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WRB staff had identified nearby Fort Ontario as the site for the camp.

ShelteredĪfter a two-week Atlantic Crossing, 982 refugees arrived in New Jersey and traveled by train to Oswego, New York. They selected men, women, and children to make the trip. WRB representatives traveled to Allied-occupied Italy, where thousands of Jewish evacuees from across Europe were living in temporary accommodations. 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. Furthermore, during the first few years of the war, State Department officials under Assistant Secretary Breckinridge Long purposely obstructed efforts to assist Jewish refugees.įinally, in early 1944, employees at the Treasury Department persuaded President Franklin D. Allowing large numbers of refugees to enter the US would have required amending or circumventing the quotas-a politically risky proposition. Most American voters supported the immigration system. The law set up a quota system for migrants based on “national origin” and the false belief that people from some parts of the world were racially “inferior.” The system allocated very few spots for people from Central and Southern Europe-the places later targeted by Nazi aggression.Įven as reports of the Nazis’ persecution of Jews began to make their way into American newspapers, Congress hesitated to take action to help refugees for fear of public backlash. The Johnson-Reed Act of 1924 had implemented sharp restrictions on immigration. America’s restrictive immigration system was a chief factor in this inaction. Until 1944, the United States government made no concerted effort to help Jews escape Nazi genocide. From 1944 to 1946, it served as the only shelter in the United States for Jewish refugees fleeing the Holocaust. Fort Ontario is a historic military installation located in Oswego, New York.