OSWEGO – Officials gathered together in Oswego yesterday to celebrate the grand reopening of the Safe Haven Holocaust Refugee Shelter Museum, Sunday, October 9.
The museum’s re-opening reveals 32 new interactive displays featuring the harrowing and inspiring journeys of 982 refugees fleeing from Nazi occupied Europe to life at Fort Ontario.
Speakers at the event included Safe Haven Holocaust Refugee Shelter Museum President Audrey Hurley, Oswego Mary Billy Barlow, New York State Assembly Minority Leader Will Barclay, along with representatives from both U.S Senator Chuck Shumer’s office and U.S. Senator Kirsten Gillabrand’s office.
Also speaking at the event was former Safe Haven Board President Bob Davidson, David Roman (filling in for speaker John Sullivan) and Judy Rapaport.
Hurley spoke about the collaboration and hard work put together in creating a multi-functional, interactive museum that comes to life with video curated stories heard from Fort Ontario Safe Haven residents themselves.
“We were very fortunate to have been awarded a $100,000 grant secured by NYS Senator Pattie Richie,” Hurley said. “Although Senator Richie was unable to be with us today, her support of the museum along with a grant from Oswego County Community Foundation allowed us the extraordinary opportunity to update and redesign our museum into 32 technologically sophisticated interactive exhibits that tell the incredible story for the Fort Ontario Refugee residents.”
Barlow recounted the resilience and courage the refugees had in fleeing persecution and death for a better life in a foreign land.
“Oswego has something that no other community in the entire United States can lay claim to – a small but significant piece of the history of the United States involvement in World War II. But more importantly, a story about humanity and the triumph of hope over fear,” Barlow said. “I leave you today with a simple request; that each and every one of us continue to tell this incredible story – a story that is woven into the fabric of our community.”
Barclay spoke about the refugees impact on the community, both locally and nationally, in revealing the true horrors and persecution taking place under the barberous Nazi regime.
“I’ve heard it several times that Fort Ontario is where the Holocaust came to America,” Barclay said. “And since the founding of the museum in 1989, Safe Haven has enabled the region, the state and the large international community to take pride in Oswego’s contribution to world history,” Barclay said.
Hurley hosted the event, sharing her own story as a little girl from Brooklyn who encountered the lasting impacts WWII had on people when confronted by a school friend who didn’t have grandparents.
Hurley was shocked to learn that her friend didn’t know what grandparents were; the friend sharing her grandparents had been killed by a “bad man who hated Jewish people” in Europe.
No explanation from Hurley’s parents could take away the pain she felt for her friend, saying she never forgot what she heard that day. Now serving as Safe Haven President, Hurley is honored to be able to share and support the legacy of the brave refugees who took the chance to come to America and begin a new life.
Syracuse resident Ruth Stein attended yesterday’s event, saying Hurley’s story struck a chord with her, in that she also lost her grandparents in WWII.
“My mothers parents died in the camps, and my fathers parents – they went to Argentina and I never got to go there while they were alive,” Stein said. “And another thing that happened is after she (Stein’s mother Greda) got to the United States, she got a letter and I think her siblings also got letters from their parents begging them to help them get out of Germany, but it was too late to do anything. They weren’t able to get them out.”
Following is Stein’s story:
According to Stein, her mother Greda Waldeck was a tennis player from Muenster, Germany; her father Simon Friedeman, a Cantor in Bielefeld, Germany. Simon eventually became a Rabbi after fleeing Germany.
Stein’s parents met at one of her mothers tennis matches, becoming married in January of 1938. Because of Hitlers rise in power, Simon’s family had already moved to Argentina. With Greda lacking a passport, Stein’s parents remained in Germany.
According to Stein, her parents stayed in Bieleseld where her father continued on as a Cantor. On December 4, 1938, Stein’s father Simon was captured by the Nazi’s trying to save the Tora scrolls out of the synagogue during the Kristallnacht Riots. He was sent away to a concentration camp, his wife eventually finding out what happened to him.
“At that point, you could get out of the camp if you could get a visa to another country. So my mother helped him and was able to get him a visa to go to England,” Stein said. “And right after he left, WWII broke out, so he left at a good time or otherwise he wouldn’t have been able to get out.”
Greda stayed with her parents who still lived in Germany, her older brother and sister having moved to the United States, a younger brother in Argentina with another in Palestine.
Greda’s father, believing he would be safe having been a WWI veteran, chose to stay in Germany. Greda became nervous living under the threat of war, finally hiring smugglers to get her into Holland in 1939, thus leaving her parents behind.
Living there illegally for a few months, Greda’s brother was finally able to send her money to leave for America.
“In Holland, her brother finally sent her money [and] bought a ticket for her on a boat to the United States,” Stein said. “And while she was on the boat, the Germans invaded Holland. So she was really out of there in the knick of time.”
During the couple’s three-year separation, the two corresponded back and forth until reuniting again in New York City in 1942
“My fathers joke was, in all those years they never had a fight,” Stein said. “And then I arrived in 1943, a year later.” Stein also has a younger brother.
The Friedemans lived in several different places around the country; Stein’s father taking employment as a Rabbi in Rome, New York, Wisconsin and Ohio before eventually moving Fort Myers, Florida, where they lived out the remainder of their lives. Simon died at the age of 91 in 2011, Greda passing away at the age of 104 in 2017.
Retired now, Stein says she and her husband originally moved back to NYS to attend Syracuse University, eventually making Syracuse their permanent home.
For more information about Oswego’s Safe Haven Holocaust Refugee Shelter Museum, please click here.
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