He also had a well-honed sense of justice and compassion. According to eyewitness accounts, Harrison, a big man with a fine sense of humor, broke down in tears as he visited the camps. “He was always for the underdog, for those who were less fortunate,” said his son, J. Barton Harrison L’ 56, who created the Earl G. Harrison International Human Rights Fund at Penn Law in his father’s memory. “He didn’t think that human beings should be treated that way.”

That concern continued to fuel his work on behalf of the refugees, whom he felt should have the opportunity to leave Europe, where they had suffered such unspeakable losses. As a result, he lobbied hard to change American immigration laws. And in large measure, he succeeded. By 1952, a total of 395,000 displaced persons had entered the United States.

But the Harrison Report, which unleashed a domino of policy changes, remains his signature achievement — a fact recognized by officials at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, who deem it “the single most important document of the DP era.”