One old Russian Jew was advised to pick a truly American name, one that the immigration authorities would have no difficulty in transcribing. He asked the advice of an employee in the baggage room who suggested Rockefeller. The old Jew kept repeating “Rockefeller, Rockefeller” to be sure he’d remember. But several hours later, when the immigration officer asked him his name, he had forgotten it and answered in Yiddish, “Schon vergessen” — “I’ve already forgotten.” And so he was registered with the truly American name of John Ferguson.

The story is perhaps too good to be true, but ultimately it hardly matters whether it’s true or false. To emigrants yearning for America, a new name might seem a blessing. For their grandchildren today, things are different. It is remarkable that in 1976, the Bicentennial year, several dozen Smiths whose families had come from Poland asked to be renamed Kowalski (both names mean blacksmith).

No more than two percent of all emigrants were turned away from Ellis Island. That still amounts to two hundred and fifty thousand people. And between 1892 and 1924, there were three thousand suicides on Ellis Island.

* Seventy percent of European immigrants entered through New York.

The Way to Ellis Island

Sh! We’re going to America! Where’s America? I don’t know. I only know that it’s awfully far away. You have to travel and travel a very long time to get there. And when you get there, there’s a “Kestelgartel”* waiting for you. They shut you up in the “Kestelgartel” they take off all your clothes and examine your eyes. If your eyes are healthy, it’s all right. If they aren’t, they make you go back to where you came from. As far as I know, my eyes are healthy.... On the other hand, as my brother Eliahu says, things aren’t so easy for my mother. Who’s responsible? She cries day and night. Ever since father died, she hasn’t stopped crying.

— Sholom Aleichem,

The Adventures of Mottell,

the Cantor’s Son

* Castle garden

five million emigrants arriving from Italy

four million emigrants arriving from Ireland

one million emigrants arriving from Sweden

six million emigrants arriving from Germany

three million emigrants arriving from Austria and Hungary

three million five hundred thousand emigrants arriving from Russia and the Ukraine

five million emigrants arriving from Great Britain

eight hundred thousand emigrants arriving from Norway

six hundred thousand emigrants arriving from Greece

four hundred thousand emigrants arriving from Turkey

four hundred thousand emigrants arriving from the Netherlands

six hundred thousand emigrants arriving from France

three hundred thousand emigrants arriving from Denmark

year after year, the steamships of
the Cunard Line, the Red Star Line,
the Anchor Line, the Italian Line, the Hamburg-
Amerika Line, and the Holland-America Line
crisscrossed the North Atlantic

they set out from Rotterdam, from Bremen
and Götenborg, from Palermo, Istanbul, and Naples,
from Antwerp, Liverpool, Lübeck, and Salonika,
from Bristol, Riga, Cork, from Dunkirk, Stettin, and
Hamburg, from Marseille, Genoa, Danzig, Cherbourg, and the Piraeus, from Trieste and London, from Fiume
and Le Havre, from Odessa, from Tallinn, from
Southampton