America's WW2 refugee camp
Witness History
BBC
4.5 • 1.6K Ratings
🗓️ 18 November 2020
⏱️ 11 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In August 1944 President Franklin D Roosevelt agreed to allow nearly one thousand Jewish refugees fleeing Nazi-occupied Europe to come to America. They were allowed entry only as "guests", so as not to breach strict US immigration quotas in place during the whole of WW2. The refugees, who arrived on a troop ship from Italy, were housed in a former military barracks, Fort Ontario, near the city of Oswego in upper state New York. For those who'd recently been imprisoned in Nazi concentration camps in Europe, it was a traumatic experience to find themselves once again behind barbed wire. Mike Lanchin has been hearing the memories of two of the former refugees Elfi Hendell and Doris Schechter.
Photo: A young refugee talking to local American children at Fort Ontario, Oswego, NY, August 1944 (Getty Images)
(Thanks also to USC Shoah Foundation for audio archive)
Transcript
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| 0:35.0 | Find out what it all means at the end of this podcast. and welcome to the Witness History Podcast from the BBC World Service, first-hand accounts of events |
| 0:55.3 | that have shaped our world. I'm Mike Lanchin. Today we're going back to the summer of |
| 1:00.0 | 1944 when a ship carrying nearly a thousand mainly Jewish refugees arrived in the US. |
| 1:06.8 | They were the only group of refugees fleeing Nazi occupied Europe who were allowed into America |
| 1:12.2 | during World War II. I've been speaking to two of them. |
| 1:20.0 | What was your first sight of America like? |
| 1:23.0 | We went up on the ball, we were on deck. |
| 1:26.4 | There was a huge moon, and I thought, my God, is the moon different |
| 1:32.1 | in the United States than in Europe. |
| 1:35.0 | That's Elfie Hendle who was just 11 years old |
| 1:40.0 | when the ship carrying her family across the Atlantic Ocean |
| 1:43.7 | docked at New York City Harbour on August the 3rd 1944. |
| 1:48.1 | Doris Schechter and her parents were also on that ship. |
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