The U.S. and the Holocaust

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Narrator

Much of the Board's most effective work was focused on Hungary, which in early 1944 was still home to some 800,000 Jews, the largest remaining population in Europe. It's regent, Admiral Miklos Horthy, had been a Nazi ally since 1941 when his troops joined the German invasion of the Soviet Union. (tank wheels squealing) (gunshots popping) But most of the Hungarian army had been destroyed at Stalingrad. Because Nazi defeat now seemed inevitable, Horthy began secretly exploring whether a separate peace with the Allies might be possible. When Hitler got word of it, he sent in troops to occupy the country and insisted that Horthy cooperate in ridding Hungary of its Jewish population. Between May and July 1944, some 440,000 Hungarian Jews would be rounded up and deported, 338,000 of them were killed immediately at Auschwitz. So many that the four crematoria were not enough and fire pits had to be dug and constantly tended to dispose of all the corpses. Members of the Polish underground managed to smuggle a camera into Auschwitz, so that five courageous inmates could document what was happening to the Hungarians and other prisoners. While four men kept watch, a fifth snapped four pictures from the hip, not daring to take the time to focus. The film was smuggled out of the camp inside a tube of toothpaste. They remain the only photographs of the killing process at Auschwitz. Meanwhile, in Hungary, the War Refugee Board helped orchestrate a massive international series of threats and condemnations aimed at persuading Horthy to stop cooperating in the killing. Then on July 2nd, U.S. bombers hit oil refineries on the outskirts of Budapest, and dropped leaflets on the city promising punishment for perpetrators. Five days later, Horthy called a halt to the deportations. Hungary's provinces had been emptied of Jews, but some 230,000 still survived in Budapest itself, subject to persecution, fearful that the transports might resume at any time. To protect them and to glean firsthand accounts of what was happening in Hungary, the War Refugee Board called upon neutral nations, including Switzerland, Portugal, and Sweden, to expand their diplomatic presence in the country. Their diplomats in Budapest began issuing so-called protective documents to desperate Jews, sheets of paper emblazoned with coats of arms and peppered with official-looking stamps intended to persuade Hungarian police and German officials that the bearer was under international protection. It's no coincidence that the War Refugee Board ends up making a difference in Hungary, because that's a country which is a sovereign state, which still has diplomats, where a diplomat can be sent in with briefcases full of money, and issue documents, and make a difference. On July 9th, a 31-year-old Swedish businessman named Raoul Wallenberg arrived in Budapest to accelerate that process. Appointed a Swedish attache, but recruited and partially financed by the War Refugee Board, he saw his mission as carrying out an American program. He established hospitals, nurseries, and a soup kitchen, issued thousands of protective papers, and rented 32 safe houses for those who carried them. Diplomats from other neutral countries also participated in rescue operations. Most notably, the Swiss vice consul, Carl Lutz. Soon some 37,000 Jews were living under Swedish and Swiss protection in what was called the International Ghetto. When Hitler replaced the Horthy government with more ardent fascists who resumed the deportation of Jews, Wallenberg intervened as often as he could to win the release of those with protective or forged papers. Of the nearly 150,000 Jews in Budapest who would survive the war, some 120,000 are thought to have owed their lives to Raoul Wallenberg and his fellow diplomats from neutral nations. It is impossible to tally how many tens of thousands of lives the War Refugee Board saved directly or indirectly. These were Americans who were really trying to do good and we have forgotten them, in part because we have this longer narrative and trajectory in our memory of the United States not doing enough, being indifferent, being deceitful, not trying to save people. There is a group of people in the U.S. government who were trying and who saved tens of thousands of lives by the end of World War II. That is not insignificant.