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Tuesday, July 5, 2011
No boats are likely to have more people on them this holiday weekend than go to Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty, departing from Battery Park in Manhattan (full) and Liberty State Park in New Jersey (less people).
It is a journey to feel good for most people, a photo opportunity with the Dama giant France, perhaps a little research on the family history center on Ellis Island Immigration Museum. You know the famous phrase: "Give me your tired, your poor" and so on. What more could you want?
There is another side of our national welcome mat for not receiving care so even though these days it often seems more in tune with the mood of the country. It is the side that said "Go away, do not want."
Before my last pilgrimage to Ellis Island last week, I had an email conversation with Lenni B. Benson, professor of the Faculty of Law in New York with experience in immigration matters. I asked him to give me three stories of the millions related to Ellis Island that most people should know but probably not.
She told me about Emma Goldman, Ignatz Mezei Ellen Knauff, and on Monday I called the Miss New Jersey's Liberty State Park to see if he could find his ghosts at Ellis Island in the same way that in previous visits, there was the presence of my grandfather, who arrived in 1908 from England to seek and eventually find a new life.
"The Isle of Hope, Island of Tears" is a phrase found in several places in the museum at Ellis Island, but of course it is the "Island of Hope," a medium that gets most of the attention: it is an institution that celebrates the arrival of millions of immigrants since 1892. Not everyone is let in, however, and later, these same buildings were used as a deportation center to release people who were already here. Island of Tears.
It was gratifying to see the exhibition of the museum recognized this less pleasant side of things in a couple of places. A room called "The Closing Door" has a timeline on the wall shows that the barriers to certain immigrants rose in 1875. Among those excluded by various laws in recent years - the language of the statutes is present - were prisoners, prostitutes, lunatics, idiots, poor, polygamous, epileptics, professional beggars, anarchists, imbeciles, and tuberculosis.
Professor Benson, however, looks more modern relevance in deportation cases that were processed at Ellis Island. Emma Goldman is one of the most popular and receives a mention in the museum in a small room that many visitors seemed to overlook the day I was there.
Goldman, who came to America from Russia as a teenager in the 1880s, was a prominent feminist and anarchist, with her lover, Alexander Berkman, was subjected to a deportation hearing at Ellis Island in 1919. They were not alone, fear of the Reds had taken, and it was open season on anyone with a foreign accent, whose ideas were less than mainstream.
"There was massive coordinated raids in schools, guest houses and English-language night schools in several cities," said Professor Benson in an e-mail. "Men, women and children were arrested as suspected of supporting anarchism and the new revolutionary workers' movement as the" Wobblies. "
The case against Goldman were grim, but successfully spent the rest of his life in exile. And because of that hysteria has a way of repeating itself, Ellen Knauff and Ignatz Mezei received similar treatment decades later, when World War II and the Cold War at all nervous about everything foreign.
Knauff was a Jew who had escaped from Czechoslovakia in World War II was brewing. While serving as a member of the British general staff dealing with post-war Berlin, she married a naturalized American citizen there, waiting to take citizenship under the Law of War brides.
But it was locked in Ellis Island on vague charges of subversion. His case reached the Supreme Court, which ruled against her. But was later able to demonstrate that all the accusations were fabricated by a jealous ex-girlfriend of her husband, and admitted it was - after being detained for nearly three years at the headquarters of Ellis Island.
It is a journey to feel good for most people, a photo opportunity with the Dama giant France, perhaps a little research on the family history center on Ellis Island Immigration Museum. You know the famous phrase: "Give me your tired, your poor" and so on. What more could you want?
There is another side of our national welcome mat for not receiving care so even though these days it often seems more in tune with the mood of the country. It is the side that said "Go away, do not want."
Before my last pilgrimage to Ellis Island last week, I had an email conversation with Lenni B. Benson, professor of the Faculty of Law in New York with experience in immigration matters. I asked him to give me three stories of the millions related to Ellis Island that most people should know but probably not.
She told me about Emma Goldman, Ignatz Mezei Ellen Knauff, and on Monday I called the Miss New Jersey's Liberty State Park to see if he could find his ghosts at Ellis Island in the same way that in previous visits, there was the presence of my grandfather, who arrived in 1908 from England to seek and eventually find a new life.
"The Isle of Hope, Island of Tears" is a phrase found in several places in the museum at Ellis Island, but of course it is the "Island of Hope," a medium that gets most of the attention: it is an institution that celebrates the arrival of millions of immigrants since 1892. Not everyone is let in, however, and later, these same buildings were used as a deportation center to release people who were already here. Island of Tears.
It was gratifying to see the exhibition of the museum recognized this less pleasant side of things in a couple of places. A room called "The Closing Door" has a timeline on the wall shows that the barriers to certain immigrants rose in 1875. Among those excluded by various laws in recent years - the language of the statutes is present - were prisoners, prostitutes, lunatics, idiots, poor, polygamous, epileptics, professional beggars, anarchists, imbeciles, and tuberculosis.
Professor Benson, however, looks more modern relevance in deportation cases that were processed at Ellis Island. Emma Goldman is one of the most popular and receives a mention in the museum in a small room that many visitors seemed to overlook the day I was there.
Goldman, who came to America from Russia as a teenager in the 1880s, was a prominent feminist and anarchist, with her lover, Alexander Berkman, was subjected to a deportation hearing at Ellis Island in 1919. They were not alone, fear of the Reds had taken, and it was open season on anyone with a foreign accent, whose ideas were less than mainstream.
"There was massive coordinated raids in schools, guest houses and English-language night schools in several cities," said Professor Benson in an e-mail. "Men, women and children were arrested as suspected of supporting anarchism and the new revolutionary workers' movement as the" Wobblies. "
The case against Goldman were grim, but successfully spent the rest of his life in exile. And because of that hysteria has a way of repeating itself, Ellen Knauff and Ignatz Mezei received similar treatment decades later, when World War II and the Cold War at all nervous about everything foreign.
Knauff was a Jew who had escaped from Czechoslovakia in World War II was brewing. While serving as a member of the British general staff dealing with post-war Berlin, she married a naturalized American citizen there, waiting to take citizenship under the Law of War brides.
But it was locked in Ellis Island on vague charges of subversion. His case reached the Supreme Court, which ruled against her. But was later able to demonstrate that all the accusations were fabricated by a jealous ex-girlfriend of her husband, and admitted it was - after being detained for nearly three years at the headquarters of Ellis Island.
Labels: International
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