Dear Miss Perkins: A Story of Frances Perkins's Efforts to Aid Refugees from Nazi Germany

A fascinating portrait of the first woman to serve in a president’s cabinet--and the full, never-before-told story of her role in saving Jewish refugees during the Nazi regime.

Frances Perkins was the first woman to serve in a presidential cabinet, the longest-serving Secretary of Labor, and an architect of the New Deal. Yet beyond these celebrated accomplishments, there is another dimension to her 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 Factory 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.