Exhibitions

In August 1944, 982 refugees from war-torn Europe arrived at Fort Ontario in Oswego, New York. The vast majority of them were Jews. Even as the Nazis terrorized and murdered more than 11 million people, the men, women, and children received at Fort Ontario that summer would be the only refugees to whom the United States officially offered safe haven during the Holocaust.

Upon arrival at the fort, the refugees discovered that it was surrounded by tall chain-link fence topped with barbed wire—shockingly reminiscent of the horrors of the concentration camps they escaped. Featuring a section of the fence from Fort Ontario, the permanent exhibition Holocaust to Haven tells the story of those interned there for eighteen months at the end of World War II.