“The Homeless, Tempest-Tossed” (1942 - )

Award-winning memoirist Daniel Mendelsohn reflects on myths surrounding the Holocaust, like how people assume every Jew died in a concentration camp or gas chamber. But that’s only part of the story – they were killed in all different manners and unimaginable ways. The tragedy is that there were millions who couldn’t be rescued, and the particularity of what happened is already being erased.

In 1944, President Roosevelt established the War Refugee Board – the only government agency created by any of the Allies specifically to do what it could for the Jews still under Nazi threat. Much of the Board’s most effective work was focused on Hungary with the help of fellow diplomats from neutral nations. It was still home to some 800,000 Jews, the largest remaining population in Europe.

Holocaust survivor Eva Geiringer reflects on life in Auschwitz. In 1944, Americans first learned details of the camp when three escapees meticulously documented what they’d seen. When the War Refugee Board received the report from Switzerland, they made the firsthand testimony public, and it became headline news. But Americans still couldn't grasp the scale and scope of the crime.