HISTORIAN SEEKS IMMIGRANTS TO RECOUNT ELLIS ISLAND EXPERIENCES
By Sally Kalson
Pittsburgh Post Gazette, PA
March 13 2007
If you’re an immigrant who passed through Ellis Island, even as a baby;
if you were stationed there with the Coast Guard or worked there as
an employee prior to 1954; if you were interned there as a German,
Italian or Japanese "enemy alien" during wartime, Janet Levine wants
to hear from you.
Ms. Levine is the oral historian with the Ellis Island Immigration
Museum, part of the Statue of Liberty National Monument. She is coming
to Pittsburgh on March 26 to conduct taped interviews with residents
who have any of the above associations with the processing center
through which millions of newcomers passed from 1892 to 1954.
Her visit here could last up to a week, depending on how many
interviews materialize. Those interested in telling their stories
may call Ms. Levine’s New York office, 1-212-363-3206, ext. 157,
and leave a message for her to return.
"We’re seeking people with firsthand experience of passing through
Ellis Island, even if they don’t remember that part of their
immigration," Ms. Levine said.
"The intent is to gather life stories. Ellis Island is the criterion
we use, but it isn’t the primary emphasis. I have interviewed people
who were born on the ship or shortly thereafter. The focus is growing
up in the immigrant community."
Ms. Levine will select interview subjects based on age at arrival,
overall experience and gaps in the current collection. Interviews
last an hour, and most are conducted in the subject’s residence. The
only requirement is a quiet spot near an electrical outlet.
"I do it like a conversation," she said. "We go through life before
they came, the decision to come, the departure, the ship voyage,
coming into New York harbor and Ellis Island, where they went from
there, first impressions and a thumbnail sketch of their lives here.
Whatever they remember is fine and what they don’t remember doesn’t
matter."
Eventually, the tapes and transcriptions will go into the museum’s 20
public computers, available to everyone from international researchers
to children on a school field trip. Subjects get an audio tape of
the interview, she said, adding: "Families are very happy to have it."
In particular, Ms. Levine is looking to fill gaps in the museum’s
collection.
"We would love to find someone from Bulgaria," she said. "We don’t
have one person from there.
"Also, most of the Italians and Eastern Europeans we have are Jewish
people who were fleeing persecution. We have a lot of those from
Poland," she said, but very few non-Jewish Poles.
"We have Armenians from Turkey, but not many Turks.
"We also have fewer people from France, Belgium, Spain, Portugal,
Scandinavia and the Baltic countries. We’d like to have more from
Croatia, more Czechs and Austrians — although we do have three of
the von Trapps [of ‘Sound of Music’ fame]. We can also use people
from the Caribbean and Africa."
The collection has a sprinkling of interviews with Chinese and
Japanese, she said, although most of those newcomers arrived via the
West Coast.
The Pittsburgh visit — a first for the museum’s oral history project
— is one of an ongoing series of expeditions across the country in
search of Ellis Island stories.
Ms. Levine already has several interviews lined up with people who
visited the museum and filled out a questionnaire. They include
brothers who came with their mother from Italy in 1937 to avoid the
Italian army; a former member of the Coast Guard who was stationed
there in 1941; a German who fled with his parents to avoid the Nazis;
and a Croatian woman who arrived in 1920.
Ellis Island was the first federal processing station for immigrants.
It opened in 1892, and was reincarnated as an immigration museum
in 1990.
Prior to its original opening, newcomers who arrived at various
ports were processed by the states. But 75 percent still came through
New York.
The period from 1880 to 1924 became what Ms. Levine called "the
largest migration of people in human history."
At first, she said, those who came into New York harbor disembarked
at Castle Garden, a fort in Battery Park at the tip of Manhattan. But
their numbers grew so large that the U.S. government set up the intake
apparatus at Ellis Island to exercise more control.
Those who arrived in first- or second-class passage were assumed
to have means of support; they continued to enter via Castle Garden
after a cursory medical exam on the ship. Ellis Island was for the
poorer masses who arrived in third class or steerage.
"The point was to weed out people who might become a public charge,"
said Ms. Levine.
The poorer passengers had to undergo a more rigorous physical exam.
Their papers had to be in order, and they had to have $25. Women and
children had to be picked up by a man. Those without money or a man
to retrieve them had to have a sponsor.
Such stories are among many already archived in the museum’s
collection. The first taped interview was done at the Statue of Liberty
by oral historian Margo Nash in 1971. She taped 200 interviews with
people who had made a life for themselves in the New World. Often
they talked about how different the statue looked from when they
first saw it.
Now, Ms. Levine said, the museum has 2,000 archived interviews,
plus another series conducted around the country in the mid-1980s in
preparation for the museum’s opening. Excerpts are used in exhibits
where visitors can listen in by phone.
If family members did their own audio taped interviews that are of
good quality, the museum will accept them as donation, she said. The
museum library also has donated diaries that were kept by immigrants,
and a permanent exhibit of things newcomers brought with them from
the old country.
In addition, the museum houses the American Family History Center,
which affords computerized access to passenger manifests from all
the ships that came into New York harbor from 1892 to 1924, when more
stringent quota laws came into effect.