It’s worth it, every so often, to stop and remember that for our cast of characters in the War Refugee Board, World War II touched their lives in a very real way. This may seem obvious, but I promise that it’s easy for a lot of historians of the Holocaust to treat them as two separate issues. Lots of Holocaust historians know nothing about World War II, and vice versus.
But at the time, the members of the War Refugee Board had skin in the game. Josiah DuBois’s brother had been in a Nazi POW camp for more than a year and three other brothers were also fighting overseas. Florence Hodel’s husband (they were separated) was stationed in England. John Pehle’s brother is in Europe. He won’t survive the war.
It affects friends of the WRB, too. In October 1943, John Winant, the US ambassador to Great Britain, learned his son had been captured; one of the highest-profile POWs, John Winant, Jr. was the personal prisoner of Heinrich Himmler and narrowly escaped execution. In March 1944, Oscar Cox found out that his brother had been killed in the Pacific. And, on April 11, 1944, the son of Herbert Lehman, former governor of New York and director of UNRRA, was killed over Europe.
The Holocaust and World War II were experienced at the same time. I know this sounds so obvious, but it is worth keeping at the front of your mind. The progress–and stakes–of the war mattered to them, and both were intensely personal.
