IV 
110TH CONGRESS 
1ST SESSION 
H. RES. 226 
To recognize John Pehle for 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 7, 2007 
Ms. WOOLSEY submitted the following resolution; which was referred to the 
Committee on Foreign Affairs 
RESOLUTION 
To recognize John Pehle for his contributions to the Nation 
in helping rescue Jews and other minorities from the 
Holocaust during World War II. 
Whereas approximately 6,000,000 Jews were slaughtered 
pursuant to Adolf Hitler’s diabolical plan for the total ex-
termination of the Jews during the reign of the Third 
Reich, and even more would have perished had it not 
been for the heroic efforts of John Pehle to persuade 
President Franklin Roosevelt of the need for extraor-
dinary measures; 
Whereas, as a 33-year-old lawyer working in the Foreign 
Funds Control unit of the Department of the Treasury 
of the United States, John Pehle, along with his col-
leagues at the Department of the Treasury, worked to 
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•HRES 226 IH 
overcome bureaucratic inertia within the United States 
Government during World War II in order to rescue 
many Jews from the extermination camps of the Nazi 
Holocaust; 
Whereas, by researching and citing pertinent and overlooked 
precedents, in December 1943, John Pehle was instru-
mental in helping secure the first license of communica-
tions in enemy-occupied territory and a remittance of 
$25,000 that was issued by the United States Govern-
ment to Gerhart Riegner, the representative of the World 
Jewish Congress in Switzerland, for the rescue of Jews 
in France and Romania; 
Whereas, overcoming internal communication problems within 
the United States Government, John Pehle provided crit-
ical information about the rapidly-worsening plight of de-
ported Jews from many parts of Europe to his superi-
ors—Secretary of the Treasury Henry Morgenthau, Jr., 
General Counsel Randolph Paul, and Assistant General 
Counsel Josiah E. Dubois—and together they determined 
to inform President Franklin Roosevelt of the urgent 
need for corrective action; 
Whereas John Pehle accompanied Secretary Morgenthau and 
Randolph Paul to meet with President Franklin Roo-
sevelt on January 16, 1944, to deliver a vitally important 
document titled Personal Report to the President, which 
Pehle, Morgenthau, and Paul were instrumental in com-
piling and which had first been entitled Report to the 
Secretary on the Acquiescence of This Government in the 
Murder of the Jews; 
Whereas, on January 22, 1944, only 6 days after receiving 
the Personal Report to the President, and in reaction to 
it, President Franklin Roosevelt issued Executive Order 
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•HRES 226 IH 
9417, establishing the War Refugee Board, and ap-
pointed John Pehle as the Acting Executive Director of 
the Board; 
Whereas, thanks largely to the heroic efforts and unparalleled 
persistence of John Pehle, it became the policy of the 
United States Government to implement ‘‘the develop-
ment of plans and programs . . . for (a) the rescue, trans-
portation, maintenance, and relief of the victims of enemy 
oppression, and (b) the establishment of havens of tem-
porary refuge for such victims’’; Pehle became respon-
sible directly to the President in implementing that policy 
Government-wide; 
Whereas, in one of his first official acts at the War Refugee 
Board, John Pehle, on January 25, 1944, drafted an 
overdue and critically important diplomatic cable, sent to 
all United States embassies, consulates, and other diplo-
matic missions, that ordered ‘‘action be taken to forestall 
the plot of the Nazis to exterminate the Jews and other 
persecuted minorities in Europe’’; 
Whereas, working with a staff of no more than 30 employees 
in Washington, DC, 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 ar-
rivals from Nazi-occupied territories; 
Whereas, in 1944, Pehle and his colleagues in the War Ref-
ugee Board cleared the way for the International Red 
Cross to provide food parcels to ‘‘stateless’’ civilians in 
the internment camps, to support and protect 3,000,000 
Allied and Axis prisoners of war, and to streamline Fed-
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•HRES 226 IH 
eral 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 in-
ternees; 
Whereas President Franklin Roosevelt’s promotion of John 
Pehle from Acting Executive Director to Executive Direc-
tor of the War Refugee Board on March 24, 1944, coin-
cided with the issuance of a direct warning at the presi-
dential news conference on the same day, prepared by the 
Board, that none of those who participated in the whole-
sale systematic murder of the Jews of Europe—‘‘one of 
the blackest crimes of all history’’—shall go unpunished; 
Whereas, in April 1944, at the direction of John Pehle, the 
War Refugee Board urged all neutral nations to increase 
their diplomatic missions in Hungary to help prevent the 
accelerating deportation of Jews to Auschwitz, Birkenau, 
and other Nazi extermination camps and begin providing 
vital funding and other resources such as lists of corrupt 
Hungarian passport officials, undercover anti-Nazis, and 
other sympathizers to assist the ingenious and heroic 
struggle of Raoul Wallenberg, whose extraordinary per-
sonal efforts resulted in the rescue of more than 100,000 
Hungarian Jews from Nazi concentration camps; and 
Whereas 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 thou-
sands 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 de-
cency: Now, therefore, be it 
Resolved, That the House of Representatives— 
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•HRES 226 IH 
(1) honors the life and contributions of John 
Pehle; and 
(2) commends the actions of John Pehle that 
rescued Jews and other minorities from the 
Holocause during World War II. 
Æ 
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