My first book, Rescue Board: The Untold Story of America’s Efforts to Save the Jews of Europe (Doubleday, 2018), details the work of the War Refugee Board, a US government agency–run by a group of Treasury Department lawyers, most of them in their 30s–which rescued Jews during the Holocaust. They begged, borrowed, bribed, laundered money, falsified documents, opened a refugee camp, and threw the weight of the United States government behind their plans, ultimately saving tens of thousands of lives.

To ensure I was telling the complete story, I digitized every document related to the Board’s work I could find. While writing my dissertation in 2014, I kept a blog of day-by-day primary source documents from the War Refugee Board.

I am thrilled to be represented by Anna Sproul-Latimer at Neon Literary.

Winner of the 2018 National Jewish Book Award for Writing Based on Archival Material (the JDC-Herbert Katzki Award)

“Erbelding writes vividly of intrigue and espionage, secret negotiations, money laundering, ransoming of victims, and rescue ships . . . Erbelding’s history is an important contribution to understanding America’s humanitarian efforts during and after WWII and a timely perspective, given questions about today’s world crises.”
—Booklist