The Secret History of America's Only WWII Refugee Camp

[marble falls]

Photographs by Alfred Eisenstaedt/The LIFE Picture Collection, via Getty Images


The Secret History of America’s Only WWII Refugee Camp

At the height of the war, 982 refugees fleeing the Nazis were invited by President Roosevelt to a converted military base in upstate New York.

By Keren Blankfeld

Sept. 11, 2020
Updated 1:20 p.m. ET

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/11/nyregion/oswego-jewish-refugees-world-war-two.html?action=click&block=associated_collection_recirc&impression_id=c59b1051-f47b-11ea-8038-7949d3c1f165&index=2&pgtype=Article&region=footer


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After the night on the ship, the refugees were herded by American soldiers into a Quonset hut on the pier where men and women were separated. They were ordered to strip and were sprayed with DDT. Elfi obeyed, mortified, as the soldiers sprayed her hair, and all over her body, down to her toes. None of the refugees set foot in New York City proper.

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“All we saw was a barbed-wire fence and American soldiers,” said Ben Alalouf, another child refugee who made the journey. Mr. Alalouf had been born in a bomb shelter in Yugoslavia in 1941, and though he was just a toddler, he recalls the adults’ panic. “Obviously, everyone thought it was a concentration camp.”

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In 1944, Americans were by no means eager to welcome refugees; many actively opposed their arrival. Before the chosen “guests” arrived in Fort Ontario, nativists were saying it was dangerous for “Nazi-controlled peoples in Europe” to immigrate.

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.”

For decades, nativists had lobbied Congress to guard against a “foreign invasion.” In 1924 a national-origins quota limited immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe as well as Africans, Asians and Arabs. By the 1930s, nativists focused on a new slogan: “America’s children are America’s problem! Refugee children in Europe are Europe’s problem!”

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As the refugees settled in, some Oswegans regarded the camp with suspicion. Rumors circulated that the group was living in luxury. After a month’s quarantine to ensure the refugees weren’t carrying diseases, Fort Ontario held an open house — partly to introduce the newcomers to the local community, and partly to dispel rumors of fancy stoves and lavish accommodations.

The camp was made up of nearly 200 buildings. Army barracks had been converted into two-story dormitories partitioned with slats of paperboard so families could live together, according to Paul Lear, a historian and superintendent of the Fort Ontario State Historic Site. Elfi and her sister shared a room with two cots; their parents were on the other side of the paperboard. Communal bathrooms and showers were down the hall. The arrangement was comfortable, although the thin, uninsulated walls provided no privacy. They would learn soon enough about Oswego’s frigid winters.

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The State Department not only enforced strict immigration limits but also concealed information on the genocide in Europe. According to Rebecca Erbelding, a historian at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and the author of “Rescue Board: The Untold Story of America’s Efforts to Save the Jews of Europe,” the State Department feared that news of the mass murder of Jews in Europe would undermine its immigration stance.

Her book details how in 1943, Breckinridge Long, a patrician Missourian (and rumored anti-Semite) who managed visas for the department, suppressed harrowing information from Europe that described Hitler’s plans to exterminate Jews. He later claimed he was looking out for national security. But the Treasury Department blasted the State Department and Mr. Long in a January 1944 memo to Roosevelt.

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The treatment of Jewish refugees is a shameful stain on our history.

[Fla Dem]

1. Another stain from the same era is the internment of Japanese/Americans.

It’s disappointing we were so prejudice and had such a great sense of superiority. Equally disappointing this happened during F. Roosevelt’s presidency. Guess Dems hadn’t found their moral compass just yet.