Refugees Registering at the Fort Ontario Refugee Camp

After the Nazis came to power in Germany in 1933, German and Austrian Jews tried in growing numbers to flee persecution. While about 250,000 would eventually come to the United States between 1933 and 1945, immigration officials applied regulations so rigidly, especially after the outbreak of World War II in 1939, that quotas for Germany and Austria were rarely filled.

In 1944, about 1,000 refugees were picked to come to America to live in the newly established Fort Ontario Emergency Refugee Shelter in Oswego, New York. The camp had been established by President Roosevelt to respond to political pressures to do more to help Jews in Europe and to sidestep immigration regulations. Initially, refugees had to promise to return to Europe when the war was over, but President Truman permitted the refugees to stay in the United States.