 Over 12 million men, women, and children passed this way. Passed through rooms and corridors, haunted with a special stillness, which remains only in places once noisy with human life. Here they bought tickets for 1,000 places in America. Here they traded their drachmas, their liras, and their rupals for dollars. Here they sang their first American songs, experienced their first American Christmas in Hanukkah. Here they waited to be given permission to pass over to the new land. Tens of millions of us have relatives who came this way, sat in this room, part of the largest human migration in history. Of the many who came, some were turned away, but even they would leave part of themselves in America to remind us why they had come so far, why they had made the journey. You never know how hard it was to leave her. That was the hardest thing Hanukkah ever had to do. She said, if you leave, why I don't ever want you to come back again. Long hard life. Europe had always lost its children to America, and now there were new reasons to leave. Industrial change and political unrest had brought increased joblessness and poverty to Italy and Southern Europe, reaching as far north as the industrial cities of Poland and Russia. In America they were saying there was a future, perhaps a fortune to be made. In the Southern European ports of Naples, Pyrrhus, Trieste, and Constantinople, they gathered to board the ships to America. Some were birds of passage, leaving to seek work and return. Others with hopes to find at the end of the journey the good permanent life that awaited. They were told 3,000 miles across the sea. In the rural areas of Eastern Europe, they had in addition to poverty, other reasons to look to America. The government was taking young boys to the army. In a mother's lifetime, she might not see him again. And always there was the police, the historic persecutor of the Armenian, Slovak, and Jew. You know what I see now? I see the presence with a wagon and hay to take me, take me away. The whole town was around my wagon. Everybody came to say goodbye. I didn't know how to say goodbye. It was sure, it was a mania. And everybody just wanted to get out of there. Making their way to the railheads, they sought passage to the sea. Some had money for the journey, and some did not. But turning back was seldom an alternative. I didn't pay no tickets. Get out on a train and play for luck. They carried us just like they would carry a load of a bunch of pigs. If you go move a bunch of caves and a bunch of pigs, would you put them in a passenger car? That's the way they looked at us. For many, entering the great port cities of northern Europe was like entering a new world. They had reached the sea, and the immigrant was now in the hands of the steamship company. Immigrants from the east and north swarmed into Bremen, Antwerp, Hamburg, and Liverpool to be processed for the passage to America. They stood in line together, those who saw America as an adventure, those who saw America as a beacon of hope. It was a business of numbers, an operation designed to house, feed, and process 4,000 people at a time. To identify those whom American authorities might reject and return to Europe at steamship expense. First thing to do with you is to wash you. Look, your hair all over. Your hair, if there was a net in your hair, you would have to have a shampoo. Furying epidemics, huge facilities were established to fumigate clothing, baggage, and people. Processed and ticketed. They waited for their ship. They boarded in many parts of Europe and in many kinds of vessels, most to New York and some to other ports. But they had one thing in common. They were traveling steerage and the steamship companies understood the profit in numbers. They began a journey that could last from a week to a month. That was the last time it ever ran again. That was the last trip she made. She should have never made that one either. For some, it would be a voyage without incident. For others, the crossing would provide days for which they were ill-prepared. They gave us a tin plate with a fork and a spoon. A cup of soup. And that much bread. Fifteen days. It was all born big home. I was in the cellar. There were little lights going on there all the time. Little lights. We were riding in the steerage, like animals. You could see a lot of water, but we didn't see the sky. No sky. To escape the throbbing engines in the odor of spoiled food, those with blankets came on deck for air. She was sick all the time. People didn't know where the toilets were and so they'd use it. It was a terrible life. I prayed one night that that ship would go down. It was so horrible. It had to stop for a while. For some, you know, the waves in Washington. Traded to go down. There's only one thing in my mind where I wanted to get out of there and to come to America. It appeared like a fog in everybody when I was at the rail link. Just admiring. I thought I was in heaven. My God, this is a city on earth. This is a city in heaven. I've never seen a building like that. But beautiful. Everybody was just waiting to get off that standing wait to get off that ship. You're just wondering where you were coming to or what was going to happen to you. You know, in your mind. Still separated from the first class and cabin passengers who were processed by immigration officials on board. The immigrant from Sterege waited yet another boat ride. This one from the Hudson River Pier to an island in the upper bay. Crowded into barges and ferries. They approached the place that had become a legend in their mind. Get my eyes on that. I was kind of glad to see all as I was as bad as it was. It was good to see any kind of land. According to the houses I left in my town this was like a whole city. And I almost felt smaller than I am. When I came to these doors I saw all these people that I figured well I guess I'll have to stay here for good probably because all these people what are they doing here? And nobody was happy. You don't know what's going to happen. I had a coat and a dress and a pair of shoes. That's it. One suitcase I had with me. And I bought, I bought $50 I guess. My basket. My little basket that's all I had with me. You're lucky to have the one. We had no other possessions but that. We had no baggage. We had nothing. Nothing except the clothes. We had nothing. Clinging to their possessions they entered the great building and climbed the stairs. Jesus Mary and Joseph I swear am I. They would come right into the big hall and there they were told to sit and stay there. And they didn't know where they were. It was a new land but they haven't been in land that was just the big hall. And all you could get was tears and crying of the children. For the vast majority the process would last less than a day. But now they waited. Those from Europe and the Near East with those who had arrived from the Caribbean. Those who were the first in their family to come to America with those who would be met. Those who came to make money in return with those who were determined never to return. So they all had this fear just worry. They were worried about police because they were always checked in the other countries. The word government frightened me. Government was tyranny. Government was officers who looked at you with the sense that they wanted to hate you or eliminate you. And the idea that there is democracy or that the policeman will help you was very new to me. The policeman to me was someone who could cut my head off. It was the most dangerous thing for everybody to go through in the ice. Charcoma. The dreaded disease of the immigrant. The diagnosis for which could lead to almost certain deportation. There's anything that put a chalk mark here. A chalk mark there. Those identified to be set aside for possible rejection represented a small percentage examined each day. But this was little consolation to a family separated. You didn't have to know the people but you know that somebody is missing. The agony they went through. So you know that somebody is missing in the family. All of a sudden the thought, my goodness, they're separating us because that's what the police always did. They separated the men from the women and then took care of the women and children. As long as some member of the family, some loving member of the family was with you, life was tolerable. You lived in a relationship of family love. Even though the other members of the family you didn't know where they were. You could converse, you could plan, you could warm each other. I had a feeling that I'm left all alone. It's a terrible feeling. All of a sudden they were gone. America did not want the burden of an unhealthy immigrant. America wanted a person who could make a living and was not bringing into the country an infectious disease. And they looked your back, go around with your lungs and your heart and everything. And you were sent from one to the other, one doctor to the other. And a lot of people were put away on the side. I wouldn't want to be in such a bad... People were rejected because they showed outward signs of illness. What they consider mental difficulties. We didn't call it psychiatry, they called it neurology. And we said we're sorry. And the ship that brought them had to take them back. That was a tragedy. I decided if they ever have to send me back, I'll jump down to the water. I'd never go back to Russia. I never wanted to see it again. Built for 1500, the dining room often fed 3,000. Dishes and forks and knives and white napkin. Long tables, well set, but when the people went in, it was like chaos. They handed us food. Food was not something people gave you. I didn't like it, but then I tasted it again. I never had seen a banana before. To me, this white bread was like cake. At night, Ella served as a dormitory for thousands, waiting the new day. Each morning, the great hall would fill and the noise would begin again. Hopefully, their papers were in order, a clean bill of health. A letter from a relative guaranteeing they would not become a public charge. Proof that they were not a contract labor for a dangerous alien. In adjacent rooms, the detain were given additional scrutiny and an opportunity to make their case. But accepting an appeal to Washington, the Board of Inquiry was the rejected immigrant's last chance. Through an interpreter, they did their best to persuade and to overcome the complexities of a changing immigration law. But it was in the great hall with a vast majority faced their first and their last test. In his hand, the man at the registry desk held a ship's manifest. In his power, the right to interpret questions intended to identify those who should be let in were kept out. They know border English. I couldn't understand English, not one word. First question, how much money have you got? She had to have five parts. My father, remember, gave me that five parts. Do you know how long it took a couple of years, two and three years to get that $25? My mother, when we got nearer and the person at the desk called our names, my mother turned to me. She says, I was never here. How does she know my name? I said, it's all right. She knows it. They asked for my name and I told them, they say, how do you spell it? I didn't know how to spell it. And they didn't know it. And they spelled it L-I-C-H-T. I said, it's all right for me. I don't know the difference. But then they say, all right, you can go. You're free to go. To Hoboken. There would still be questions of what food to buy for the railroad trip to Chicago and the boat trip to Boston. It was still the strange names, the strange numbers, and the fear of losing one's money. It was the process of buying a ticket to places with unpronounceable names like Pittsburgh, Hamtramik, and Kierkegaard. But those were details. The island had passed them through. It was as if God's great promise had been fulfilled. I've gone into a free land. I don't think I ever can explain that feeling that I had that time. There was such a thing to be explained. It came out of my system. It's over. It's not the native land, but it means more to me than the native land. It means more to me than the native land. Any country on earth, this never happened. It became a human being again. It's a miracle. I'm glad I'm here. It couldn't be any better, could it? And everybody had hopes. And one thing I was sure in thousands like me that the degradation, the abuse in the privation that we had in Europe, we wouldn't have here. God, yes. Hoping for centuries.