Roswell McClelland is a historian’s dream. He took notes on his conversations, wrote draft replies on letters he received, and annotated cables with his notes and impressions. I always get the sense that he was waiting for a historian to come and tell his story, and is just trying to help me out with this. (It was actually a lifelong habit of his, and has nothing to do with me or anyone else, but I like to project here.)
These are his notes after a meeting with Isaac Sternbuch, the representative in Switzerland of various Orthodox relief organizations in the US. Sternbuch was in a tough position–the Orthodox had a very skewed perspective of what was going on in Europe, and made a lot of demands on their rep. (Things like “send a courier to Lithuania and rescue these specific people.” That was a suicide mission in 1944, and an attempt to rescue people who were no longer there and mostly no longer alive, and who hadn’t been either of these things for several years.)
In this case, Sternbuch is explaining a potential ransom opportunity for Jews. It’s clear McClelland doesn’t quite understand the nature of the deal, and equally clear that Sternbuch is trying to advocate for something he doesn’t quite understand either.
