The cover of Erbelding’s book (Courtesy)
When you think about America’s response to the Holocaust during the war, you might be under the impression that there really wasn’t much of one. Historian Rebecca Erbelding knows that isn’t quite true.
Erbelding, an archivist and curator at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, is coming to Kansas City under the auspices of the Midwest Center for Holocaust Education. She’ll talk about the largely-unknown story of the War Refugee Board that she uncovered while researching her doctoral dissertation.
“I had read a lot of books on the American response to the Holocaust,” Erbelding said, “They all tell this story of a narrative arc of anti-Semitism and indifference, that the United States knew what was going on and didn’t do anything or it didn’t know what was going on.”
Erbelding commented on how many books do not explain this period of history deeply enough. “Most of these books have a little section at the end, and they say, ‘Well, in Jan. 1944, there’s the War Refugee Board, there’s a new government agency tasked with trying to rescue Jews,’ Erbelding said. “I thought there was a real disconnect between this idea of Americans knew nothing and did nothing, but also at the end, there’s this movement toward rescue that saves many people.”
One of the reasons the story of the War Refugee Board isn’t well-reported is that the records were not well-organized. Most of the records were stored based on what country in which each project took place.
“When you look at things thematically, when you look at them just based on the location in which the project was happening you lose the chronology of it. You lose what else is happening at the time, and that is really crucial information,” Erbelding said. “It matters where the armies are. It matters whether Hungary has been invaded. It matters whether D-Day has happened. All those things have a huge impact in the decision-making.”
To look at the records chronologically and understand the decisions the Board made based on what information they would have had at the time, Erbelding had to photograph everything and rearrange it. It took two years.
“It becomes a mystery. I was learning things that previous historians hadn’t figured out, because I wasn’t looking at documents in the same order,” she said. “Having everything at my fingertips and not knowing if some of (the Board’s) proposals were going to work — It became maybe the most fun research project I’ve ever done.”
Rebecca Erbelding (Courtesy)
After finishing her research, Erbelding donated a digital copy of the newly-organized records to the Franklin D. Roosevelt Library in Hyde Park, New York.
Erbelding also reached out to the children of the people involved with the Board.
“Many of their family members were not only alive and around, but absolutely willing to talk. No one had ever talked with them about this,” she said.
The first head of the Board was John Pehle, a lawyer who grew up in Omaha.
“He surrounded himself with hard workers who were going to fight for this,” Erbelding said.
Erbelding’s book follows Pehle and others trying to navigate the bureaucracy to achieve their goals — especially red tape purposefully put in their way by the State Department. By contrast, the Treasury Department comes out of the story looking like a hero for helping the Board sidestep some of these obstacles.
This isn’t Erbelding’s first time in Kansas City. She’s been here a few times, most recently in the fall. She was all set to talk about her book ,when a transformer problem just hours before the event left the entire Jewish Community Campus without power. MCHE is happy to have her back to talk about this topic.
“Because Rebecca is an American historian rather than a European hoist, I think that gives her an interesting perspective,” said Jessica Rockhold, executive director of MCHE.
Despite some of the frustrations of the story — that the efforts were too small or too late — Erbelding sees it as a tale of hope.
“I think it’s easy to be cynical,” Erbelding said. “I hope it encourages people to be less cynical, to realize individuals can do a massive amount of good, and you shouldn’t just give up because it seems hopeless,” she said.
“There’s a very human message about fighting for what we believe in and the power of individuals to make what we can all agree is the right choice to do something for others, even when the situation might seem hopeless.”
Erbelding’s book is “Rescue Board: The Untold Story of America’s Efforts to Save the Jews of Europe”. She’ll be speaking at 7 p.m., Monday, March 23, at the Jewish Community Campus Social Hall. The MCHE talk is sponsored by Peter and Deborah Frye Stern in honor Herbert and Catherine Stern.
By Beth Lipoff / Contributing Writer