John W. Pehle
John W. Pehle (1909 – 1999) was an American United States Department of the Treasury lawyer and one of the authors of the Report to the Secretary on the Acquiescence of This Government in the Murder of the Jews, a 1944 document exposing the United States Department of State's alleged cover-up of the Holocaust. He became the first director of the War Refugee Board.[1]
John W. Pehle | |
|---|---|
| Director of the War Refugee Board | |
| In office 1944–1946 | |
| President | Franklin D. Roosevelt |
| Preceded by | Position created |
| Succeeded by | William O'Dwyer |
| Personal details | |
| Born | 1909 Minneapolis, Minnesota, U.S. |
| Died | March 24, 1999 (aged 90) Bethesda, Maryland, U.S. |
| Education | Creighton University (BA) Creighton University (LLB, JD) |
Early life and education
Pehle was born in Minneapolis and grew up in Omaha, Nebraska. He earned a Bachelor of Arts degree from Creighton University, followed by a Bachelor of Laws and Juris Doctor from Yale Law School.[2]
Career
From 1934 to 1940, he was a lawyer in the Office of the General Counsel for the Department of the Treasury. Later, he became director of the Treasury Department's foreign-funds control and assistant to the secretary of the Treasury.
He was the first director of the War Refugee Board, created in 1944,[3] while he continued work for the Treasury Department's Foreign Funds control. Early in 1946, he left the War Refugee Board, where he was succeeded by William O'Dwyer.
In 1946 he entered private practice, as senior partner in the Washington, D.C., law firm of Pehle & Lesser and successor firms; and, later, in the Washington office of Morgan, Lewis & Bockius.
Death
He died in Bethesda, Maryland in 1999.[2][4] In 2006 he received posthum the Congressional Gold Medal for his rescue efforts.[5]
References
- "Background & Overview of the War Refugee Board". www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org. Retrieved 2018-04-09.
- "Obituaries". Washington Post. 1999-03-27. ISSN 0190-8286. Retrieved 2018-04-09.
- Lanzmann, Claude. "Interview with John Pehle during the filming of Shoah". USHMM, Accession Number: 1996.166, Film ID: 3259, 3260, 3261, 3262, 3263, 3264. Retrieved 15 July 2021.
- Wolfson, Leah (2015-08-13). Jewish Responses to Persecution: 1944–1946 (in Arabic). Rowman & Littlefield. ISBN 9781442243378.
- War Refugee Board (WRB) on the site of Holocaust Memorial Museum of San Antonio.