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FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 28, 1990
Ellis Island
Continued from Page 2
7,000 aliens left the country
through Ellis Island, chief-
ly because of hard times in
the United States.
The certification of all
immigrants (medical,
literacy, economic status
and likelihood to become a
public charge) is now con-
ducted abroad under the
supervision of the
American consuls and by
immigration inspectors on
the steamers in New York
harbor, and only those
aliens are sent to the island
who are held for special in-
quiry. Jewish religious ser-
vices are held on the island
and special food is provid-
ed for those who are Or-
thodox by the Hebrew Im-
migrant Aid Society. As for
those who chance to die on
the island, of all the
peoples in the world only
the Jews have a perfect
record for burying their
own dead.
Authors of prominence of
that era left indelible literary
marks on this immigration
epic with their accounts of oc-
currences in the first half of
this century. Bernard Postal,
who should be remembered as
one of the leading figures in
the English-Jewish press, and
as a historian of American
journalism, compiled with
Lionel Koppman American
Jewish Landmarks, which
lists some of the prominent
writers and their works about
the immigrants. He states:
The story of the New
York Jewish immigrant
and his descendants
became a best seller
through the novels and
short stories of Herman
Wouk, Bernard Malamud,
Saul Bellow, Philip Roth,
an, Herbert
Bruce Friedm
Gold, Chaim Potok, and
the translations of Isaac
Bashevis Singer. The body
of fiction by and about the
Jews of New York provides
a continuing insight into
the changing patterns of
Jewish life and history in
the city. The East Side and
its impact on Jewish and
American life have in-
trigued writers for half a
century.
Ellis Island and the ghet-
to as the Jewish im-
migrant's frontiers were
the themes of Ab Cahan's
The Rise of David Levin-
sky, and Mary Antin's The
Promised Land. The tears
and whimsy of Fannie
Hurst and Montague Glass
were succeeded by the
idealized cliches of
Leonard Q. Ross' The
Education of Hyman
Kaplan, Milt Gross' Nize,
Baby, and Arthur Kober's
Having a Wonderful Time.
The proletarian novels of
disenchantment by Mike
Gold, Isidor Schneider,
Henry Roth, Joseph
Freeman, Albert Halper,
and Leona Zugsmith
presaged the debunking
and self-hatred of Ben
Hecht, Jerome Weidman,
Budd Schulberg, and the
novels of wartime anti-
Semitism by Irwin Shaw,
Arthur Miller, and Norman
Mailer.
The books of Harry
Golden and Sam Levenson
of East Side reminiscences
and the recent Jewish
novels with New York
characters completed the
cycle in which New York
Jews were no longer
pathetic strugglers, victims
of schlemiehls, but or-
dinary Americans of
middle-class status.
The road to attaining
economic security had its
tragic experiences. There
were the horrors of the sweat-
Ellis Island and the
ghetto as the
Jewish immigrant's
frontiers were the
themes of several
books.
shops and their many deaths.
Courageous demands for pro-
tection and legal and political
exertions were made to pre-
vent recurrence of horrors
like the sweatshop fires.
In American Jewish Land-
marks, Bernard Postal and
Lionel Koppman traced the
aspect of the sweatshops:
From 1880-1900, most
clothing manufacturers
employed few workers ex-
cept highly skilled cutters,
who were then largely Ger-
mans or Irish. Bundles of
unfinished cuttings were
turned over to petty en-
trepreneurs, known as con-
tractors, who finished the
garments in their own out-
side shops. Some contrac-
tors handed this work over
to subcontractors whose
savage competition for
bundles led to price cut-
ting and exploitation of the
workers through wage
cuts and longer hours.
The outside shop became
the horrible sweatshop, a
sunless tenement flat
which doubled as living
quarters and factory. Until
the contractor became pro-
sperous to open an inside
shop in a loft building, his
workers were often
members of his own family
or fellow-townsmen. Most
of the contractors and sub-
contractors were also East
European immigrants who
went into business for
themselves as soon as they
accumulated some capital.
At Ellis Island they met
and recruited relatives and
former neighbors for the
sweatshops.
In the front room of tene-
ment flats tailors, basters,
and finishers bent over
rented sewing machines
that covered every inch of
floor space. Piles of finish-
ed and half-finished
garments filled the
bedroom. The red hot stove
and blazing grate of glow-
ing flatirons in the kit-
chen, where the pressers
sweated, gave birth to the
name "sweatshop." Parents
and children worked side-
by-side. Payment was by
the piece and the longer
they worked the more they
earned. The working day
often began at 4 a.m. and
did not end until 10 at
night. Sanitary conditions
were appalling, and the
sweatshop became
synonymous with disease-
breeding tenements oc-
cupied by exploited
workers.
HIAS, the Hebrew Im-
migrant Aid Society which
now performs additional
historic roles as Operation
Exodus for Russian Jews
emigrating to Israel and this
country, receives due recogni-
tion from Mr. Postal and Mr.
Koppman in the following:
Responsible uptown
leaders, recognizing that
they could not ignore the
plight of fellow Jews
without rejecting their own
Jewishness, brought all
elements of the community
together in the Russian
Emigrant Relief Society in
1881. Reorganized as the
Hebrew Emigrant Aid
Society, this group struggl-
ed for 18 months to meet
the needs of daily
shiploads of destitute Jews
dumped in the vast domed
shed of Castle Garden,
New York's old immigra-
tion station.
Hundreds slept on floors
and temporary benches,
crowded into narrow, un-
sanitary quarters, until a
former lunatic asylum on
Ward's Island was con-
verted into the Schiff
Refugee Center, where hot
meals and medical care
were provided. There the
poet Emma Lazarus, who
came from an old Sephar-
dic family, had her first
contact with the "huddled
masses yearning to
breathe free," whom she
immortalized in her sonnet
on the Statue of Liberty.
When the Hebrew
Emigrant Aid Society
suspended operations in
1884, its work was taken
over by the United Hebrew
Charities, which was, at
first, not too sympathetic
to the East Europeans.
This prompted the older
established Russian Jews
to organize their own relief
societies. In 1882, they had
formed the Hebrew
Emigrant Auxiliary Socie-
ty. A Hebrew Sheltering
Society, which opened tem-
porary immigrant shelters
in 1882, and the Hebrew
Emigrant Aid Society,
founded in 1902 as the
Voliner Zhitomirer Aid
Society to provide burial
for Jews from Zhitomir
who had died on Ellis
Island, became the
predecessors of United
Hias Service, the world-
wide immigrant agency.
History bathed in tears and
reconstructed in Americaniz-
ed stories may be the way to
maintain the fascinating
Ellis Island story. It will keep
inviting recollections with
renewed loyalties to citizen-
ship inspirations. The
memories will be unforget-
table.
❑
Jacob Marcus
Continued from Page 2
ecutive, but his real job
was helping others. He
once wrote: "There's a big
difference between stick-
ing your nose in other peo-
ple's business and putting
your heart in other peo-
ple's problems:' There is a
consensus: No other in-
dividual in Detroit has
been more active as a
humanitarian than
Leonard Simons. In every
field — in welfare, inter-
faith relations, culture,
social advancement — he
has reached out to advise,
to aid, to comfort.
With appreciation to Dr.
Marcus for his newest work
goes gratitude for including
an honored fellow citizen
among the personalities
selected for quotations.
Leonard Simons again
emerges as a qualified
codifier of high Jewish prin-
ciples. Therefore we salute
the historian for a noteworthy
supplement to Jewish Ar-
chives.
❑