The goal of the David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies (www.wymaninstitute.org) is to bring the historical record on the American response to the Shoah to a broad rather than a scholarly audience. Its fourth annual conference, held earlier this month at the University of Pennsylvania Law School, focused on one particular largely unsung hero: Josiah E. DuBois Jr.
DuBois was a non-Jewish lawyer working in the Treasury Department in 1943 when he stumbled onto a startling conclusion: The U.S. State Department, acting in conjunction with the British, and without protest from the president, wasn’t merely indifferent to the fate of the Jews; it was actually doing everything possible to obstruct every attempt to rescue even those few of Hitler’s victims who had a chance to escape Europe, and to silence those who wished to publicize news of the slaughter or work for rescue.
DuBois’s investigations were summarized in an 18-page document titled “Report to the Secretary on the Acquiescence of This Government in the Murder of the Jews.” Decades before any debate about the question, this Penn-trained lawyer blew the whistle on the government with a document that still makes for painful reading.
The secretary in question was his boss, Henry Morgenthau, the secretary of the Treasury. An assimilated Jew himself who was no Zionist, Morgenthau was shocked to his core by DuBois’s findings. DuBois threatened to resign and call a press conference to publicize the truth, but Morgenthau needed no further prompting.
After failing to make headway with a State Department that was a stronghold of anti-Semitism, he took DuBois’s report to FDR himself and demanded action in the form of an agency devoted to rescue. Seeing that the secretary meant business – and also facing pressure from Congress to act – Roosevelt gave in and signed an executive order creating the War Refugee Board in January 1944.
DuBois left the Treasury to help create this agency, which was largely responsible for, among other things, Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg’s saving of thousands of Hungarian Jews in late 1944.
Though given little money – and still obstructed by the rest of the government, and with no active backing from FDR – the board proved that given the will, there was a way. Effective action was possible. Had it been created only a year earlier, once the extent of the Shoah was confirmed by Washington, far more might have been saved.
DuBois, who was labeled a “Jew” by his detractors, followed this meritorious service by a stint as a prosecutor at Nuremberg, where he obtained convictions of the executives of I.G. Farben pharmaceutical conglomerate, though he protested the light sentences meted out by the court.
Disillusioned by his experiences and having burned many bridges in the course of his pursuit of justice, DuBois left government service for good. He died in 1983 at the age of 70.
As we have seen in the reaction to genocidal regimes since the Holocaust, indifference and inaction are the rule, not the exception. And there will always be those who will be there to rationalize the indifference afterward, especially if it serves some political agenda.
If we are ever to vanquish that sort of moral complacency, it can only be by studying the example of people of courage and decency like Josiah DuBois. The Wyman Institute deserves credit for mounting a tribute in his honor. With so much nonsense masquerading as history nowadays, one can only hope its efforts will flourish.