More Than a Teardrop in the Ocean

Neil Rolde’s biography of Breckinridge Long exposed the tragic reality that the U.S. appointed the wrong man for the job. Ninety percent of the quota places available to immigrants from countries under German and Italian control were never filled. In 1944 President Roosevelt established the War Refugee Board with Executive Order 9417 that declared: “It is the policy of this Government to take all measures within its power to rescue the victims of enemy oppression who are in imminent danger of death and otherwise to afford such victims all possible relief and assistance consistent with the successful prosecution of the war.” This is Volume I. Volume II, More of the Tempestuous History of the War Refugee Board, continues the intertwined stories of heroism, perseverance and escape across changing borders and personal relationships, from the worst to the best, from Europe to North Africa, the U.S. and the Middle East. “The War Refugee Board’s feat of saving some 200,000 targeted innocents condemned to die out of six million slaughtered, while seemingly puny, is surely worthy of respect. The saga of the Board is a story worthy of being told in detailed entirety, in two volumes.” —Neil Rolde