Holocaust refugees in America didn’t enter the “land of the free” right away. They didn’t even enter immediately after the war ended.
A docudrama portraying the story of their internment in a little-known refugee camp premiered at the Block Museum of Art on Tuesday night. Through a mix of archival photos, film footage and historical reenactments, “Prisoners of Freedom: An American Holocaust Story,” recounts the story of the Fort Oswego, N.Y., camp and its 982 refugees.
Northwestern Prof. Lester Friedman, co-writer of the 90-minute film, watched the result of five years of work for the first time with about 40 members of the Northwestern community.
“It is a very little-known incident in American and Jewish history, but I think it has very interesting ramifications,” said Friedman, a senior lecturer in the School of Speech and the Medical School.
Franklin Roosevelt’s administration allowed 982 Holocaust refugees to enter the country during World War II from camps in Allied-occupied Italy. Specifically, “Prisoners of Freedom” tells the stories of the refugees who remained imprisoned at Fort Oswego even after the war ended and their struggle to remain in America.
Although the refugees were grateful to leave the horrors of the Holocaust behind them, they resented the restrictions the U.S. government placed on them.
“We had everything but our freedom,” one refugee said, in carefully documented dialogue reenacted in the film.
Another expressed disappointment “not to be free in the land of the free.”
The placement of the refugee camp in Oswego, a relatively isolated location, allowed the government to avoid media scrutiny, Friedman and the film’s director, Owen Shapiro, told the audience.
“I think we all know that the anti-Semitism that existed in the Roosevelt administration was the reason only (about) 1,000 refugees were allowed in,” Shapiro said, adding that Mexico accepted about 700,000 Holocaust refugees.
Eventually a directive by President Truman intended to allow refugees in other countries to enter the United States made it possible for the refugees at Fort Oswego to stay in the country. They were bused four miles from Oswego across the Canadian border and back again, and then released from the camp to fend for themselves with the help of benefactors and family.
Both Friedman and Shapiro saw parallels between the political climate in the United States regarding refugees during World War II and the recent war in Kosovo. During the filming, one the camp’s featured survivors spoke out in favor of allowing Kosovar refugees into the country.
Resentment expressed by the surviving refugees made the story more difficult to tell from Friedman’s perspective.
“How do you show their stories and make their criticisms valid without making them sound like whiners?” he asked.
The film also focused on the disproportionate number of artists and musicians in the camp. Although the refugees came from Italy and most spoke Italian, they represented many different nationalities and languages. Art became a common language, and they formed choral and orchestral groups.
“All kinds of people were there,” said Shapiro, director of Syracuse University’s film department. “These were not 982 Jews.”
Some of the film’s impact may have been spoiled by the poor conditions of its debut – it was projected too brightly and at an incorrect aspect ratio – but the filmmakers expressed their confidence that the subject matter’s message would shine through.
“The attempt is to combine a lot of different styles to get at a subjective kind of truth,” Friedman said.
