ACCORDING TO BARUCH:

“Early in 1944, I consulted John McCormack on the advisability of a free port in Palestine. A free port is a strip of land where imported freight scheduled for trans-shipment to other countries is stored temporarily free of custom duty. Why, I asked McCormack, cannot the same principle be applied to human beings? Let us have a reservation in Palestine, fenced and guarded.

“But, interposed McCormack… before we can push such a plan for Palestine, we must first do it elsewhere. Otherwise, we will be accused of injecting nationalism in a purely human enterprise, which we want to avoid.

“I saw the political merit of his reasoning, and that is how this petition to the President evolved. One of the militant private agencies, the Emergency Committee to Save the Jewish People of Europe [Baruch, not so coincidentally, served as the director of the committee’s rescue activities] …circulated the petition to which over a million Americans subscribed within six weeks. The plan was favored by the War Refugee Board, liberal newspapermen, and columnists.”[1]

Petition circulated by the Emergency Committee to Save the Jewish People of Europe

[1] Flight from Fear, p. 60