Falmouth Jewish Congregation invites you to a special program marking International Holocaust Remembrance Day, January 27
A Jewish Book Council Author Talk by Rebecca Brenner Graham on Dear Miss Perkins: A Story of Frances Perkins’s Efforts to Aid Refugees from Nazi Germany
Tuesday, January 27 at 1pm at Falmouth Jewish Congregation, 7 Hatchville Road
Includes a book sale and signing with Eight Cousins Books
Please RSVP to fjcoffice@comcast.net. Advance registration is required!
A fascinating portrait of the progressive female trailblazer and US Secretary for Labor who navigated the foreboding rise of Nazism in her battle to make America a safer place for refugees. It's a topic that is both timely and relevant as we mark International Holocaust Remembrance Day and as our country debates the role of refugees and immigrants. Come spend an hour to be enlightened and inspired by this contemporary account of a fighter for immigrants.
Frances Perkins was the first woman to serve in a presidential cabinet, the longest-serving Labor Secretary, and an architect of the New Deal. Yet beyond these celebrated accomplishments there is another dimension to Perkins’s story. Without fanfare, and despite powerful opposition, Perkins helped save the lives of countless Jewish refugees fleeing Nazi Germany.
“Immigration problems usually have to be decided in a few days. They involve human lives. There can be no delaying,” Perkins wrote in her memoir, The Roosevelt I Knew. In March 1933, at the height of the Great Depression, Perkins was appointed Secretary of Labor by FDR. As Hitler rose to power, thousands of German-Jewish refugees and their loved ones reached out to the INS—then part of the Department of Labor—applying for immigration to the United States, writing letters that began “Dear Miss Perkins . . .”
Perkins’s early experiences working in Chicago’s famed Hull House and as a firsthand witness to the horrific Triangle Shirtwaist fire shaped her determination to advocate for immigrants and refugees. As Secretary of Labor, she wrestled widespread antisemitism and isolationism, finding creative ways to work around quotas and restrictive immigration laws. Diligent, resilient, empathetic, yet steadfast, she persisted on behalf of the desperate when others refused to act.
Based on extensive research, including thousands of letters housed in the National Archives, Dear Miss Perkins adds new dimension to an already extraordinary life story, revealing at last how one woman tried to steer the nation to a better, more righteous course.
Praise for Dear Miss Perkins
“Dear Miss Perkins brings a millennial’s perspective to Perkins’s life that incorporates issues of race, class, religion and ethnicity. The book examines how a daughter of privilege . . . became an advocate for labor and immigration.” —The Times of Israel
“A fascinating portrait of the progressive female trailblazer and U.S. Secretary for Labor who navigated the foreboding rise of Nazism in her battle to make America a safer place for refugees.” —Smithsonian
“Graham is an ardent champion of her subject, sharing Perkins’s values and extolling her ‘diligence, empathy, integrity, and selflessness.’ . . . Graham’s tight focus on Perkins’s struggles to help refugees fleeing Nazi Germany, despite American bigotry, casts a cold, fierce light on the Statue of Liberty’s promise of welcome to ‘your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.’ . . . A valuable exploration of one woman’s suborn crusade to save those who would have ended up in death camps.” —The Wall Street Journal
“Thanks to authors like Graham, everyday Americans are increasingly seeing Perkins as a role model who confirms their desire to change the world for the better. Amid this Perkins renaissance, Graham offers the details of a complex moment in history that needs to be widely known, especially as our national response to refugees and immigrants is yet again the topic of divisive debate. Dear Miss Perkins is timely in the extreme.” —Christian Century
“Graham’s extensive original research shines . . . Thought-provoking and long overdue . . . Perkins, as historian Rebecca Brenner Graham reveals in her illuminating new biography, Dear Miss Perkins: A Story of Frances Perkins’s Efforts To Aid Refugees From Nazi Germany, was a woman molded by her Protestant religiosity, work in settlement houses, and identity as a member of the Progressive movement. Thus, she tirelessly and creatively undertook to admit immigrants, even taking on her governmental colleagues in the U.S. State Department. There is a crucial lesson for our times in Perkins’s career: even within an uncaring government bureaucracy, one person could make a difference, not only in what she was able to accomplish but also in what she was able to thwart.” —Contingent Magazine
“Finally, proper attention is being paid to Frances Perkins and her dogged efforts to aid European Jews during the Holocaust. Rebecca Brenner Graham’s expansive and modern telling reminds us that there are historical figures to whom we can—and should—look for inspiration as we continue to face some of the same xenophobic, racist, antisemitic dynamics as Perkins did in the 1930s. You’ll emerge from this book with a new hero.” —Rebecca Erbelding, PhD, Holocaust historian and author of the National Jewish Book Award-winning Rescue Board
Rebecca Brenner Graham is a postdoctoral research associate at Brown University. Previously, she taught at the Madeira School and American University. She has a PhD in history and an MA in public history from American University, and a BA in history and philosophy from Mount Holyoke College. In 2023, she was awarded a Cokie Roberts Fellowship from the National Archives Foundation and a Rubenstein Center Research Fellowship from the White House Historical Association. Her writing has been published in The Washington Post, Time, Slate, the Los Angeles Review of Books, and elsewhere. She can be found online at RebeccaBrennerGraham.com.