Did you know that there was a refugee camp in upstate New York during WWII? It housed 982 refugees from Europe, almost all of them Jews.
It was the only one of its kind.
I didn't know about the Fort Ontario Emergency Refugee Shelter before I moved to central New York from California, some fifteen years ago, although I consider myself to be well educated about Holocaust history. My grandparents were refugees from Germany, settling in New York City in the 1930s.
Actually, the shelter wasn't really described as a refugee camp at the time. To the contrary, due to popular sentiment against Jewish immigration, every effort was made to not portray the inhabitants as refugees. They were, instead, "special guests" of President Roosevelt, to be housed in the old army fort until the end of the war, when they would be sent home to Europe. They were not granted asylum upon arrival; in fact, before being accepted into the "guest program", they had to sign documents swearing that they would return to Europe as soon as hostilities ended. They were held in a fenced compound, their movements restricted. A few non-Jewish refugees were included in the group so that the operation wouldn’t have to be characterized as entirely Jewish in nature. Americans didn't want Jewish refugees settling in the U.S., and politicians fought any attempts to bring them over during the war, despite abundant evidence of what was happening to those stranded in Europe.
It's a fascinating story.
It never occurred to me to wonder why there was not a system of refugee shelters in the US during the war. I did know that it was extremely difficult for Jews to immigrate to the US during that period, thanks to restrictive laws passed in the 1920s. Like many American Jews, I know of family members who tried desperately to get here during the war. None of my relatives left behind in Europe survived.
The Fort Ontario Shelter was, in a way, the exception that proved the rule. The immigration restrictions at the time were popular and held firm even as the situation for European Jews became a crisis. From the New York Times (gift link – this is a fantastic article about the Fort Ontario Shelter):
Senator Robert R. Reynolds of North Carolina introduced a bill in 1939 that called for halting all immigration into the United States for 10 years. “Let’s save America for Americans,” he argued. “Our country, our citizens first.” In 1941, Reynolds would suggest building a wall around the United States that “no refugee could possibly scale or ascend.”
President Roosevelt conceived the “emergency shelter” as a sort of compromise, albeit rather too late to have any significant effect on the Jewish situation in Europe. From the National Park Service website:
In early 1944, employees at the Treasury Department persuaded President Franklin D. Roosevelt to try to help. Roosevelt created a new agency called the War Refugee Board (WRB) and instructed it to “take all measures within its power to rescue the victims of enemy oppression who are in imminent danger of death.” In the summer of 1944, Roosevelt announced via executive order that the country would temporarily shelter 1,000 refugees. WRB representatives traveled to Allied-occupied Italy, where thousands of Jewish evacuees from across Europe were living in temporary accommodations. They selected men, women, and children to make the trip.
In August 1944, the refugees were put as a group on a troop transport, debarking in New York City and then sent by train to Oswego (some 6 hours away). Fort Ontario was an old army base, dating to the time of the French-Indian War, that was in disuse at the time. The barracks were revamped to accommodate families. Although their movements were monitored, refugees could obtain day passes to exit the fenced compound and roam the city. Children were bused to local schools.
After the war ended, the refugees lobbied to stay in the U.S. despite their original agreement – there was nothing in Europe for them to return to. Eventually, in early 1946, they were allowed out of the camp, granted visas and freedom to stay in the U.S. if they so desired (most did).
To their credit the residents of this small city (Oswego’s population is around 18,000) have made a great effort to preserve this history. On the grounds of Fort Ontario, near the old British fortification, is an excellent museum detailing the story of the refugees. Many events honoring the refugees and the people who helped them have been held over the years. (An 80th anniversary celebration is planned for August.) The story is cast as a positive one around here, a source of tremendous local pride. To be sure, the fact that 982 were saved is worth celebrating. I appreciate that the locals, in a deep red county, a place where hardly any Jews live and casual antisemitism is pretty common, take pride in their town's role in helping Jews.
But it's actually a terrible story, in many ways. There was only one such camp. There could have been a dozen, or more. (I can’t help but think that the camps used to intern Japanese-American citizens might have been put to better use.) The gates to immigration could have been opened much earlier in the war. Why weren’t they? I'm sure the resources were there. But Americans didn't want Jews coming here. It was politically unthinkable. So it didn't happen.
Over the Christmas holiday I read Dara Horn’s popular recent book, “People Love Dead Jews.” One of her essays therein, “On rescuing Jews and others”, discusses this very conundrum in the context of individuals who took risks to help Jews in Europe during the Holocaust. She expressed perfectly what I feel:
… rescuers… do not actually call into question the premise that innocent people are doomed to be murdered. Instead, such stories simply reveal that the most righteous people available could do no more than provide, for a tiny number of people, the possibility of remaining alive. In this sense, rescuer stories are the opposite of inspirational. They are stories that make painfully clear everything that might have been.
I’ll leave you with a bit of music, as is our habit in the Song of Zion series. There were many accomplished musicians among the Fort Ontario refugees. In late 1945, still stuck in the shelter and their fate uncertain, Charles Abeles and Miriam Sommerburg composed an operetta titled “The Golden Cage,” which was performed just once at the shelter, on New Year’s Eve 1945-46, shortly before the refugees were released. The musical score was then lost, until Abeles’s nephew discovered it in a trunk a few years ago and brought it to the attention of museum personnel. Parts of the libretto were subsequently located in the National Archives. In 2022 the Oswego Opera Theater (a small community opera company) produced the operetta at the local university. (A recording will be broadcast on PBS this year.) The clip below has some samples of it.
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