In July 1944, six months after the change in US license procedure meant that relief organizations were able to send much more money overseas to aid their work. If you remember, there are a few different ways the organizations could use their license money: 1) through blocked dollars in a neutral country; 2) through currency exchange in a neutral country; or, if those weren’t possible, 3) free exchange of currency in enemy territory.
It might surprise you to learn that most of the relief organizations only worked through 1) and 2), finding wealthy Swiss citizens and refugees who could lend or exchange large amounts of the needed currency.
The exception was the Joint, normally the most strait-laced and law-abiding of all the organizations, but was the only one to exchange free currency in enemy territory. This is Saly Mayer’s basic explanation of the exchanges (he gets into more detail in other pages, but this gives you the broad brushstrokes of what he was up to.)
