Special Interview the Long Night

This second in the Jewish Telegraphic Agency’s three-part interview with World Jewish Congress Secretary-General Gerhart Riegner, who served as WJC representative in Geneva during the war, focuses on the actions of the American government regarding the rescue of European Jews.

Q: What were some of your suggestions on rescuing European Jews?

A: My suggestions were mainly in the direction of getting passports for the immigrants, immigration facilities, even temporary ones, in neutral countries (Switzerland, Sweden, Spain, Portugal, Turkey). We had to help the neutrals, get them guarantees — first that the people they took in could be fed, and second, that they would get rid of them after the war, that they wouldn’t be a permanent burden ….

More and more, we developed the idea of help to the Underground — illegal means — help to illegal immigrants, falsification of documents, helping people to live underground with false papers, passports, ration cards.

In the last year of the war, $20 million — Jewish money — was spent through the U.S. War Refugee Board (established January 22, 1944) for rescue and aid to victims of the Nazis, The whole machinery of false papers, tens of thousands of false papers, was run through the WRB.

All these underground activities, and the financing of underground activities could — and should –have started much earlier. It took a full year to obtain U.S. permission to transfer money to Europe and use it. The first license for the transfer of money –$25,000 as an experiment — was given to the World Jewish Congress in December, 1943. I was authorized to be in contact with enemy countries in order to help save the victims.

Even on the first $25,000, there was a big protest from the British when they found out, and they tried to delay it even after (permission) had been granted. The published papers of the British Foreign Office (reveal) what various officers later wrote in their “logbook” about the War Refugee Board. Some of the quotations are absolutely unbelievable — as if the Jews were the enemy and not the Germans, (and) about how the Board appears to be nothing else but “an electoral device of Roosevelt to bribe the Jews.” Absolutely nothing there that it may be some kind of humanitarian reaction, some urge to help an unfortunate people who are in despair.

BACKGROUND OF THE WAR REFUGEE BOARD

Q: Didn’t Roosevelt establish the War Refugee Board in response to public pressure?

A: There’s no doubt about it …. The Board was the outcome of certain suggestions we had made, base on one of my telegrams which was sabotaged by the State Department. This concerned the immigration of Jews from Rumania to Turkey and Palestine.

Early in 1943 the Rumanian authorities said they would let 60,000 Jews go to Palestine. Whether they really meant it is another question; nobody knew. This (proposal) came officially from the Jewish organization in Rumania, from the government through the International Red Cross.

I relayed it to the U.S. in March 1943. When the license for the transfer of funds finally came through, six to eight months had passed, and there was no reality to the whole scheme. The American government, the State Department (bears) the major responsibility, that they didn’t do anything and then said it was too late.

When (Rabbi Stephen) Wise found out that there was no action on my telegram after several months, he went to Henry Morgenthau, Jr., Secretary of the Treasury. Morgenthau asked two employees of his department, Isaiah Dubois and John Pehle, to investigate. They wrote their famous memo on the complicity of the U.S. government in the mass murders. In this report, they described how the State Department had suppressed my cables, tried to stop them (entirely) and did not act on all sorts of positive suggestions.

When Morgenthau wrote his memo on this to Roosevelt, it was really an embarrassment. Roosevelt was an astute politician; he knew the memo was dynamite and he had to do something. That, in my opinion, was the decisive factor (in creating the War Refugee Board.)

ISSUE OF BOMBING AUSCHWITZ

Q: Why didn’t the U.S. ever bomb Auschwitz?

A: There were numerous requests. Early in June, 1944, we received a message from Budapest that the Hungarian provinces had been emptied of Jews –which meant that 300,000-400,000 Jews had been evacuated and then killed. In that message, there was a request that the Allies bomb the installations in Auschwitz and the whole series of rail and communications lines through which the transports were passing, which they listed.

This came together with a copy of the first report from the Slovakian Underground by two Slovakian Jews, Rudolf Vrba and Alfred Wetzler, who had escaped from Auschwitz in the Spring of 1944. The Czech Minister asked me to make a summary, (which) he gave to London a day or two later. I gave the whole report to the Americans (including) the list of the communications systems (to be) bombed, and they cabled it to the U.S.

I went to the library of the League of Nations, because I remembered that Auschwitz was situated in a district of the Plebiscite of 1920 held under its auspices. (The Plebiscite was on whether the residents wanted to belong to Poland or Germany). The League had the most detailed maps one could imagine. Some people I knew there who were friendly gave me copies of the maps and I gave them to the American Legation.

The Allies never did anything. To this day I don’t know why. It was not the negligence or lack of activity on the part of the Jews …. Dr. Chaim Weizmann, president of the World Zionist Organization, went to speak to Churchill, who accepted it and sent it on to Anthony Eden, the British Secretary of State for War, not the greatest friend … (But) the Allied governments sabotaged it. For what reason? I don’t know.

Today, we know they lied to us from beginning to end. They said, “It cannot be done, we have to win the war.” So I said, “You don’t want to win the war and (find that) all the people for whom you are fighting are dead.” Then they said, “We cannot help it; we cannot deal with it, it will detract from the major (effort).” But when we insisted, they said it could not be done for technical reasons.

We know today that they had full air supremacy from the beginning of the year (1944). During that period, there was a whole series of bombardments of the Buna works, five kilometres from (the main) Auschwitz (camp). So how to explain it — they couldn’t have thrown three bombs there?

(Tomorrow: Part Three)