First transport of children from Romania arriving in Palestine via Istanbul

In 1944, a group of Romanian Jewish children arrives in Palestine on a special transport from Istanbul as part of a Balkan rescue effort coordinated under the aegis of the U.S. War Refugee Board (WRB). At the initiative of U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau, Jr., President Roosevelt established the U.S. War Refugee Board on January 22, 1944. The Board enlisted the help of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC) as well as many other Jewish, Christian, and non-sectarian organizations in the United States, to carry out rescue and relief programs abroad. The Board enabled these private agencies to send funds into enemy territory (with government permission). Of the $20,000,000 in private funds that were licensed by the United States Treasury for these purposes, JDC provided the majority of the funds, approximately $15,000,000. These funds helped finance the rescue of Jews in Nazi- and Axis-occupied territories. Efforts included the evacuation of about 7,000 Romanian Jews to Palestine via Turkey between 1944 and 1945, largely financed by JDC, as well as the rescue operations overseen by neutral diplomats such as Raoul Wallenberg and Carl Lutz in Nazi-occupied Hungary.