into State Department immigration procedures during 1943, they were led to make the following conclusions:

[quote]Under the pretext of security reasons so many difficulties have been placed in the way of refugees obtaining visas that it is no wonder that the admission of refugees to this country docs not come anywhere near the quota....

 

If anyone were to attempt to work out a set of restrictions specifically designed to prevent Jewish refugees from entering this country it is difficult to conceive of how more effective restrictions could have been imposed than have already been imposed on grounds of "security." ...

 

These restrictions are not essential for security reasons. Thus refugees upon arriving in this country could be placed in internment camps similar to those used for the Japanese on the West Coast and released only after a satisfactory investigation. Furthermore, even if we took these refugees and treated them as prisoners of war it would be better than letting them die. [32][/quote]

 

One positive note in the State Department's response to the Holocaust was its permission in September 1942 for 5,000 Jewish children trapped in France to enter the United States. This offer, made at the time of mass deportations from France, was obtained through pressure by Eleanor Roosevelt, the President's Advisory Committee, and the refugee-aid agencies. The project failed, as we have seen, because of stalling by the Vichy government. [33]

Among the Jews who evaded deportation by fleeing across the Pyrenees were perhaps 200 children. Most were in Spain; some were in Portugal. American refugee-aid organizations feared German occupation of the two countries and a repetition of the events in France. They were also disturbed because Spain's policy of interning these illegal refugees in prisons applied to children as well as adults. The private agencies and the President's Advisory Committee therefore appealed to the State Department to assign 200 of the 5,000 visas to these children and to expedite their evacuation by instructing American consuls to waive the red tape usually involved in visa issuance. [34]

Sumner Welles agreed in December 1942 to do so. He also offered to include the children's mothers. But this generous impulse was undermined before any visas were granted. The State Department ruled that the mothers would have to go through the regular visa-approval process. That meant they had very little chance of reaching the United States, for even though the quotas were already far undersubscribed, 1943 saw further severe tightening of immigration restrictions. And so it happened, to cite but one example, that fourteen-month-old Max reached America in the care of his sisters, nine and twelve years old. His mother, who had somehow smuggled her baby boy and her daughters over the Pyrenees after her husband was deported, remained in Spain. [35]

Even the agreement to bring the children out ran into trouble. The Visa Division tried to restrict the program to children whose parents had both been deported, but backed down following protests from the private agencies. Then it stalled on dispatching the necessary instructions to the American consulates; and when it did send them, they were confusing and vague. Almost immediately after clarified directions finally arrived at the Lisbon consulate, thirty-one children sailed to a new life in the United States. A second group of twenty-one followed a' few weeks later, completing the Portuguese side of the project. [36]

The American consulates in Spain took no such expeditious action. After receiving workable instructions, the Barcelona consulate delayed for two months by insisting on technicalities supposedly waived for the children. For instance, some were required to produce unavailable French passports. Then, in the midst of the processing, the consul sought to postpone the project again because other demands on his time had arisen. [37]

When the first group of thirty-five children from Spain finally sailed, it included twenty-one with visas issued in Barcelona. But an equal number had been turned down there. A frustrated JDC representative wrote to New York that the consulate in Barcelona "instead of facilitating the project apparently is doing everything possible to limit its scope." [38]

The President's Advisory Committee and the private agencies urged the Visa Division to remedy the situation in Spain, but nothing changed. In May, Eleanor Roosevelt pressed Sumner Welles about the children. His reply was entirely noncommittal. A month later, the Quakers reported a continued "lack of action on the part of Barcelona." In September, Madrid was a center of difficulty. The consulate there, by raising technical barriers, had stopped the visas of three of the thirteen children who had been readied for .departure. Two of them, a brother and sister whose father was dead and whose mother's whereabouts were unknown, got out two months later. Apparently the other, an orphaned boy of fourteen, did not. [39]

In all, about 125 children left Spain and Portugal for the United States during 1943 under the special program. Another dozen followed before the war ended in Europe. At no time was shipping a problem. Portuguese passenger vessels were sailing regularly to the United States only partially booked. [40]

In Lisbon, the American consulate's cooperative approach toward the children's project also characterized its dealings with adult refugees. Quaker relief workers described the American vice-consul in Lisbon as "splendid and cooperative" and the rest of the consulate-and the legation, too-as very helpful. [41]

No such sensitivity was found in Madrid or Barcelona. Consuls there not only resisted the children's project, but did what they could to stifle adult immigration to the United States. Their interference was crucial; after November 1942, Spain and Portugal were the only countries in continental Europe where American consuls still issued visas. Jewish refugees had encountered obstructionism at Barcelona since the fall of 1941. But in 1943 the difficulties reached extremes, as consuls held back the visas of a substantial number of refugees who had been cleared by the screening process in Washington. [42]

In June 1943, Howard K. Travers, chief of the Visa Division, admitted to a Friends representative that the Madrid and Barcelona consulates were withholding visas from refugees who had advisory approvals. The Quaker pointed out that Spanish officials were disturbed that refugees were not moving on; Travers agreed to press the consulates for an explanation. Six weeks later, Travers said he had received no response but would try again. Two more weeks passed without any word. At that point, in August, the available record runs out. Some of the visas in question had been approved in Washington as far back as February; yet none had been granted, and no explanation could be obtained. It is difficult to believe that in eight weeks the State Department could not get an answer from subordinate personnel overseas. One has to suspect that the Visa Division was a party to this subversion of the visa process. [43]

Two documents will suffice to illustrate attitudes current among American diplomats in Spain. The first, a June 1943 report by Robert Brandin, a middle-level official at the embassy in Madrid, sharply criticized the Joint Distribution Committee for its efforts to help Jewish refugees immigrate to the United States. Furthermore, from Brandin's standpoint, a refugee who obtained advisory approval from Washington had won "only half the fight since the individual consul still has the final say." Proof appeared in Brandin's report: only 64 percent of the advisory approvals sent to Madrid that year had resulted in the issuance of visas. [iv] [44]

The second document is a record of a conversation in April 1944 between a Quaker representative and Mary Evelyn Hayes, the wife of Carlton J. H. Hayes, the American ambassador to Spain. Mrs. Hayes mentioned that the ambassador was antagonistic toward the Joint Distribution Committee. She also said the consuls in Madrid were very annoyed that "the Jews always seem to know more than anyone else." The consuls' complaint actually grew out of the JDC's use of cablegrams to inform refugees of their vis. status, while the State Department relayed the same data to the consulate by much slower airgrams. The animosity was also unquestionably fueled by the JDC's occasional success in persuading the Visa Division to put pressure on the consuls to issue visas. [46]

Only the close of the war in Europe brought an end to Washington's complex security-screening machinery. On July 1, 1945, the visa system reverted to pre-war procedures."

What were the quantitative results of America's wartime immigration policy? Between Pearl Harbor and the end of the war in Europe, ap proximately 21,000 refugees, most of them Jewish, entered the United States. [v] That number constituted 10 percent of the quota places legally available to people from Axis-controlled European countries in those years. Thus 90 percent of those quotas -- nearly 190,000 openings -- went unused while the mass murder of European Jewry ran its course. [vi] [48]

The quota limits were mandated by law. But the severe restraints that the State Department clamped on immigration were not. They took the form of administrative regulations and, at times, purely arbitrary State Department innovations. President Roosevelt had the legal power at any time to modify the restrictions and open the quotas to full use. He did not do so, possibly out of concern that restrictionists in Congress might lash back and enact the restrictions into law. More likely, he was just not interested and found it convenient to leave immigration policy to Breckinridge Long and his associates. [50]

Late in 1945, a New York Times writer summarized the effect of America's wartime immigration policies: "The United States, once the haven of refuge for the oppressed peoples of Europe, has been almost as inaccessible as Tibet." He was, of course, exaggerating -- but not by much. [51]

[b]Paper Plans: The Intergovernmental Committee[/b]

While the tradition of America as a shelter for the oppressed dissolved, another hope, the reorganized Intergovernmental Committee on Refugees, amounted to little more than a cover for Allied inaction. As Breckinridge Long had intended when he urged its renovation in early 1943, the ICR took on the appearance of a capable international organization, the logical body to assume responsibility for the refugee problem. The State Department then used it as a byway to which it could divert rescue proposals with full confidence that little or nothing would come of them.

Ironically, Long had done his best two years earlier to extinguish the Intergovernmental Committee. At Myron Taylor's initiative, Robert T. Pell had been handling State Department activities connected with the ICR. [vii] In March 1941, Pell angrily resigned. He informed Taylor that "Long apparently made up his mind some months ago that he was not going to have any Intergovernmental Committee around this Department. He has since that time indulged in an unrelenting attack on the work and the officers ... connected with it. There is just no use going on." [52]

Long's assault came on three fronts. He fired Pell's assistant, Alfred Wagg, despite his excellent service as acting secretary of the ICR. Wagg's work, Long explained, was being discontinued. Long then issued orders barring Pell from almost all refugee matters and shifting his former responsibilities to the anti-refugee European Division and Visa Division. Finally, Long did not ask Congress to renew the $26,000 annual appropriation for the work of the Intergovernmental Committee. [53]

Despite Long's attack, the ICR survived-but only in suspended animation. Wagg's dismissal raised enough press protest that Long continued the post of ICR acting secretary, staffing it with a low-ranking State Department functionary. And, following a year's lapse, Taylor forced the reinstatement of the tiny budget item for the ICR. [54]

The affair dampened Taylor's interest in State Department refugee policies and in the Intergovernmental Committee. He was unwilling to participate in the Bermuda Conference, knowing beforehand that it would not be permitted to recommend realistic solutions. After the conference, he privately condemned it. [viii] Taylor did, however, help plan the renovation of the Intergovernmental Committee during 1943. He intended then to quit as the American delegate to the ICR, but acceded to Roosevelt's plea that he stay on. Taylor and Pell, who was again appointed his alternate, worked sporadically with the revived ICR until both resigned in June 1944. From then until spring 1945, the United States had no delegate to the committee. [55]

In the meantime, the Bermuda Conference's recommendations for reorganizing the ICR had bounced back and forth between the State Department and the Foreign Office for months. The ICR's executive committee had finally met in London in August 1943 and approved the proposed changes. The new mandate specifically empowered the ICR to take all steps necessary "to preserve, maintain and transport" Euro pean refugees. The organization also moved to expand its twenty-nine-nation membership by inviting nineteen other states to join. (Only seven did so by spring 1945.) The ICR's minute staff was increased. Sir Herbert Emerson continued as director. An American, Patrick Malin, accepted the new post of vice-director. Plans were made to appoint a secretary and additional support personnel. [ix] Finally, funding arrangements, previously nearly nonexistent, were thoroughly restructured. Administrative expenses were apportioned among all member states. But the costs of actual operations such as relief and transportation would be covered by the United States and Great Britain on a fifty-fifty basis. [57]

The agreement on British-American funding of major projects was the result of pressure from Myron Taylor, with backing from Churchill and Roosevelt. Bold ICR leadership and prompt allocation of the funds might have saved many victims of Nazi terror. But, although each of the two powers pledged $2 million for the first year (mid-1943 through mid-1944), none of the money was forthcoming until well into 1944. [59]

Despite the ICR's reorganization, its leaders never expected it to accomplish much. Right after the August meeting, Emerson informed Taylor that "one of our troubles is going to be the extravagant hopes that have been raised by irresponsible zealots, mainly in this country." (He was referring to the many religious and parliamentary leaders who were demanding rescue.) Emerson saw three goals for the ICR: to use the "very limited" existing opportunities to help refugees, to develop new opportunities when possible, and, "most important, to playa big part in the solution of post war problems." [x] [60]

During a visit to the United States in April 1944, Emerson and Malin again emphasized the modest roles envisioned for the ICR. Malin informed private refugee-aid agencies, "We hope to operate as little as possible." "There is very little," he explained, "that can be done with regard to rescue." Rather, the ICR was negotiating with various governments concerning such refugee problems as lack of citizenship, retraining, employment, and migration. Otherwise, Malin pointed out, the main tasks of the ICR were to provide relief for refugees where neither the Allied military nor UNRRA was doing so and to work on emigration or postwar repatriation plans for them. [xi] [62]

The revived Intergovernmental Committee did not compile an im pressive record. An attempt to persuade Switzerland to admit more refugees foundered because the ICR could not induce Anglo-American blockade authorities to let the necessary relief supplies go through. Protracted negotiations persuaded UNRRA to take over the maintenance of refugees in areas where it operated. UNRRA also agreed to handle the postwar repatriation of refugees willing to return to their former homelands. But by April 1944, eight months after its reorganization, the Intergovernmental Committee had done nothing else concrete. Steps were under .way, though, to place ICR representatives in strategic locations for initiating refugee-aid programs. This potentially valuable plan called for offices in North Africa, Italy, Portugal, Spain, and Turkey. Very little came of it, however. [64]

For one thing, the first office did not open until early May 1944; the second started in late June. For another, representatives were never sent to the most crucial locations-Turkey, Spain, and Portugal. [xii] Furthermore, the main field representatives were almost entirely unqualified for their posts. [65]

Sir Clifford Heathcote-Smith, assigned to Italy, was well-meaning, but a poor administrator who did not work well with others and had no background for complex refugee problems. His office oversaw valuable, though small-scale, relief operations in southern Italy, and it helped with the overseas emigration of 1,500 Jews. But Heathcote-Smith actually had little to do with these projects. They were planned and carried out virtually independently by a few relief workers sent to Italy by the American Friends Service Committee and the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee. [67]

Only recently made aware of the dimensions of the European Jewish catastrophe, Heathcote-Smith was anxious to help. But he dissipated much time in planning unrealistic rescue schemes. Most damaging, refugees and relief workers alike felt that Heathcote-Smith, though apparently unaware of it himself, was anti-Semitic. This attitude evidently stemmed from his long career in the British foreign service in the Middle East. Whatever the cause, a senior AFSC worker noted not only that he was "not friendly to the Jews," but that his condescending manner toward them "takes from the refugees whatever shred of personal security they may have left." Despite his shortcomings, Heathcote-Smith did at least press the Vatican to try to save Jews, and he traveled to Switzerland in an unsuccessful attempt to arrange the evacuation ofJews from German-occupied Italy to neutral and safe Switzerland. [68]

If Heathcote-Smith was a poor choice for the post he held, Victor Valentin-Smith, a French colonial governor, was even less satisfactory as the ICR representative in Algiers. A Quaker relief worker recorded one problem: "As far as we could ascertain, V-S (the IGCR seems to go in for hyphenated Smiths) has even less idea what the IGCR is all about than H-S had when he started." Valentin-Smith soon made it dear that refugee assistance was not his interest. One of his first steps was to ask the ICR in London to press for the immediate termination of the recently opened refugee camp in North Africa and to arrange to remove its inhabitants from French territory. The French had been uneasy about the camp all along; they feared they would be left after the war with numbers of refugees who could not find permanent homes. American authorities, however, insisted on keeping the camp in operation. Once Valentin-Smith's objective in North Africa was thwarted, the French government persuaded the ICR to shift his office to liberated Paris. [69]

In the summer of 1944, with sizable funds finally in hand, the Inter- governmental Committee undertook its only substantial project of the Holocaust years. It granted hundreds of thousands of dollars to the Joint Distribution Committee. The JDC, working through the under ground, used the money to support groups engaged in hiding Jews, providing them with supplies and helping some to escape from Axis territory, Before the war ended, the ICR had transferred $1.28 million to the JDC for such projects in France, Rumania, Hungary, and northern Italy. [70]

Despite this valuable assistance, the overall record of the reorganized Intergovernmental Committee was one of failure. It did little more than carry out a few peripheral relief projects and attempt to find small-scale emigration opportunities. The ICR's lethargic pace, "lack of imagination," and very limited effectiveness had convinced leaders of American relief agencies that there was "little if any hopeful outlook for the Committee," Their assessment was confirmed by a high official who was partly responsible for the course the ICR took. Shortly after the war, Sumner Welles evaluated the Intergovernmental Committee: "The final results amounted to little more than zero. The Government of the United States itself permitted the committee to become a nullity." [xiii] [71]

But the purpose in reviving the Intergovernmental Committee had not been to rescue Jews. The State Department intended the renovated ICR to be a detour down which it could divert-and stall-pressures and proposals for rescue, As such, it played a pivotal role 'in the State Department's response to the Holocaust.

***

The spring of 1943 slipped northward across Europe bringing the annual rebirth of life and hope. Summer gradually followed, through the mountains and into the foothills and plains and valleys. of the Continent's north slope. Farmers planted and tilled. The promise of harvest and replenishment again radiated from the land. An ocean away, the Bermuda Conference came and went, blighting hope. In America and Britain, important officials planned insignificant plans. And the stifling, unending death trains lurched and rattled across Europe.

As 1942 ended, Allied military forces had seized the momentum of war. Through the spring and summer of 1943, they pressed forward toward the still-distant but increasingly sure victory. After the German collapse at Stalingrad, in February, the Russians began the slow recon· quest of the Ukraine. Simultaneously, they stoned pushing the enemy back along the front in the north. In July, they broke a major German offensive in a week, then regained their forward motion. As summer ended, the Red Army captured Smolensk, reached the Dnieper River at several other places, and threatened Kiev.

In mid-May, the Axis capitulated in North Africa. The Mediterranean was open to Allied shipping and the way cleared for the invasions of Sicily and Italy. Sicily fell in mid-August, after a short campaign. Anglo-American forces penetrated the mainland in early September, just as the Italian government surrendered. Although the Germans took over in Italy and dug in for a long struggle, Allied advances were substantial in September. An American-British stronghold had at last been established on the Continent.

In the Pacific, February saw the end of the struggle for Guadalcanal. The summer brought further Allied advances in the Solomon Islands and New Guinea. Although progress was agonizingly slow, Japan was by then entirely on the defensive.

As the spring and summer passed, people in the Allied nations grew more and more certain of the conflict's outcome. To the conquered populations of Europe, the summer's air carried the hope and anticipation of restored freedom. But for the Jews still alive in Axis Europe, no help was yet in sight.

______________

[b]Notes:[/b]

[i] At about the same time, the State Department persuaded Latin American governments to halt nearly all immigration from Europe. The reason given was the need to safeguard hemispheric security. Yet the department's information sources had no reports of Nazi agents or subversive activities among refugees in Latin America. [7]

[ii] Warren, who worked closely with several of the private organizations, also had a post in the State Department. He was a person of measured opinions who normally gave the State Department the benefit of the doubt.

[iii] Hebrew Sheltering and Immigrant Aid Society, foremost Jewish migrant-assistance agency

[iv] Statistics in Brandin's report sharply contradicted the State Department's continual insistence that the refugee problem was not essentially a Jewish one. Of 117 advisory approvals, noted Brandin, 114 were for Jews. In Washington the visa Board of Appeals, drawing on other evidence, made the same point in a report to the President. [45]

[v] A sizable proportion of them were people who had already reached safety in the Western Hemisphere and had waited there for over a year for an opportunity to move on to the United States. Exact statistics are not available, but in late 1942 and in 1943 about 40 percent of the refugees admitted to the United States were in that category. [49]

[vi] The year-by-year numbers follow, based on fiscal years that ended on June 30. The figures for fiscal 1941 are presented for purposes of comparison; that year closed just as the stringent immigration restrictions of July 1941 were imposed. The first five months of fiscal 1942 preceded America's entry into the war, so immigration in those months is not included in the overall wartime total of 21,000.

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