2004 Days of Remembrance Theme

For Justice and Humanity

Resources »

The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum is mandated by Congress to educate Americans about the history of the Holocaust and to annually commemorate its victims in the national Days of Remembrance ceremony. The Museum has designated “For Justice and Humanity” as the theme for the 2004 Days of Remembrance in memory of the Jews of Hungary, deported sixty years ago in the final stages of World War II, and to honor those courageous individuals as well as the few organizations and countries who attempted to rescue them.

In 1944, Nazi Germany and its collaborators continued, even accelerated, the killings of the "Final Solution" despite certain military defeat. By late summer 1944, Soviet forces, having crushed the German Army in Belorussia, were approaching Germany from the east, while British and American forces, following their successful D-Day invasion of France in June, approached from the west.

A transport of Jews from Hungary arrives at Auschwitz-Birkenau. Poland, May 1944. Yad Vashem Photo Archives/United States Holocaust Memorial Museum #77354

Suspicious of Hungarian efforts to desert the Axis alliance, German forces occupied Hungary in March 1944. In May, Hungarian officials, with German guidance, began the systematic deportation of Jews from Hungary. Most of the victims were deported to the Auschwitz-Birkenau killing center in German-occupied Poland, while a minority was deported to a string of transit and forced labor camps on the Austro-Hungarian border. In less than three months, German and Hungarian authorities deported approximately 440,000 Jews. At least half of them were killed in gas chambers immediately upon their arrival at Auschwitz-Birkenau. By the time the Red Army drove the Germans and their Hungarian collaborators out of Hungary in April 1945, nearly four-fifths of the Hungarian Jewish community had been killed.

Yet there were some individuals, organizations and countries that asserted the value of human life in the face of the systematic murder of men, women and children. The War Refugee Board (WRB), established on January 22, 1944, by executive order of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, worked with Jewish organizations, diplomats from neutral countries, and resistance groups in Europe to rescue Jews from occupied territories and provide relief to inmates of Nazi concentration camps. Its mandate was to take "all measures to rescue victims of enemy oppression in imminent danger of death."

Portrait of Henry Morgenthau Jr. at his desk in the U.S. Department of the Treasury. USHMM #03919/courtesy of National Archives

The creation of the WRB was largely the work of Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau, Jr. and his team. Following the 1942 confirmation of the mass murder of Europe's Jews, the failure of the Bermuda Conference on rescue in April 1943, and the growing outrage of the American Jewry at how little was being done to rescue the remnant of Europe's Jews, there was pressure on Roosevelt to take action, which he finally did in establishing the WRB in 1944. Measured against the enormity of the Holocaust, the work of the WRB and its accomplishments were far too late and exceedingly modest. Yet, when viewed in the context of the military situation in early 1944, and the enormous challenges faced by the agency, the activities and results of the WRB were significant.

Per Anger, in his office, in front of a large image of Raoul Wallenberg USHMM #00018/courtesy of Per and Ellena Anger

Raoul Wallenberg, a Swedish diplomat based in Budapest, Hungary, led the War Refugee Board's most extensive rescue efforts. Wallenberg and his Swedish colleagues, such as Per Anger, helped protect tens of thousands of Hungarian Jews from being deported to Auschwitz by distributing protective Swedish passports or travel papers. As Sweden was a neutral country, Germany could not easily harm Swedish citizens. Diplomats from other neutral countries joined the rescue effort. Carl Lutz, a Swiss diplomat, issued certificates of emigration placing nearly 50,000 Jews in Budapest under Swiss protection. Italian businessman Giorgio Perlasca, posing as a Spanish diplomat, issued forged Spanish visas and established under his "authority" safe houses, including one for Jewish children. Angelo Rotta, the papal nuncio in Budapest, protested the treatment of the Jews and issued thousands of Vatican protective passes. When Soviet forces liberated Budapest in February 1945, more than 100,000 Jews still remained in the city because of the efforts of Wallenberg, Lutz, Perlasca, Rotta, and other diplomats and individuals. The War Refugee Board played a crucial role in the rescue of as many as 200,000 Jews in German-occupied Europe.

U.S. officials knew about German plans to murder the European Jews more than a year before taking specific action, in establishing the War Refugee Board, to help rescue Europe's Jews. Even though this action was late, it saved lives, reminding us of the terrible consequences of indifference and of the possibility for individuals, organizations and countries to confront and work to halt acts of genocide or related crimes against humanity.