Specifically, Assistant Secretary Breckenridge Long, was actively blocking any efforts to rescue Jewish refugees and burying evidence of his obstructionism.
Pehle and his colleagues helped Morgenthau marshal the evidence of State Department intransigence and present it to President Franklin D. Roosevelt in January 1944.
Originally titled with the fiery phrase, ”Report to the Secretary on the Acquiescence of this Government in the Murder of the Jews,” the final draft of the briefing memorandum was headed, "Personal Report to the President.” As a result of that briefing, Roosevelt created the War Refugee Board, and placed Pehle in charge as its first executive director.
[3] Pehle’s advocacy had played a large part in convincing Roosevelt to finally act, according to the PBS documentary “The U.S. and the Holocaust.”[4] The War Refugee Board, nominally co-headed by the U.S.
After years of official inaction in the matter of the extermination of European Jews by the Nazis and their Axis collaborators, the War Refugee Board streamlined the work of private relief agencies, helping them send money and resources into neutral and enemy territory.
[2][6] In 2006 John Pehle was the subject of H.R.5011, which was meant to award him, posthumously, a Congressional Gold Medal in recognition of his contributions to the Nation in helping rescue Jews and other minorities from the Holocaust during World War II.