Fort Ontario Emergency Refugee Shelter

This collection primarily consists of Arthur Lehmann's letters to Fanny Geck, written while he was in the Fort Ontario Emergency Refugee Shelter (1944-1945) and in Niagara Falls, NY (1946-1947). It also contains a small amount of other correspondence, and some of Arthur Lehmann's writings.

The collection consists of Jack Cohen and Mosco Tzechoval’s papers relating to their involvement at the Fort Ontario Emergency Refugee Shelter in Oswego, New York, 1944-1946. Materials include correspondence, sermons, minutes, reports, notes, clippings, and photographs.

This collection contains the papers of Joseph Perkins Chamberlain, a professor of law who worked with many refugee aid organizations during the 1930s and 1940s. The papers reflect the work of Chamberlain and the organizations in rescuing and assisting refugees from Europe during this time. Although the bulk of the documents consists of correspondence, the collection also includes minutes of meetings, reports, statistical information, clippings, booklets and transcripts of speeches.

This collection contains the records of the National Refugee Service (NRS), a refugee aid organization founded in New York City in 1939 to assist refugees fleeing Nazi persecution. A successor agency to the National Coordinating Committee for Aid to Refugees and Emigrants Coming from Germany, which had operated as an umbrella organization of refugee aid agencies since 1934, the NRS remained in existence until 1946, when it was merged into the new organization United Service for New Americans. The NRS program encompassed a migration service that assisted with affidavits, visas and other legal aspects of the immigration process; temporary relief and casework services; job placement, retraining, and small business loans; help in resettling to localities throughout the country; and social and cultural adjustment to American life. The records include minutes, correspondence, memoranda, and reports related to the board of directors; the executive director; lay advisory committees; the various departments within the NRS; special committees assisting professional groups, including physicians, musicians, rabbis, social workers, and scholars; and cooperating refugee-assistance committees and organizations across the United States.