The Statue of Liberty, standing tall in New York Harbor since 1886, was at the time of the Holocaust an international symbol of freedom and hospitality for immigrants seeking a better life in the United States. A poem by Emma Lazurus inscribed on a bronze plaque in the interior wall of the monument reads:

Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, the tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!