We were advised by our friends in the State Department that the State Department not only was not interested in the refugee problem, but that they were actively suppressing information about the extent of the Holocaust by sending instructions to their legation in Switzerland not to permit private Jewish agencies to transmit any such stories.

This suppression and cover up were the final straws in causing the Secretary of Treasury Dept., Henry Morgenthau Jr. to go ahead with the President on the establishment of the War Refugee Board.

The tragic history of this Government’s handling of this matter reveals that certain State Department officials are guilty of the following:

(1)     They have not only failed to use the Government machinery at their disposal to rescue Jews from Hitler, but have even gone so far as to use this Government machinery to prevent the rescue of these Jews.

(2)     They have not only failed to cooperate with private organizations in the efforts of these organizations to work out individual programs of their own, but have taken steps designed to prevent these programs from being put into effect.

(3)     They not only have failed to facilitate the obtaining of information concerning Hitler’s plan to exterminate the Jews of Europe but in their official capacity have gone so far as to surreptitiously attempt to stop the obtaining of information concerning the murder of the Jewish population of Europe.

(4)     They have tried to cover up the guilt by:

(a)     concealment and misrepresentation;

(b)     the giving of false and misleading explanations for their failures to act and their attempts to prevent action; and

(c)     the issuance of false and misleading statements concerning the “action” which they have taken to date. 

AMERICAN JEWISH CONGRESS
330 WEST 42^nd STREET NEW YORK CITY

STEPHEN S. WISE, President
CARL SHERMAN, Chairman, Executive Committee
NATHAN D. PERLMAN, Vice President
LEO H. LOWITZ, Vice President
LOUIS LIPSKY, Chairman, Governing Council
M. MALDWIN FERTIG, Chairman, Administrative Committee
JACOB LEICHTMAN, Treasurer

April 14, 1943

Hon. Sumner Wlles
Under Secretary of State
State Department
Washington, D.C.

My Dear Secretary Welles:

In behalf of the joint Emergency Committee for European Jewish Affairs, comprising the American Jewish Committee the American Jewish Congress; the B'nai B'rith the Jewish Labor Committee. the American Emergency Committee for Zionist Affairs of the Zionist organization of America; Hadassah; Mizrachi; and the Poale Zion; the Synagogue Council of America; the Agudath Israel of America, Inc.; and the Union of Orthodox Rabbis in America, we submit through you to the Bermuda Conference, scheduled to open on April 19th, the enclosed Memorandum and appendix, setting forth a program of rescue to be undertaken for the Jews of Nazi-occupied Europe, otherwise doomed to destruction. The signatories, to these Memoranda represent leading Jewish organizations in the United States with whom are affiliated a large majority of the Jewish population of this country.

These Memoranda set forth the principal projects representing, in our considered judgment, basic action to be undertaken immediately by the United Nations if the remnants of European Jewry are to be saved from destruction…

Immigrants

We can delay and effectively stop for a temporary period of indefinite length the number of immigrants into the United States. We could do this by simply advising our consuls, to put every obstacle in the way and to require additional evidence and to resort to various administrative devices which would postpone and postpone and postpone the granting of the visas. However, this could only be temporary. In order to make it more definite It would have to be done by suspension of the rules under the law by the issuance of a proclamation of emergency--which I take it we are not yet ready to proclaim.

Summing Up

We can effectively control non-immigrants by prohibiting the issuance of visas
unless the consent of the Department to obtained in advance for universal application.

We can temporarily prevent the number of immigrants from certain localities such as Cuba, Mexico and other places of origin of German intending immigrants by simply raising administrative obstacles.

"If Jews persist in supporting communism directly or indirectly, that will be regrettable. By their failure to use the press, the radio and the banking house, where they stand so prominently, to fight communism as vigorously as they fight Naziism, the Jews invite the charge of being supporters of communism."
-- November 28, 1938

"From European entanglements, from Naziism, communism and their future wars, America must stand aloof. Keep America safe for Americans and the Stars and Stripes the defender of God."
-- January 2, 1939

"Must the entire world go to war for 600,000 Jews in Germany who are neither American, nor French, nor English citizens, but citizens of Germany?"
-- January 30, 1939