In January 1944, Treasury Department staff, led by Secretary of the Treasury Henry Morgenthau, Jr., persuaded President Franklin D. Roosevelt to establish the War Refugee Board, During World War II. Reports from various intelligence bodies in Europe and the famous Reignart Telegram made increasingly clear to Americans that Nazi Germany and their allied Axis powers were systematically murdering European Jews.
Roosevelt then created the War Refugee Board, nominally headed by the Secretaries of State, War, and Treasury, with the aim of carrying out an official American policy of rescue and relief. The War Refugee Board staff worked closely with Jewish organizations, diplomats from neutral countries, and resistance groups in Europe and intelligence officials to rescue Jews from occupied territories, provide relief to Jews in hiding and in concentration camps and help release information regarding what was happening to Jews in Europe.
The War Refugee Board, along with the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, also sponsored the work of Raoul Wallenberg, a Swedish businessman sent to Budapest as a diplomat to assist Hungarian Jews. Wallenberg helped save thousands of Hungarian Jews by distributing protective Swedish documents. Because Sweden was a neutral country, Germany could not easily harm those under Swedish protection. Wallenberg also set up homes, hospitals, nurseries, and soup kitchens for the Jews of Budapest.
The War Refugee Board is described in the novel The Wallenberg Dossier.