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Unsung Hero
Panel paints picture of local attorney who helped save Jewish lives
By HARRIET KESSLER
Editor of the Voice
The speakers agreed that the War Refugee Board established by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt in late December 1944 could and should have been created at least a year earlier. They also agreed that without considerable pressure from a Woodbury, N.J. Mormon, Josiah DuBois, Jr., the WRB, which saved as many as 250,000 European Jewish lives, would never have come into being.
Paying tribute to the late DuBois, an attorney and one of five personal assistants to Secretary of the Treasury Henry Morgenthau, were his brother, Herbert; his widow, Dorothy; journalist William Spiegler; historian Dr. Philip Rosen, educational director and curator of the Goodwin Holocaust Museum; his friend, Richard Goodwin; and Maxine Ladov, a vice president of the Holocaust Museum and Education Center of the Delaware Valley (HMEC), a Jewish Community Relations Council department and sponsor of the program.
An audience of more than 150 heard the panel paint a verbal portrait of a brilliant, determined, modest and righteous man who valued both justice and human life.
To introduce the program, moderator Rosen set the scene with a video clip, “Who Shall Live and Who Shall Die” which explained that during the years when Europe’s Jews were being slaughtered, mainstream American Jewish organizations were afraid to rock the boat. The video showed that DuBois did not share this fear.
When the young attorney discovered that the U.S. State Department was buying information about the “final solution,” he wrote a lengthy memo concerning the United States’ “acquiescence in the murder of the Jews,” and threatened FDR with taking the document to the press if he didn’t take significance action.
“My husband said that FDR was a politician first; a humanitarian second, said Dorothy DuBois. He also perceived the State Department as decidedly anti-Semitic, according to the widow.
With “State always blocking Treasury, Josiah got so frustrated, he resigned from the Treasury Department over and over again,” she said. She recalled that her husband called news broadcaster Drew Pearson when the State Department blocked Morgenthau’s attempt to save 250 rabbis being held in France. Morgenthau wanted to allow their passports to clear the United States so that the rabbis could escape to Latin America. Pearson told the story on a Sunday night radio broadcast. But is was too late. The rabbis had already been sent to camps.
According to Herbert DuBois, Josiah, the oldest of eight siblings, “was always different.” A prodigy, he graduated from Woodbury High School at 14, and went to the University of Pennsylvania in knickers.
“Causes always came before money for Josiah,” said his brother. As a young lawyer, he used to bill “on his own effectiveness.” He had tremendous energy, remarkable concentration, and, said Herbert, “he wasn’t afraid of anything.”
Journalist Spiegler, who never me DuBois although he grew up in Woodbury, just a block from the DuBois home, grew interested when he read Josiah’s Aug. 1, 1983 obituary. His research into DuBois accomplishments have lead him to describe Josiah as “the intellect and energy of the War Refugee Board.” Among the accomplishments of the WRB was the creation of a haven for about 1000 European Jews in Fort Oswego, in western New York near the Canadian border, and provision of funds to Raoul Wallenberg so that he could go to Budapest to save Jews.
DuBois also prosecuted Farben at Nuremberg, Spiegler pointed out, and published a book about the I.G. Farben trials called “The Devils Chemists.” It was a better book; according to Spiegler. Published in the fall of 1952, it attracted little attention. DuBois was disappointed by “the public indifference to the villain,” said Spiegler. He also said that DuBois came from a Huguenot family, which might account for his concern with religious persecution.
Rosen spoke of meeting DuBois in 1983, “when I was reading While Six Million Died.” Together with leaders of the American Jewish Committee and the ZOA, Rosen honored him shortly before his death. “I also wrote an article about him for the American Jewish Committee Publication Present Tense,” Rosen said.
Goodwin, the local builder who has dedicated the Goodwin Holocaust Museum, said that he first met DuBois around 1953 when he and his father were looking for an attorney to represent them in their development projects. “Joe and I soon became joined at the hip,” Goodwin said. “When we drove to meetings together, we had lots of time to talk, and he clued me in to what was going on in Europe and what the U.S. wasn’t doing.”
According to Goodwin, DuBois blamed the British for the State Department’s inaction. “We were considered a colony, we didn’t know what we were doing. The British feared trouble with the Arabs and disruption of the West’s oil supplies.”
Goodwin would like to see DuBois honored as a righteous gentile at Yad Vanshem. “Even though he didn’t risk his life, I think he’s entitled to that,” the philanthropist said. “Here, at least, he’s getting proper recognition.”
Like Rosen, Maxine Ladov first learned of DuBois through reading “While Six Million Died.” She read about him not knowing that he was a local person, but then, six years ago, “I presented a plaque to Dorothy,” she explained.
Ladov closed the program that was opened by Ruth Respler, also an HMEC vice president. Describing HMEC as a three-pronged entity with a museum, education center and speakers’ bureau, she said that its mission of continuing to teach the lessons of the Holocaust was as critical as ever. “There have been many genocides since the Holocaust...and bigotry continues to have terrible implications for all humanity,” she said.
Pointing out that HMEC is self supporting, she added it has a goal of a million dollar endowment. “Richard Goodwin has made a $100,000 challenge gift, with the first $100,000 endowment in memory of Josiah DuBois,” she said. The program was held in the Katz Jewish Community Center social hall.
