With her baby in her arms and her young son tagging behind, Mrs. Eva Bass comes through the gate to her new home at Fort Ontario. Source: Life Magazine Time Warner, vol. 17, no. 8, 21 August 1944, page 25. The refugees line up after dinner in front of the mess halls to get two towels and one cake of soap each. Many of them were hesitant to let LIFE photographer Alfred Eisenstaedt take their pictures until they had had a chance to clean up. Others were worried by the raggedness of their clothing. They said the Army took all their clothes and disinfected them in gas chambers. During the process, holes were burned and suits ruined by discoloration. "We are very sorry because we wanted to look our very best when we arrived here," they explained. Source: Life Magazine Time Warner, vol. 17, no. 8, 21 August 1944, page 26. The Ontario Chronicle From 8 November 1944 through 6 September 1945, the internees of Fort Ontario, with the help of the National Refugee Service, published their own mimeographed newsletter, called the Ontario Chronicle. It contained both articles that expressed the hopes of all internees, and prac tical information that affected their daily lives. Forty-two issues of the Ontario Chronicle were published in all. The newsletter was edited by Dr. Arthur Ernst. The first page of the first issue of the Ontario Chronicle, reproduced here in facsimile, is courtesy of the Leo Baeck Institute, New York. OMACHRONICLE ROOSEVELT REELECTED Ft. Ondorio, NO. 8 At. 3. m., C. B., S. announced 7-utki in D. Roosevelt to alocted for the fourth for 111 of the thio Statod Governor Dovey a statement by hae calated F, D, R. PRESIDENT'S HER Yet, his Tha Presidont of the Despite these "checks daHe has the right Autolauk Congress for any Law he wishes, and his rejuncts have great" weightt ith the lawmakers." pe id ant af radium de The Coordinating Committee and the agencies assoai- *** From Our Director, Joseph H. Smart: We at Ft. Ontario have developed many means of-imdividual and group expression, and it is appopriate that anewspaper should now be added to these The Role of Jewish Organizations ECSJPE Advertisement The Emergency Committee to Save the Jewish People of for rescue action in the United States during the war. During the first half of 1944, ECSJPE used full-page newspaper advertisements as part of a campaign to open Palestine to Jewish refugees. With the deportation of the Hungarian Jews in spring 1944, this objective was combined with a call for the rescue of the Jewish population in Hungary. Reset from the New York Post, 15 May 1944. 25 SQUARE MILES Which Shall It Be? Since this advertisement was written, the news report about Hungary appeared. Read it. It is not a story of the two or three million already dead. It is the dreadful challenge that plans are under way to slaughter a million more human beings—right under your very eyes. Will you keep silent—when a way has been found to save some or maybe all of them, or will you raise your voice so that the men who can do something stop twiddling their thumbs—and do it now! THE tragedy of the Jewish situation in Europe has rested not alone upon the cruel strategy of the Nazis-it diabolic success lay with the germs of racial fear that was spread among all the peoples of the earth. This fear was that a flood of refugees would be loosed upon many nations, complicating not only their internal political stability, but threatening as well their citizens' economic balance with an alien competition. This fear was always a fiction--for there was always the possibility of setting aside a number of internment camps for people faced with the alternative of death-as there is always room found to contain, temporarily, the brutalized prisoners captured from our enemy. Now, in the eleventh hour of the reign of death, a way has been found-a political “Penicillin”, if you wish, that can accomplish the miracle of rescue with the guarantee that no after affects at all will be risked by the rescuers. It is suggested that approximately 25 square miles of rescue camps in the whole world-five temporary mercy reservations, located in Palestine, Turkey, North Africa, and some of our own abandoned military training camps in the United States and some of the territories of Great Britain can hold all the Jews who can immediately escape from Nazi Europe. Assuming that, with the further shrinkage of the German frontier, more can escape-the liberated territories themselves would stabilize the problem. A Practical Plan Those camps-or "Free Ports," as they have elsewhere been called-would be as temporary as our war prison camps will be. They can be supervised and guarded by the military establishments of the several countries in which they are created. They can be administered and financed by funds and the contributions of those men of goodwill who inevitably dedicate themselves to the task of human salvation. They can be operated from within, by the willing and grateful men, women, and children in whose behalf they are established. They would be temporary-for God willing, it is only a question of a little time before the powerful armies of freedom will rid the world of the deaths-head that roams the territories of the world. Survival-Not Politics Under this specific plan offered here, neither Great Britain, Turkey, Free France, nor the United States need fear that those who will have escaped to havens in their territory will involve as benefactors with political commitments. As to Palestine itself, no one but a sadist or a Nazi would suggest that Palestinian Jews themselves can put political considerations above the gnawing fear that their parents or children may inevitably perish in the horrible extermination camps of Germany or Hungary-or that they would sacrifice their kin to any postwar ambitions. ISTANBUL, May . 1994. According to official diplomatic dispatches, the Hungarian government of Premier Deorne Sziojay has launched a program of torture and extermination of the wandering Jews now in that country. Vast gas chambers (and gas baths) of the Nazi pattern are being erected for carrying this mass execution. The present large number of Jews in Hungary is in part due to the fact that many refugees, escaping from Poland and other countries. found temporary sanctuary, or at least comparative safety, in that country. Now that the Nazis have taken over, the picture has changed overnight. It is reported that a total of five and one-half million Jews have been put to death--one way or another since the war began. Of these, literally hundreds of thousands of men, women, and children perished in the so-called gas baths of Poland. A common Nazi practice was to herd the intended victims into sanitary baths as they came off the cattle trains in Poland, on the pretense of cleaning them before their train shipment to the Ukraine for "colonization."Actually, these "sanitary" baths wre lethal chambers from which no one came out alive. A neutral diplomat, writing in official press dispatches, condemns the present Hungarian government saying. Were I not here to witness it with my own eyes, I would never have believed that Magyars were capable of perpe trating such inhuman acts against honest, law-abiding citi zens, whose only sin is that they are members of the faith which is the mother of Christianity. Never in my career was I so eager to be relieved of my post as I am today. The cruelty of the Government is beyond my comprehension, and I fail to understand how mencalling themselves gentlemen and aristocrats can be so heartless and brutal to the fellow men. (From newspaper reports.) EMERGENCY COMMITTEE TO SAVE THE JEWISH PEOPLE OF EUROPE OR 2,000,000 LIVES The United States Must Show the Way Palestine, Turkey, and North Africa are geographically nearest that is a visible fact. But just as important as geography is the role which the United States must play just because dating back to the settlement of New England, this country is the recognized leader in every fight against tyranny and oppression. The establishment of a few rescue camps in America has nothing to do with immigrations laws, because the people who would be brought into such a camp would not be immigrants, nor even visitors. They would be detained there only until some final desination will be found for them—a destination which would be found in due time, whether it be the lands whence they came, or some new and which would be arrived at by the victorious powers. Since such a rescue camp would in no way touch upon existing immigration laws, there is no need for any legislation. Nothing stands in the way except the all important element of time. We know that it will be not practical to save the Jewish people of Europe in tens and hundreds of thousands by transporting them to rescue camps in the United States. We know that first and foremost they will have to be evacuated to territories close to the Balkans-principally Palestine, but also Turkey, Cyprus, and North Africa. In order to bring pressure effectively upon all other allied and natural countries to create such havens, it is vital that the government of the United States can show with clear conscience that we have done more than our share-that our country has This then is our formula-temporary rescue The President's War Refugee Board should en- The people of America have already expressed in A Race Against Death How You Can Help Effectively You can help us mobilize public opinion from coast to coast. You can help spread our appeal among many more millions of Americans in order to arouse them to their responsibilities. It is imperative that we place this message is hundreds of newspapers throughout the country and through safesend booktops. For each day dooms thousands that might otherwise be saved. This Committee asks, the American people for substantial financial support the enable it to carry on its work for the rescue of millions of martyred human beings. We need this financial help immediately. NOW! Yes can sign your name below and enclose your contribution to speed the effectiveness of our fight to save the Jewish people of Europe. EMERGENCY COMMITTEE I TO SAVE THE JEWISH PEOPLE OF EUROPE 25 West 45th Street, New York 19, N. Y. I enclose the sum of. It is not in the tradition of our great NAME to enable you to carry out (By a ruling of the Treasury Department, cash donations to the Committee are tax exempt.) |