Guests of the President

The definitive and moving account of America's only World War II Holocaust refugee shelter. Nearly eighty years ago, the residents of a small town in upstate New York welcomed a group of refugees that changed the town forever. The 982 people were the only refugees to enter the United States outside of the immigration system during the Holocaust. They represented nineteen nationalities and spoke more than a dozen different languages. Most were Jewish. They were doctors, janitors, comedians, pastry chefs, cafe singers, novelists, rabbis, cobblers, architects, factory owners. The youngest, nicknamed “International Harry,” had been born in a truck on the way to the ship that would take them to the United States. The oldest, Isaac Cohen, in Thessaloniki during the American Civil War. At least one hundred of them had spent time in Nazi concentration camps. Now they were in America and hoped for a fresh start. They published their own camp newspaper and staged performances. They fell in love and got married. They got into fights. They died and gave birth. They befriended their American neighbors and learned English. The kids attended public school. Yet the refugees' lives were precarious. They lived on American soil, but held no legal status. They were called, simply, “guests of the president.” For eighteen months, these men, women, and children lived and loved together in uncertainty. They were supposed to return to Europe after the war. Would the United States really deport them? Famous Americans like Eleanor Roosevelt and Albert Einstein would lobby for them to stay. And the refugees would fight for themselves with civic action, art, journalism, performance, and every ounce of energy they had. They would find unlikely allies in the local townspeople who had come to love their new neighbors. Guests of the President is a poignant story about humanity, rebuilding community, and what we owe one another.

Rebecca Erbelding is a historian of American responses to the Holocaust. Her first book, Rescue Board: The Untold Story of America's Efforts to Save the Jews of Europe, won the National Jewish Book Award for Writing Based on Archival Material. She served as the main historical advisor and as an on-camera expert in Florentine Films's The US and the Holocaust, directed by Ken Burns, Lynn Novick, and Sarah Botstein. She is a historian and educator at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and holds a PhD in American history from George Mason University.