In this lecture, historian Dr. Rebecca Erbelding pieces together years of research and newly uncovered archival materials to tell the dramatic story of America’s little-known efforts to save the Jews of Europe.
Rebecca Erbelding is the author of Rescue Board: The Untold Story of America’s Efforts to Save the Jews of Europe, which won the JDC-Herbert Katzki National Jewish Book Award in 2018. She holds a PhD in American history from George Mason University. Her work has previously been featured in the New York Times, the Washington Post, the New Yorker, and on the History Channel and National Geographic.
Rescue Board is the extraordinary story of the War Refugee Board, a US government effort late in World War II to save the remaining Jews of Europe. The staff of the War Refugee Board gathered D.C. pencil pushers, international relief workers, smugglers, diplomats, millionaires, and rabble-rousers to run operations across four continents and a dozen countries. They tricked Nazis, forged identity papers, maneuvered food and medicine into concentration camps, recruited spies, leaked news stories, laundered money, negotiated ransoms, and funneled millions of dollars into Europe, ultimately saving tens of thousands of lives.
The Gerald S. Kaplan Endowed Lecture is supported by the Gerald S. Kaplan Endowment Fund.
