In August 1944, 982 refugees, mainly Jews fleeing Nazi persecution in Europe, arrived in Oswego, New York, from Italy under the United States government's Safe Haven program. Housed at the Fort Ontario Emergency Refugee Shelter during the final year of the Second World War, they were part of the only official U.S. government effort to rescue Jewish refugees during the war. Yet their refuge came with sharp limits: they were confined behind barbed wire, given no formal legal status, and initially expected to return to their homelands after the war. Only later were they allowed to remain in the United States.