In my June 16th entry, I talked about the very real and very destructive rivalries between the Jewish relief organizations.  This cable is from James Mann.  Mann was a young guy who had been with the Treasury Dept in the 1930s, then with the State Dept. Almost as soon as the WRB was created, Pehle pulled Mann out of his foreign service post in Argentina and brought him back to work with the Board. He was their “fixer.”  Whenever there was a real problem, Mann was the mediator, he was the one who went in and solved the problem.  And his reports are incredibly insightful and damn funny.

Mann flew to Portugal to try to fix the situation in Lisbon between the Joint and the World Jewish Congress. For nearly three weeks, he goes completely off the grid. He sends very few cables at all, certainly nothing about what is happening. This is one of the few cables that he sends during this time, announcing that he is going to Spain. It’s pretty enigmatic.