Page 11 of The Righteous
WHEN THE MEETING with John Pehle concluded, Teddy took Julia and Theresa to the Oak Tree, a restaurant and cocktail bar not too far away on Jefferson Drive.
They arrived just ahead of the early-evening crowd and were shown to a booth.
Teddy ordered a round of beers and some appetizers.
He still had a confident smile on his face.
Julia, on the other hand, was not smiling.
Something big was going on, and she was being kept in the dark.
“All right, Teddy, what’s this report all about?
‘Tomorrow’s the day,’” she said mimicking Teddy’s voice.
“‘Hell or high water.’ ‘Special delivery.’ C’mon, Teddy, it’s me, Julia.
What in the world are you talking about?
What report is being delivered? And who is Joe? ”
“Joe is Josiah DuBois, an attorney here at Treasury, and he is the one drafting the report. Believe me, Julia, it’s huge,” Teddy said.
“And I don’t have a right to know about it? Didn’t we put our lives on the line together in Amsterdam? Weren’t we soldiers in arms in a combat zone?”
Theresa assumed that Teddy’s reluctance to discuss the secret report was due to her presence. She was an outsider. She stood up to leave. “I’m going to go and take a walk,” she said. “You two can discuss the matter in private.”
“Oh no, you stay right where you are,” Julia said. “You and I have no secrets. Whatever Teddy has to say, he can say it in front of you.”
Teddy took a deep breath, glanced to either side, and leaned forward so the conversation stayed right at the table. “Do either of you know about an organization called the World Jewish Congress? Because it all started there.”
Julia shook her head, but Theresa nodded. “My uncle mentioned something about a World Jewish Congress organized in Switzerland,” Theresa said, “but I don’t know much more than that. I was in college at the time.”
“Your uncle was right,” Teddy said. “It was formed in 1936 in Switzerland by Nahum Goldman and Rabbi Stephen Wise.”
That caught Theresa’s attention, and her eyebrows raised. “Rabbi Wise?”
“That’s right.”
“I know about him; in fact, I’ve met him.
He was born in Budapest, but now he lives in New York.
His father and grandparents were rabbis in Hungary.
They’re well known. Rabbi Wise was one of the first advocates of the movement we call Progressive Judaism.
My father, who is on the board at Dohány Street Synagogue, and used to be the president, knows him very well. He is the one who introduced me.”
“So Rabbi Wise is a Progressive Jew?” asked Teddy.
“Very much so. Very modern. And very outspoken. Apparently, Rabbi Wise gave a controversial sermon eight or nine years ago. It has become well known among progressive, or reform, rabbis. I’ve seen a copy.”
“Do you remember that sermon?” Julia said.
“Not word for word, but my uncle was right—it was controversial. The sermon was titled ‘Jesus the Jew.’”
Teddy gave a low whistle. “That could be controversial.”
Theresa continued, “I don’t think it was meant to be.
It was progressive, that’s for sure, but not demeaning or insulting in any way.
It didn’t criticize Christian religions.
Rabbi Wise’s sermon praised Jesus as being a great moral and ethical teacher, a Jew of whom we should be proud because of his ethical teachings.
There is no doubt that Jesus was born a Jew. ”
“Then what’s wrong with calling him Jesus the Jew?” Julia said.
“Well, I can understand the controversy,” Teddy said.
“It goes against traditional teachings. Especially for Christians who believe Jesus is God, not just an ethical teacher. Jewish liturgy doesn’t mention Jesus.
So, no matter what church or temple Rabbi Wise spoke to, it would rub some people the wrong way. When was that sermon given?”
“About the time Rabbi Wise was a delegate to the Democratic National Convention, where he gave the invocation,” Theresa said. “My father knows him well. Like I said, he’s famous, influential, but also controversial. Why did you bring up Rabbi Wise?”
“Because he was a founder of the World Jewish Congress in Switzerland,” Teddy said.
“The organization stayed in Zurich for a few years and then moved to Paris. When the Nazis started to ramp up their antisemitic campaign, the WJC began to lobby French and Allied governments on behalf of Jewish refugees fleeing Germany and Austria. He also urged US Jewish organizations to lobby Congress to loosen the immigration quotas for Jewish refugees.”
“We’re very familiar with the plight of fleeing refugees, and the harsh immigration quotas,” Julia said. “That was our job at the State Department in Amsterdam from 1938 till 1941.”
“The aims of the WJC are set forth in its charter,” Teddy added. “It is to mobilize the Jewish people and the democratic forces against the Nazi onslaught, and to fight for equal political and economic rights everywhere. That was conveyed to the State Department by Rabbi Wise.”
“We were with the State Department,” Julia said, “but I never heard about Rabbi Wise, or his address, or the WJC.”
“That’s not surprising, is it?” Teddy answered.
“No doubt it was buried away by the State Department. In 1940, General Charles de Gaulle, the leader of the French government in exile, got Wise’s message and pledged to the WJC that all measures taken by the Vichy regime against the Jews would be repudiated upon France’s liberation.
In late 1941 and early 1942, diplomats and journalists started to receive scattered reports about mass murders of Jews in Nazi-occupied Poland and Russia, but the news was difficult to confirm.
In June 1942, the WJC held a press conference in London with a member of the Polish government in exile, where they stated that an estimated one million Jews had already been murdered by the Germans. ”
“That’s not hard to believe,” Julia said. “We heard the reports when we were in Amsterdam. We met many Polish refugees.”
“Working here at Treasury these last few months has opened my eyes,” Teddy said.
“No one outside of Germany knew the details of the Nazis’ plans to commit mass murder or the Wannsee Declaration until the Riegner telegram.
Allied intelligence agents had collected information about the Einsatzgruppen. ”
“I never heard of them,” said Julia and Theresa together.
“Neither did I until recently. They were German SS mobile killing squads that ultimately murdered over one million Jews on the Eastern Front between June 1941 and June 1943. On September 12, 1941, British intelligence agents informed Prime Minister Winston Churchill, and Soviet officials publicly acknowledged it in January 1942. Gerhart M. Riegner, a representative of the World Jewish Congress, sent a cable to British and American diplomatic contacts telling them about it in August 1942. That cable went straight to the State Department.”
“And I suppose the news was buried away?” said Julia. “That is so hard to believe.”
“It is, isn’t it? Treasury Secretary Morgenthau told me that he saw a copy.
The Riegner telegram informed the Allies for the first time about the Nazi plans for the Final Solution—that is, to kill every single Jew on the continent.
Riegner asked the State Department if it would also pass the message on to Rabbi Wise at the WJC, but true to form, the State Department officials did not pass it along to Wise or anyone else. ”
“What did the State Department do after it received the telegram? That’s the important question,” said Theresa.
“I just told you, the answer is nothing,” said Teddy.
“The State Department considered it ‘a wild rumor, fueled by Jewish anxieties.’ It was only three months later, on November 25, 1942, that the WJC was allowed to release that news to the world, and by then, the number of Jews murdered had already reached two million.”
“It’s hard to believe that the State Department would suppress that information,” Julia said. “Why would they do that? Why wouldn’t they want the world to know? There are good people in the State Department. We knew plenty of them. What about Sumner Welles?”
Teddy nodded. “He’s a good man. Do you remember that it was Undersecretary Welles who appointed me to the position of consular officer and sent me to Amsterdam in 1938?
When you and I escaped Holland last fall, it was Welles who steered me away from going back to State and sent me here to Treasury.
At the time, I didn’t know why. Now I do.
In January 1943, at the same time you and I were passing along intelligence reports to State, telling them what was happening in the Netherlands, Rabbi Wise cabled the American embassy in Switzerland asking for more information on the Nazi murders so that it could be made public.
A month later, a State Department official sent a cable basically ordering the diplomats in Switzerland not to make such information public.
For the first six months of 1943, while you and I were scrambling to find places for Dutch families to hide and for good, honest people to take in a little toddler or two, or a baby, there were several cables to and from State discussing proposals to fund refugee rescues, but they never made it happen.
Finally, last July, State approached Treasury to discuss releasing funds for refugees, and Treasury promptly approved.
Did it happen? No. Because of certain individuals whose names you already know, the State Department continued to delay the funding. ”
“You mean like Breckinridge Long?”
Teddy nodded. “That’s right. It was the assistant secretary of state, Breckinridge Long.
When Henry Morgenthau found out what had happened, he decided to take the matter into his own hands.
Maybe because he’s the only Jew in the president’s cabinet, I don’t know, but he wanted to make a difference.
He appointed John Pehle and Joe DuBois to write a report that would accurately and thoroughly detail the history of how our government had done absolutely nothing to help Jewish refugees. ”
“Good for them,” Theresa said. “That takes courage, but that’s a powerful accusation to make.”
“It’s true! Time after time, State buried away information or just refused to help.
The final catalyst for the report was an incident involving seventy thousand Jews whose evacuation from Romania could have been bought with a $170,000 bribe.
The Foreign Funds Control unit of the Treasury Department authorized the payment of the funds.
Both the president and Secretary of State Cordell Hull supported it.
That was five months ago. The payment has still not been funded. ”
“If both Cordell Hull and the president supported paying the ransom, and it is still stalled in Congress, what makes you think that the DuBois Treasury report is going to make any difference?” Julia said.
“There are too many Breckinridge Longs in this country, and they don’t want taxpayer money going overseas, and, I’m sorry to say, they don’t want it going to Jewish refugees either. How do we change their minds?”
“We’re never going to change the minds of the hard-liners, but we can change the course of affairs with a powerful report.
The president can create an official government agency with his executive power and authority to help Jewish and European refugees.
That’s the plan,” Teddy replied. “If we show it to the president, and he believes strongly in it, he can make it happen.”
“Is it finished?” Theresa asked.
“I guess we’ll find out tomorrow. Like I said, ‘Tomorrow’s the day.’ ‘Special delivery.’”
“As I understand American politics,” Theresa said, “President Roosevelt would have to create it by an executive order, not through Congress, or it would be stalled. Isn’t that true?”
“That’s true,” Teddy said, nodding in her direction. “Theresa knows her politics.”
Julia smiled. “Professor Weissbach.”
“Can I come to the meeting, or is it too confidential?” Theresa asked.
“It is super confidential,” Teddy said, “but come over here with Julia tomorrow morning, bright and early, and I’ll do my darndest to get you in.”