THE NORTHWEST OHIO JEWISH BOOK FESTIVAL PRESENTS:  

Historian Rebecca Erbelding, author of Rescue Board: The Untold Story of America’s Efforts to Save the Jews of Europe

Thursday, September 3

7 p.m. Zoom virtual event

Register by Friday, August 28, to registrations@jewishtoledo.org 

In January 1944, a young Treasury lawyer named John Pehle made a case for the United States to authorize relief funds to help Jews escape Nazi territory. Within days of the meeting, FDR created the War Refugee Board, empowering it to rescue the victims of Nazi persecution, and put Pehle in charge. In Rescue Board: The Untold Story of America’s Efforts to Save the Jews of Europe U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum scholar Rebecca Erbelding tells the extraordinary unknown story of the War Refugee Board, President Franklin D. Roosevelt's unpublicized effort late in the war to save the remaining Jews.

Rescue Board is based on a decade of research, never-before-seen documents from the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, and interviews with survivors and their families. Profiled by The Washington Post, The New York Times, the History Channel, and NPR, author Rebecca Erbelding is an archivist, curator, and historian for the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington D.C. She won the Jewish Book Award in 2019.