On January 16, 1944, in the middle of the day, Secretary of the Treasury Henry Morgenthau, Jr, Treasury Department General Counsel Randolph Paul, and Head of Foreign Funds Control John Pehle met with President Franklin Roosevelt in the Oval Office. The President had a cold, and the meeting lasted only about 20 minutes. The Treasury Department staff came prepared with an eight-page memo for the President, which they orally summarized at his request and did not leave with him. Arguing that the State Department had been deliberately suppressing information about Nazi persecutions in Europe and hampering attempts to aid the victims of this persecution, the Treasury staff urged the President to create a War Refugee Board.  They envisioned a governmental agency specifically designated to formulate and effect relief and rescue of Jewish and non-Jewish victims of Nazi persecution in Europe. It was a radical idea–but one had been introduced in the House of Representatives and Senate two months earlier. Whether out of concern for the victims of persecution or recognizing it to be politically expedient, Roosevelt agreed to the creation of this new Board.

You can find this document reproduced in a few different places, including in some published primary source series. This one (which looks like the original) is at the National Archives in the Secretary of the Treasury’s files. (RG 56, Entry 193, Box 1).