At this point, the creation of the War Refugee Board is still somewhat of a secret. Adolf Berle, newly in charge of the Visa Division at the State Department (Breckinridge Long’s successor) doesn’t even know about it yet. So the Treasury Department staff and their collaborators are trying to get their ducks in a row so that when the creation of the Board IS announced, they can answer any questions the press (or, more likely, other government employees) might have about it.
One of the big questions was money. The WRB planned to get some administrative financing from the President’s Emergency Fund, but the exact number was up in the air.
They had a few options:
- depend on the President’s Emergency Fund for administrative financing (and for a few projects) but assist relief agencies to use their private funds in the most effective way
- have a public fundraising campaign for relief and rescue projects
- depend solely on government financing
They ended up going with option 1.
The problem with option 2 is that it would have taken a long time to host a campaign, the results were uncertain, and it would compete with ongoing War Bond Drives, the National War Fund campaign, and United Jewish Appeal. The Board didn’t want to draw private funds from any of these causes (and in fact, they ended up facilitating many of the projects funded through the NWF and UJA).
The problem with option 3 is that this, too, was uncertain, and there were rules about what could and could not be done with government financing. Had the WRB gone with this option (as many of the relief agencies hoped they would) it’s likely they would not have received enough money to implement many projects and the bureaucratic oversight on the use of the funds would have stymied any clandestine work.
This document, dated January 20, 1944, from the War Refugee Board papers at Hyde Park (box 60, folder 5) authorizes the WRB to accept small donations from private citizens under the Title XI of the Second War Powers Act. It meant that these small donations to the WRB could stay with the agency and didn’t have to be put in the general Treasury pot. (Believe it or not, people actually donated money to the government for projects they supported!) The WRB made sure that any donation from a private citizen went towards the Board-funded rescue projects, not to any administrative needs.
