Harrison Report

Truman wrote "On the basis of this and other information which has come to me I concur in the belief that no other single matter is so important for those who have known the horrors of concentration camps for over a decade as is the future of immigration possibilities into Palestine.

One is led to wonder whether the German people, seeing this, are not supposing that we are following or at least condoning Nazi policy.He wrote that to date U.S. authorities were handling DPs in traditional ways as national groups, but that conditions and the history of Nazi anti-Semitism required recognition of the distinct identity of these DPs:[11] The first and plainest need of these people is a recognition of their actual status and by this I mean their status as Jews....

Refusal to recognize the Jews as such has the effect, in this situation, of closing one's eyes to their former and more barbaric persecution.He recommended to the President that 100,000 DPs in those camps be permitted to resettle in Palestine.

Eisenhower responded promptly with a series of measures that segregated Jewish DPs, found housing even if it meant displacing German locals, increased rations, and preference in employment, perhaps aided by information about the Report's contents before it reached Truman.

We have no better opportunity to demonstrate this than by the manner in which we ourselves actually treat the survivors remaining in Germany.It also highlighted Palestine as the solution and British control of immigration there as a crucial barrier.

He wrote that:[12] Mr. Harrison's report gives little regard to the problems faced, the real successes attained in saving the lives of thousands of Jewish and other concentration camp victims and repatriating those who could and wished to be repatriated, and the progress made in two months to bring these unfortunates who remained under our jurisdiction from the depths of physical degeneration to a condition of health and essential comfort.Harrison responded in a radio address the next day that what Eisenhower viewed as improvements fell far short of what was required: "The point is that they shouldn't be in any camps at all, but in houses.

[16] In June he called for the United Nations to create an agency to address the problems of those uprooted by war, many now stateless, and he thought Latin America might welcome many of them.

[17] British Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin referred to the report in a speech to the House of Commons, a week after the London Conference of 1946–47 – Britain's last attempt to negotiate peace in Palestine – failed.