"Operation Texas" refers to activities undertaken by Lyndon Baines Johnson when he was a young congressman in 1938 and 1939. Specifically, Johnson rescued approximately 400 Eastern European Jews from the Nazis by arranging for visas to be issued to them in Warsaw and setting up their unlawful immigration into the United States through the port of Galveston, Texas. These actions on the part of Johnson were illegal, were against the anti-Semitic policies of the Roosevelt administration, and could have resulted in Johnson's imprisonment and loss of office.
Johnson's family had a history of fighting bigotry against the Jews, and, at one point in 1915, LBJ hid in the cellar of his house while his adult male relatives stood guard with shotguns against a potential Ku Klux Klan retaliation for their pro-Jewish stance.
As early as 1934, Johnson provided his fiance with the gift of a book of essays outlining the potential dangers of Nazism.
In 1937, Johnson, as a freshly minted congressman, bucked the Dixiecrats and his party by voting for immigration reforms which would naturalize illegal aliens, primarily Jews, from Poland and Lithuania.
During World War II, Johnson and others arranged to send arms to Jewish underground fighters in crates marked "Texas Grapefruit."
When asked by Soviet premier Aleksei Kosygin in 1967 why Johnson supported three million Israelis over 80 million Arabs, Johnson responded, "Because it is right."
For further information on Johnson's attitude towards the Jews and the nation of Israel, including his actions as President, click here.
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