20/3/26 To be edited.
1000 refugees were brought to the States as guests of the President Roosevelt in 1944 transported on army ship from Anzio and Cassino, to a camp in Oswego ,NY. This camp was under the War Relocation Authority(WRA) part of the Dept. of Interior. Organized by Harold L. Ickes , secretary for the Interior. Brought on the USNS Henry Gibbins an army tranport. This ship is also documented by the book The English GI: World War II Graphic Memoir, the story of Bernard Sandler.
1924 a quota system was implemented in bringing immigrants to the US, it was designed in such a way that mostly Western European could enter the States so as to make it more difficult for Easter European to enter i.e. Jews and Orientals. About 675,000 a year could enter the USA. This 1000 was outside the quota. Britain had closed the doors of Palestine. The 100,000 Japanese Americans interned and relocated to camps were also under the WRA. just after Pearl Harbour. theoretically this thousand were being given refuge while the war was on but could not get visas and so were supposed to be sent back to Europe at the end.
Harald Ickes sent Ruth to represent his dept. as she had got her degree in Germany and spoke Yiddish as well. She had to get vaccines for smallpox, typhus tetanus and plague. In flying an army plane they were taught that if a plane (C54) was shot down and had to ditch. They had to know how to inflate the Mae West vests and open the collapsible life boat. The landed in Newfoundland and then the Azores but must not meet the natives as their was plague and use mosquito repellent, and never eat uncooked vegetables. Venereal disease was also rampant in the tropics. The Casablanca which had a smell of goats. In Algeria the army was building a refugee camp to take in 40,000 refugees.
Information about the holocaust had come to American but the government decided to suppress this.
Yugoslavian refugees and others found their way into Italy. Refugees here would be treated as prisoners of war for whom no quotas were required.
1944 April the first shipment of Hungarian Jews were shipped to Auschwitz. The US war effort was hampered in Italy by refugees clogging the roads, needing shelter food and medical car. While the British were there trying to stop refugees from getting to Palestine.
The Germans under Albert Kesselring were fighting the allied invasion. This was the same time as the van Stoffenburg plot against Hitler. In Naples she was aware of British , French Italian Senegalese and Gurkhas soldiers .
The Henry Gibbins had the1000 refugees on the forward adn wounded solders in the stern. They were part of a convey a flotilla of 29 vessels 13 warships escorting 16 troop and cargo ships including POW ships that were a protective cover. 100,000 German POWs were keeping farms and factories going. The refugees were 982 people. 874 Jewish, 73 Catholic, 28 Greek Orthodox and 7 Protestant. 525 male and 457were female,.from 18 different countries. They were a cross section of population to make they a self sustaining group. A microcosm of a small town. Teenagers hadn't been to school for 5 years and younger children who had not been to school at all. German was the lingua franca but many spoke no German. Ruth organized English lessons on the deck. They also started classes in American history and English literature. Many had fled the Drancy concentration camp Near Paris others at Gurs like Lion Feuchwanger the novelist.. Some Gaulist groups had helped people escape to Spain. Brigade Blanch was a Belgium partisan brigade that some Jews survived in. Some had climbed La Madonna della Finetra Pass to escape the Germans. Others had refuge in a convent and only god chestnuts to eat. Many had trekked through the fighting lines to escape. Ruth got many of the stories of survival of refugees. The story of the Pentcho of 500 refugees on a boat that broke down and they landed on an island and were transferred to Rhodes by the Italians.
The Mediterranean was dangerous as it had Nazi bombers and U-boats. At one time feeling in danger a smokescreen was put up and all suffered the smell..
A women over the age of 40 gave birth to a baby. The professional singers offered to entertain the troops and the put on concerts for them, this improved the atmosphere as wounded soldiers had blamed Jews for the war.
Arriving in New York you can see the Statue of Liberty and on its plinth is a poem by Emma Lazarus a Sephardi Jewess, The New Colossus 1883 welcoming immigrants.
The most widely listened to radio commentator was that of Father Coughlin a Detroit priest and vituperative anti-Semite.
They were taken to the Oswego camp and allocated rooms or houses according to family size. Not by intellectual class as they had wanted, or by ethnicity. They were told if there is a knock on the door it is a friendly one. It was the first time many had had bedsheets for years. The town Oswego had a population of 22,000. Most were ther from the 19 Century early 20 C , Quebec from Germany , Ireland , Poland Italy , majority Roman Catholics. The town was surrounded by the Oswego river. This had been an army camp but was recently closed. The town had lost income when the camp closed and begged the movement to fill the camp again. It was now a refugee camp. Next to this was Fort Ontario 1955 to protect the British from the French. Rabbi Stephen Wise came to visit the camp adn Ruth showed him around.
Life Magazine showed photos of the camp in 1944 taken by Alfred Eisenstadt. Many remembered photos of this period are his work.
Hungary under Admiral Horty, while Germany was a co- belligerent he would not allow the Nazi's to touch Hungarian Jews. However now Adolf Eichmann was sent to round up the Jews in March 1944.
Food and shelter were provided by the government. A 10 man committee was organized to keep up the moral and maintain the spirit so to education. The towns reaction to the refugees had been favorable. Previously negro soldiers had been in the camp and the public worried they would rape their daughter but the turned out to be respectable youngster. Later illiterate soldiers had been sent for remedial training and they also turned out to be better than expected. They requested that the local schools be opened to their children and this was very successful. German was the common lingua franca however the Yugoslavc and Italian and other wanted to move away from this now hated language.
Open house day where the whole town of Oswega was invited. The refugee children who had lost years of education became grinds and this set an example that the local followed.
Eleanor an her friend Elinor the wife of Henry Morgenthau arrived to visit. She wrote in her syndicated column "My Day" on the camp.
Many refugees had been running climbing mountains etc to escape and never had, had proper foot ware and needed arch supports or orthopedic shoes as well as false teeth.
1+945 8th May VE day the War in Europe ended with German unconditional surrender.. General Eisenhower instructed that poles liberated from German camps must not be forced to return to Poland.
President Truman sent Earl . G. Harrison to investigate the DP camps in Europe. Hitler had murdered a million children and ther were few old people alive. Antisemitism had not died with Hitler's suicide. Truman now asked the New British PM Clement Attlee to allow 100,000Jewish refugees into Palestine. The refugee problem had become a world problem.
All over Europe UNRRA set up camps for millions of displaced people. Here in Oswego you had displaced people with refugees who had absorbed the spirit of democracy. Eventually a government subcommittee agreed for them to stay, despite the quota. Roosevelt had done something sly by inviting the 1000. These people all had the qualifications to be accepted into the US and so were taken to the Canadian border where they were processed by the border guard. The Oswego resident spread all over the country so to family they had others had wanted to be in small towns.
After 1946 the Oswego camp became the temporary housing project for war veterans and their families. In 1951 The New York state turned it into a historical museum and park about the French and Indian Wars and WW2. There is a plaque, From 1944 to 46 fort Ontario served as a haven for survivors of the European holocaust.
No comments:
Post a Comment