Standing Up - Josiah Dubois

Josiah Dubois Stood Up Against Tyranny When it Counted - And then he stood up again.

Maureen G - Dec 14, 2025

Although I was a New Jersey attorney myself during the latter part of Josiah Dubois’ life, I had never heard of him until I moved to North Carolina. I happened to meet one of his former law partners, who was very proud to have known and worked with him, and related his story. I have wanted to write about Josiah Dubois ever since, and now seems the right moment. His story picks up the thread from my previous post on Nativism in the White House, in that it concerns Nativist and antisemitic bigotry in the U.S. State Department during the 1930s and during WWII. This post will only lightly touch on Josiah Dubois’ life and career, and his inspiring example of speaking truth to power.

Dubois was a young attorney working in the Treasury Department before and during WWII; he was one of a number of junior officers who through their work on foreign funds control had access to nonpublic information about the peril faced by Jews in Germany and German-occupied countries. In 1943 they became aware of long-standing efforts to thwart the rescue of Jews by State Department officials including Assistant Secretary of State Breckinridge Long, an avowed Nativist.

Long had been Ambassador to Italy prior to the War, during which time he came to admire facism, as described in this 1938 diary entry which exposes Long’s antisemitism quite clearly:1

“Have just finished Hitler’s Mein Kampf. It is eloquent in opposition to Jewry and to Jews as exponents of Communism & chaos.... My estimate of Hitler as a man rises with the reading of his book.”

When Long returned to Washington in 1940, he used his considerable administrative authority over immigration to actively suppress the entry of Jews. Here’s an excerpt from an intra-departmental memo sent by Long in June 1940:2

“We can delay and effectively stop for a temporary period of indefinite length the number of immigrants into the United States. We could do this by simply advising our consuls to put every obstacle in the way and to require additional evidence and to resort to various administrative devices which would postpone and postpone and postpone the granting of the visas.”

One of the tools used by the State Department to obstruct and delay was the requirement that immigrants prove that they would not become a “public charge” if they entered the U.S. This became difficult if not impossible for many potential immigrants who had been the subject of Nazi antisemitic economic measures.3 This was a fact with which Long was quite familiar from his experience in Europe.

I keep asking the same question these days: Does this sound familiar? It should; the “public charge” provision is exactly the same provision being deployed today by the 47 administration to deny entry from those pesky “sh*thole countries.” This time it’s being done in the open; Secretary of State Marco Rubio (one of those children of immigrants who have a short memory) is in the driver’s seat. Deny, deny, deny.4

Dubois and his fellow officials were threatened with career-ending consequences for their pursuit of information about State Department obstructionism. Nevertheless, they brought evidence of Long’s lying, concealment of information, and manipulation of documents to Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau, Jr, the onl;y Jewish member of FDR’s cabinet. Morgenthau directed them to produce a report detailing the obstruction, and Josiah Dubois was tasked with writing it. He worked through December 1943 into January 1944 on the report.

According to one researcher, he worked on the report on Christmas Day 1943,5 which wouldn’t be particularly remarkable if Dubois had been Jewish, but he was not. In fact, many of Dubois’ coworkers erroneously attributed his zeal on the topic of rescuing Jews to his supposed religion.6 According to a video interview of Dubois in the 1970s, “… since I felt so strongly about it, therefore they just assumed I must be a Jew … ‘cause a non-Jew, we could never feel so strongly about something like this.”7

The draft produced by Dubois was originally entitled “The Acquiescence of This Government in the Murder of the Jews.”8 Dubois presented the draft to Morgenthau with an ultimatum: If Morgenthau did not bring the report directly to the attention of FDR, Dubois would resign and expose the scandal to the public.9 This was a strategic statement on the part of Dubois, who was mindful of the mounting public pressure already being brought on Roosevelt to act on rescuing Jews.10

Morgenthau personally presented the report to FDR, but toned down the language a bit and entitled it: “Personal Report to the President.”11 It contained this passage:

The State Department has turned its back on the time-honored principle of granting haven to refugees. The tempest-tossed get little comfort from men like Breckenridge [sic] Long. Long says the door to the oppressed is open but that it ‘has been carefully screened.’ What he should have said is ‘barlocked and bolted.’ ... If men of the temperament and philosophy of Long continue in control of immigration administration, we may as well take down that plaque from the Statue of Liberty and black out the ‘lamp beside the golden door.’

Morgenthau’s presentation of the Report prompted Roosevelt to create the War Refugee Board in January 1944. Breckinridge Long was demoted and ultimately retired; Josiah Dubois was made counsel to the WRB upon its creation. The work of the Board is credited with saving almost 200,000 Jews by the end of the war.12 Whether FDR should be lauded for creating the Board, or decried for doing too little too late continues to be a topic of controversy.13 In any event, the actions of Josiah Dubois and his coworkers are rightly credited with saving many Jewish lives.

Josiah Dubois went on to a dizzying career in government service from 1944 through mid-1946, but he finally returned to Camden, New Jersey, intent on the long-delayed project of building a law firm with his brother, also a lawyer. He hadn’t been home long when he was requested to return to government service as a prosecutor in the Nuremberg trials. He was asked to handle the case against the directors of the I.G. Farben corporate conglomerate, suppliers of the Zyklon B gas used by the Nazis in their campaign of genocide, among other crimes including the use of slave labor. His participation was sought because he was familiar with the company as a result of his wartime work in foreign funds control.

Once again, Josiah Dubois stood up. He set aside his personal plans, and guided the prosecution which resulted in guilty verdicts for 13 of the accused. Dubois’ book, The Devil’s Chemists, gives an account of the trial, as well as efforts on the part of government officials and others, even the trial judges, to minimize the charges.14 Dubois’ reward for his efforts at Nuremberg included accusations that there were “too many Jews” acting as prosecutors in the trial, and calls for investigation into whether he was Jewish.15 At the conclusion of the trial, he returned to build his law practice in Camden, which was the focus of his life, along with his family, until his death in 1983.

A full account of the I.G. Farben trial and its aftermath is a story for another day, but both of these incidents in the life of Josiah E. Dubois Jr. really come to a simple point: He stood up for what is right, and he stood up against tyranny. His strong moral compass is an inspiring example for us today.

1

Andrew Meier, “‘The God-Damnedest Thing’: The Antisemitic Plot to Thwart U.S. Aid to Europe’s Jews and the Man Who Exposed It,” Politico, September 23, 2022. https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2022/09/23/henry-morgenthau-roosevelt-government-europes-jews-00058206

2

Quoted in Robert L. Beir (13 December 2013). Roosevelt and the Holocaust: How FDR Saved the Jews and Brought Hope to a Nation. Skyhorse Publishing Company, Incorporated. pp. 136, 137. ISBN 978-1-62636-366-3 (per Breckenridge Long Wikipedia entry Dec. 13, 2025). A facsimile of the memo is available here: https://docsteach.org/document/memo-temporary-halt-immigration/.

3

A fuller account of the perfidy of Breckinridge Long is available here: “Rescue in the Holocaust by Diplomats - Hiram Bingham, IV,” United States Holocaust Museum,” https://www.holocaustrescue.org/bingham-and-us-state-department-chronology As this chronology demonstrates, Josiah Dubois and his coworkers were not the only U.S. officials who sought to take action to save Jews.

4

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2025/11/13/obesity-visa-rules-trump-administration/ (paywall). You may recall that Rubio’s family benefited from the “Cuban Adjustment Act” which enabled the entry of refugees from Fidel Castro’s Cuba, which in turn enabled him to grow up and become a right-wing Republican, but I digress. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marco_Rubio

5

https://heathervoight.com/tag/josiah-dubois/

6

A transcript of the interview of Josiah Dubois Jr. by the Truman Library is available here: https://www.trumanlibrary.gov/library/oral-histories/duboisje

7

You can view the video interview of Josiah Dubois on the web site of the Wyman Institute: http://new.wymaninstitute.org/resources/video-interview-with-josiah-e-dubois-jr/

8

https://perspectives.ushmm.org/item/treasury-department-report-to-president-roosevelt/collection/us-government-rescue-efforts

9

https://enc.wymaninstitute.org/?p=181

10

https://time.com/5513482/war-refugee-board/

11

United States Holocaust Museum, “Treasury Department Report to President Roosevelt.”
https://perspectives.ushmm.org/item/treasury-department-report-to-president-roosevelt/collection/us-government-rescue-efforts

12

See “War Refugee Board,” Shoah Resource Center, https://wwv.yadvashem.org/odot_pdf/Microsoft%20Word%20-%206488.pdf.

13

https://www.ncronline.org/three-gentiles-got-fdr-save-jews

14

The book was commercially published in 1952 and currently appears to be out of print, but it can also be viewed on the Internet Archive. https://archive.org/details/pdfy-3lxDZXBsQKxNRaCr .

15

http://www.wollheim-memorial.de/en/die_hauptverhandlung_im_nuernberger_prozess_gegen_ig_farben