On December 7, 2021, The Ackerman Center hosted the workshop, “Operation Texas: LBJ and the Holocaust,” which explored the claim that Lyndon Johnson, while a freshman congressman, led a clandestine rescue mission to save European Jews from the Holocaust. This workshop was made possible by a grant from the Texas Holocaust, Genocide, and Antisemitism Advisory Commission.
Dr. Nils Roemer, Interim Dean of the School of Arts and Humanities and the School of Arts, Technology, and Emerging Communication, Director of the Ackerman Center, and Stan and Barbara Rabin Distinguished Professor in Holocaust Studies chaired a panel of three presenters who have investigated the claim as they presented their findings and conclusions.
Dr. David P. Bell served as chair of the board of trustees for Holocaust Museum Houston from 2002-2003. He was involved in the creation of the museum in the 1990s and was instrumental in establishing the rationale and criteria for selection of the recipients of the Lyndon Baines Johnson Moral Courage Award. Dr. Bell received his doctorate in education from Stanford University and served for nearly four decades as an administrator at the University of Houston. Dr. Bell discussed Holocaust Museum Houston’s creation of the LBJ Moral Courage Award and subsequent research on LBJ’s involvement in “Operation Texas.”
Claudia Anderson has served for over fifty years as an archivist at the LBJ Presidential Library in Austin, Texas, and served as the Library’s Supervisory Archivist from 2004 to 2016. In 2013, the National Archives and Records Administration honored her with a Lifetime Achievement Award for her extraordinary contributions to the National Archives. Though now retired, she continues to work at the LBJ Library through a contract with the Lyndon Baines Johnson Foundation. Mrs. Anderson explored the making of the myth of “Operation Texas” and the historical evidence, based on over twenty years of research.
Philip Barber is a research assistant and PhD candidate at the Ackerman Center for Holocaust Studies at The University of Texas at Dallas, where he was twice awarded the Mike Jacobs Fellowship in Holocaust Studies. Under the direction of Nils Roemer and sponsored by a grant from the Texas Holocaust, Genocide, and Antisemitism Advisory Commission, he spent two years researching the legend of “Operation Texas.” Mr. Barber assessed the source of the claim, Louis Gomolak’s 1989 dissertation from UT Austin, giving special attention to a trip to Poland in 1938 and a speech in 1963 which served as the primary basis of Gomolak’s claim.
