Safe Haven Museum and Education Center

09/02/2026

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OSWEGO — On the morning of Aug. 5, 1944, nearly 1,000 men, women and children arrived on the overnight train from New York City at an old Army post in

09/01/2026

EDUCATION - "In normal years the Oswego school system might not have been able to absorb the refugee children in its regular classes. However, the town had lost population and the class loads per teacher were down. Therefore, the addition of relatively few children in each of the classes actually helped the school system in qualifying for State funds available on a capita basis. The private agencies arranged to provide carfare for children attending schools that were not within walking distance. The agencies also furnished school books and school supplies and supplemented the amount available for lunch money so that the children could have hot lunches." TOKEN SHIPMENT: Marks, 1946.

Photo 1) 9-year old Yugoslav refugee Giselle Hendel attended the elementary school at 33 E. Mitchell Street. She earned a PhD in Anthropology at Columbia and taught at SUNY New Paltz until retiring a few years ago.

Photo 2) Refugee students at the corner of East 7th and Bridge Streets boarding a school bus.

Photo 3) the former elementary school at 33 East Mitchell Street which Giselle Hendel attended.

08/31/2026

EDUCATION - "It had been many years since the older (refugee) children had had any school experience of a normal character. Most of the younger children had never attended school or had had only brief periods of impromptu schooling in their years of flight, sometimes within the very camps in which they were confined. WRA (War Relocation Authority) recognized an obligation on the part of the Government to provide the refugees with essential shelter, clothing, food, and medical care. Because of the nature of the Oswego project, however, the Government did not feel that it had the same obligation with respect to the maintenance of a school system that it had in the case of persons of Japanese ancestry evacuated from the West Coast by restrictive governmental order...

Fortunately, the early contacts with the town's (Oswego) leaders bore fruit in an invitation for the children to attend the town's schools. A helpful factor at the outset was that the Catholic priest designated by the Bishop of Syracuse (Walter Foery) to look after the welfare of the Catholics of the shelter population (73) to attend parochial school in town. This indirectly opened the question and helped pave the way for the acceptance of other children in the elementary schools and senior and junior high schools." [TOKEN SHIPMENT: Marks, 1946].

As a member of the Oswego Citizens Advisory Committee on Fort Ontario which began to meet 30 days before the refugees arrived, Superintendent Charles E. Riley made the decision to have the refugee children attend Oswego public schools. Riley’s duality as the Superintendent of Schools and the past president of the United War Fund made him a crucial link. Riley worked alongside other notable community leaders on the advisory board—including local pastors and Oswego State Teachers' College professors—to build strong public allyship for the refugees in a time of rigid national immigration quotas. [FDR Library]. An elementary school in Oswego is named for Riley.

Photo) Fort Ontario refugees at the Oswego High School.

08/28/2026

FIRST REPATRIATES - 28 August 1945 -"Fifty-three Yugoslav (Fort Ontario) refugees sailed on the Mercy Ship Gripsholm for voluntary repatriation. A party of 13 Yugoslavs had departed on the same vessel in May. Two shelter residents had also left for South America and Uruguay, and a third was destined to leave for Czechoslovakia in early October. These 69 persons were all who left the country during the life of the shelter.

For many of the Yugoslavs it was a difficult decision to make. Yugoslav Jews had actually experienced little of persecution in their own country until it was overrun by the N***s. While many of their family members had been exterminated, some had friends and relatives they believed to be still alive, including men and women who had served with Tito's army. It was also true of the Yugoslavs that a smaller percentage had close ties in the United States.\

The Yugoslavs at the shelter included a number who were motivated by a desire to go back and help rebuild their native land. On the other hand, some were uncertain as to the future of their country and were loath to leave the United States and the possible chance of being admitted as immigrants." [TOKEN SHIPMENT, Marks, 1946]

Photo1 ) In 1945, the Swedish passenger liner MS Gripsholm served as a U.S. chartered "mercy ship" for the International Red Cross. Operating under neutral Swedish colors, it completed critical end-of-war and post-war repatriation voyages. It safely transported freed prisoners of war, liberated internees from Axis-camps, diplomats, and refugees across the Atlantic and Indian Oceans.

Photo 2) Ontario Chronicle article, August 1945.

08/27/2026

END OF THE CHRONICLE - "In late August (1945), the editors of the Chronicle resigned over a controversy as to the weekly's purpose. For some weeks prior to their resignation, they had been publishing material which the shelter director considered as prejudicial to the interests of the refugee group. The editors held that it was the duty of the paper to publish articles pressing for the freedom of the shelter population. The shelter director felt that the circulation of inflammatory editorials on this subject might hurt the situation, and urged that the paper give more attention to news coverage of the day-to-day shelter development. Numerous conferences were held between the shelter director and the paper's editors. The shelter director agreed no to censor the Chronicle in return for a promise by the editors that they would not print any items which would be destructive to shelter morale.

The show-down came with the publication shortly thereafter of an issue containing two article which the administration regarded as offensive. One was a review of a play in which the reviewer made uncomplimentary references to a member of the cast; the second was an anonymous letter to the editor in which unfounded charges were made concerning the food situation at the shelter, without the opportunity given for a reply. Because he felt that these items might spread discontent among the residents and perhaps react unfavorably among the paper's readers outside the camp, the shelter director caused the issue in which they appeared to be suspended.

On the following day, the editor and managing editor resigned, and the paper was not published from that time on because no other qualified residents were interested in running it. It is of some signficance to not that no petition or other request for its resumption ever came to the notice of the administration." [TOKEN SHIPMENT, Marks, 1946]

08/24/2026

08/24/2026

SELECTION: "In his cable to Ambassador Murphy (in Algiers), President Roosevelt stipulated that the refugee group should 'include a reasonable proportion of various categories of persecuted peoples who have fled to Italy [and] for whom other havens of refuge are not immediately available.' The selection of the group was to be made in Italy by a representative of the War Refugee Board (WRB), working in close collaboration with the Sub-commission on Displaced Persons (DP's) of the Allied Control Commission.

In amplifying these two qualifications, the WRB made the following additional suggestions to their representative who had final decision on selections: (1) that the persons chosen to be taken in family groups, community groups, or groups that had worked together; (2) that those in the greatest need be selected; (3) that an attempt be made to obtain a cross section of skills that would make the shelter as nearly self-sustaining as possible. Also, it was emphasized that nothing should be offered to the refugees beyond safety and subsistence and that every precaution should be taken to avoid any statements that might lead later to accusations of broken promises. [TOKEN SHIPMENT: Marks, 1946].

08/20/2026

"On September 29, 1944, the first baby was born to Mr. and Mrs. Victory Franco, residents of the shelter. The Francos asked if their child was an American citizen by virtue of its birth at Fort Ontario. The War Relocation Authority (WRA) in turn referred the question to the Department of Justice for clarification, but no answer was given. WRA registered this and subsequent shelter births in Albany, and NYS birth certificates were issued in each case. But the question of citizenship was not decided for many months." [TOKEN SHIPMENT: Marks, 1946].

The Fort Ontario Refugees were the first group of refugees granted asylum in the U.S. after the quota system for immigration was implemented in 1921-24. It opened the door for later groups of refugees from those fleeing communism in Eastern Europe in the 1950's and 1960's through Vietnam, Cuba, to Afghanistan today. Nearly every issue regarding refugees entering the U.S., including birthright citizenship, was first encountered at Fort Ontario.

Fort Ontario, Oswego, NY - Where the Holocaust Came to America.

08/20/2026

"There were two couples among the refugees arriving at the shelter who desired to get married. This raised a question as to how and where the weddings should take place in order for them to have legal standing. It was decided that the couples should be escorted outside the fort as a valid exception to the quarantine then prevailing so that the marriages could take place in the city of Oswego and be recorded in the records of New York State." [TOKEN SHIPMENT: Marks, 1946].

"News of the shelter's first first bridal couple captured American hearts and drew a shower of gifts. Blonde and pretty Marianna Hartmeyer, a 21-year-old from Berlin, met handsome 26-year-old Viennese photographer-artist Ernst Breuer, and his sister, Alice (Liesel) in a Vichy concentration camp at Gurs, France. Separated from her Belgium-bound family at 15 by a Gestapo agent, Manya soothed her pain by singing for fellow prisoners. She and Liesl drew the attention of a rescue group and found themselves walking across the Alps to Italy. Ernst managed to join them in Rome, where the girls found work as cabaret singers and where they met Margareta Frank and Paul Aufricht. The latter couple, a 36-year-old Berlin Born Parisian beautician and a 47-year-old Viennese merchant, had been inseparable since their meeting in a Rome apartment that was used for the preparation of false identity papers.

The two couples married in traditional ceremonies less than three weeks after arriving at the fort, the Breuers first because they first completed legal requirements. Not authorized to perform an American ceremony, Rabbi Tzechoval assisted Oswego's Rabbi Bialik. Honeymooning in barren one-room apartments--Manya decorated hers with crepe-paper streamers and milk bottles filled with wild flowers--they shared both their happiness and their most intimate moments, the latter an unfortunate reality because barracks apartments provided visual but not soundproof privacy. [TOKEN REFUGE: Lowenstein 1986, p.71]

Photographs: wedding of Manya Hartmeyer and Ernest Braeuer on the parade ground at Fort Ontario, which is right field at the main baseball diamond.

08/17/2026

Ontario Chronicle. August 16, 1945.