Oswego could soon be home to the newest National Park. The National Park Service said the area of Fort Ontario where the Safe Haven Holocaust Refugees stayed during World War II meets the requirements to be designated a national park.
Fort Ontario was the only European refugee shelter in the United States to welcome refugees, as guests of President Roosevelt, during World War II. Nearly 1,000 refugees stayed at the shelter in Oswego between 1944 and 1946. Many of them were Jewish.
Judy Coe Rapaport, acting president of the Safe Haven Holocaust Refugee Shelter Museum, said they started the process of working toward national park status years ago. The National Park Service study completed earlier this month, said the two-acre portion of Fort Ontario consisting of the Safe Haven museum and three nearby buildings present during the operation of the shelter meet the criteria to be designated a new national park.
Rapaport said she got to break the news at the 80th reunion of Safe Haven refugees and their families. She said it's crucial to keep their story alive.
“Everyone should know this story," Rapaport said. "It's a refugee story. It's a holocaust story. It is a human rights story. And it is a story when people don't do something, bad things happen and six million bad things happen.”
Rapaport said they get visitors from all over the world to the museum and expect the number of visitors to rise with national park status. Another benefit of becoming a national park, she said, means they’d get access to federal funds. Right now, the museum is a nonprofit relying on private donations.
“We need new computers to go with our exhibits to put everything on the cloud," Rapaport said. "So that money allows us to update our museum. Without that, it's hard.”
Congressional or presidential action is required for designation as a national park. Rapaport said the museum is also looking at becoming a World Heritage Site under the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization or UNESCO, but needs the national park status first.
