I 
109TH CONGRESS 
2D SESSION 
H. R. 5011 
To award posthumously a congressional gold medal to John Pehle in recogni-
tion of his contributions to the Nation in helping rescue Jews and 
other minorities from the Holocaust during World War II. 
IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES 
MARCH 16, 2006 
Ms. WOOLSEY introduced the following bill; which was referred to the 
Committee on Financial Services 
A BILL 
To award posthumously a congressional gold medal to John 
Pehle in recognition of his contributions to the Nation 
in helping rescue Jews and other minorities from the 
Holocaust during World War II. 
Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representa-
tives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, 
SECTION 1. FINDINGS. 
Congress makes the following findings: 
(1) Approximately 6,000,000 Jews were slaugh-
tered pursuant to Adolf Hitler’s diabolical plan for 
the total extermination of the Jews during the reign 
of the Third Reich, and even more would have per-
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ished had it not been for the heroic efforts of John 
Pehle to persuade President Franklin Roosevelt of 
the need for extraordinary measures. 
(2) As a 33-year-old lawyer working in the For-
eign Funds Control unit of the Department of the 
Treasury of the United States, John Pehle, along 
with his colleagues at the Department of the Treas-
ury, worked to overcome bureaucratic inertia within 
the United States Government during World War II 
in order to rescue many Jews from the extermi-
nation camps of the Nazi Holocaust. 
(3) By researching and citing pertinent and 
overlooked precedents, in December 1943, John 
Pehle was instrumental in helping secure the first li-
cense of communications in enemy-occupied territory 
and a remittance of $25,000 that was issued by the 
United States Government to Gerhart Riegner, the 
representative of the World Jewish Congress in 
Switzerland, for the rescue of Jews in France and 
Romania. 
(4) Overcoming internal communication prob-
lems within the United States Government, John 
Pehle provided critical information about the rap-
idly-worsening plight of deported Jews from many 
parts of Europe to his superiors—Secretary of the 
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Treasury Henry Morgenthau, Jr., General Counsel 
Randolph Paul, and Assistant General Counsel Jo-
siah E. Dubois—and together they determined to in-
form President Franklin Roosevelt of the urgent 
need for corrective action. 
(5) John Pehle accompanied Secretary Morgen-
thau and Randolph Paul to meet with President 
Franklin Roosevelt on January 16, 1944, to deliver 
a vitally important document titled Personal Report 
to the President, which Pehle, Morgenthau, and 
Paul were instrumental in compiling and which had 
first been entitled Report to the Secretary on the 
Acquiescence of This Government in the Murder of 
the Jews. 
(6) On January 22, 1944, only 6 days after re-
ceiving the Personal Report to the President, and in 
reaction to it, President Franklin Roosevelt issued 
Executive Order 9417, establishing the War Refugee 
Board, and appointed John Pehle as the Acting Ex-
ecutive Director of the Board. 
(7) Thanks largely to the heroic efforts and un-
paralleled persistence of John Pehle, it became the 
policy of the United States Government to imple-
ment ‘‘the development of plans and programs . . . 
for a) the rescue, transportation, maintenance, and 
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relief of the victims of enemy oppression, and b) the 
establishment of havens of temporary refuge for 
such victims’’; Pehle became responsible directly to 
the President in implementing that policy Govern-
ment-wide. 
(8) In one of his first official acts at the War 
Refugee Board, John Pehle, on January 25, 1944, 
drafted an overdue and critically important diplo-
matic cable, sent to all United States embassies, 
consulates, and other diplomatic missions, that or-
dered ‘‘action be taken to forestall the plot of the 
Nazis to exterminate the Jews and other persecuted 
minorities in Europe’’. 
(9) Working with a staff of no more than 30 
employees in Washington, D.C., Pehle spearheaded 
the development of new programs to increase the 
flow of refugees from Nazi persecution to neutral 
countries in Europe (Turkey, Portugal, Switzerland, 
Spain, and Sweden), who, in turn, would funnel 
them to Northern Africa, Palestine, and North and 
South America, thus making room for new arrivals 
from Nazi-occupied territories. 
(10) In 1944, Pehle and his colleagues in the 
War Refugee Board cleared the way for the Inter-
national Red Cross to provide food parcels to ‘‘state-
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less’’ civilians in the internment camps, to support 
and protect 3,000,000 Allied and Axis prisoners of 
war, and to streamline Federal licensing procedures 
for the transmission of funds to pay for Red Cross 
relief supplies and rescue operations, thus saving the 
lives of thousands of Jews and other internees. 
(11) President Franklin Roosevelt’s promotion 
of John Pehle from Acting Executive Director to 
Executive Director of the War Refugee Board on 
March 24, 1944, coincided with the issuance of a di-
rect warning at the presidential news conference on 
the same day, prepared by the Board, that none of 
those who participated in the wholesale systematic 
murder of the Jews of Europe—‘‘one of the blackest 
crimes of all history’’—shall go unpunished. 
(12) In April 1944, at the direction of John 
Pehle, the War Refugee Board urged all neutral na-
tions to increase their diplomatic missions in Hun-
gary to help prevent the accelerating deportation of 
Jews to Auschwitz, Birkenau, and other Nazi exter-
mination camps and begin providing vital funding 
and other resources such as lists of corrupt Hun-
garian passport officials, undercover anti-Nazis, and 
other sympathizers to assist the ingenious and heroic 
struggle of Raoul Wallenberg, whose extraordinary 
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personal efforts resulted in the rescue of more than 
100,000 Hungarian Jews from Nazi concentration 
camps. 
(13) John Pehle spearheaded the valiant efforts 
of the War Refugee Board, which was responsible 
for the direct rescue of several hundred thousand 
men, women, and children from the Holocaust and 
the sustenance of thousands of Holocaust survivors 
during 1944 and 1945, thus breathing new life into 
the American tradition of helping the oppressed and 
persecuted in the name of human decency. 
SEC. 2. CONGRESSIONAL GOLD MEDAL. 
(a) PRESENTATION AUTHORIZED.—The Speaker of 
the House of Representatives and the President Pro Tem-
pore of the Senate shall make appropriate arrangements 
for the presentation, on behalf of Congress, of a gold 
medal of appropriate design, to the family or personal rep-
resentative of John Pehle in recognition of his service to 
the Nation. 
(b) DESIGN AND STRIKING.—For purposes of the 
presentation referred to in subsection (a), the Secretary 
of the Treasury (hereafter in this Act referred to as the 
‘‘Secretary’’) shall strike a gold medal with suitable em-
blems, devices, and inscriptions to be determined by the 
Secretary. 
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SEC. 3. DUPLICATE MEDALS. 
The Secretary may strike and sell duplicates in 
bronze of the gold medal struck pursuant to section 2 
under such regulations as the Secretary may prescribe, at 
a price sufficient to cover the cost thereof, including labor, 
materials, dies, use of machinery, and overhead expenses, 
and the cost of the gold medal. 
SEC. 4. STATUS OF MEDALS. 
(a) NATIONAL MEDALS.—The medals struck under 
this Act are national medals for purposes of chapter 51 
of title 31, United States Code. 
(b) NUMISMATIC ITEMS.—For purposes of section 
5134 of title 31, Unites States Code, all medals struck 
under this Act shall be considered to be numismatic items. 
SEC. 5. AUTHORITY TO USE FUND AMOUNTS; PROCEEDS OF 
SALE. 
(a) AUTHORITY TO USE FUND AMOUNTS.—There is 
authorized to be charged against the United States Mint 
Public Enterprise Fund such amounts as may be nec-
essary to pay for the costs of the medals stuck pursuant 
to this Act. 
(b) PROCEEDS OF SALE.—Amounts received from the 
sale of duplicate bronze medals authorized under section 
3 shall be deposited into the United States Mint Public 
Enterprise Fund. 
Æ 
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