Cummington is a small town in western Massachussetts. From 1940 to 1944, the town was home to a hostel for European refugees, including German artists. Towards the end of the war, the home was immortalised in a film. The approximately 20-minute film with the title The Cummington Story tells the story of the Refugee Hostel and its inhabitants, filmed at the original locations.
When the war broke out in 1939, tales of the suffering of European refugees were becoming more widely known, even in tiny villages such as Cummington. Local pastor Carl Sangree felt compelled to do something about it. He converted a house into a hostel for exiles. Some of the newcomers, such as the German painter Paul Wieghardt and his Jewish wife Nelli Barr, had by that time already been on an Odyssee that took them through Sweden, the Soviet Union and Japan. Others, like the graphic artist Gustav Wolf, were able to escape the unloved home-in-exile of New York by moving to the hostel. In letters, Wolf's friend Jacob Picard had raved about life in Cummington.
The American authorities regarded the Refugee Hostel in Cummington as an exemplary image of the treatment of emigrants and decided to make a film about it in 1945. In the film, the emigrants played themselves with different names, including Wolf as a graphic artist. As the production was intended to burnish the US' reputation as a humanitarian country, the film was translated into 22 languages and shown worldwide.