Passages

Nadell, Pamela

PASSAGES Between the shtetl and the Lower East Side; there was the harrowing journey. What happened along the way? PAMELA NADELL "Hurrah, we're going to America! Where is America, I do not know....

...If not seasick, they spent their days sitting on the open deck amid the machinery and rigging that cluttered their only free space...
...When Israel Davidson fled Russia in 1888, he carried, along with his tallis and tefillin-praytr shawl and phylacteries-a cup and coffee pot...
...Agents flooded the shtetls onmar-ket days, boasting of the successes of the emigrants whom they had personally sent to America...
...In 1897', in Vitebsk, Samuel Chotzinoff's father patiently listened as swarms of agents exposed the "low business standards and unethical practices of their rivals...
...Which train to take...
...As they clambered up the gangplank, encumbered with baggage, a scene of "wildest commotion" confronted them...
...Steerage passengers slept in filthy, barnlike compartments that afforded no privacy and that often served as their sleeping, living and dining rooms...
...by 1910, it was a village capable of accommodating 4,000 travelers...
...Every emigrant had heard rumors of smugglers who, having agreed to one fee beforehand, stopped in the middle of the borderlands, pulled out knives, and threatened, "Your money or your life...
...And steerage was the way to carry the most passengers...
...One emigrant recalled his last hours at home: "During the early part of the evening mother and I walked up and down in the front yard, my hand in hers, talking of the past and the future, and carefully avoiding any reference to the present...
...Others hired "professional immigrants" to help them...
...Some offered "emigration classes," where these so-called experts covered everything one needed to know about the journey-how to carry money, answer questions and conceal diseases from wary immigration inspectors...
...All they knew was that it was terribly far away...
...They traveled west, debarking a few miles before the frontier...
...The emigrants knew they were at the mercy of unscrupulous men, who could steal their luggage or their money-or worse...
...What people did it keep out...
...For emigrants who had never before gone more than a few versts beyond their shtetl, the prospect of a voyage halfway around the world seemed overwhelming...
...With so many Jewish passengers crossing the ocean, the shipping lines discovered that it was in their best ini terests to accommodate these passengers...
...Some emigrants had prepared for the voyage by baking hundreds of kuchlech...
...Taken to Castle Island, later to Ellis Island, there was still another ordeal ahead-one last set of immigration inspectors and medical examiners before America would open her golden doors...
...They figured that with oranges, herring, hardboiled eggs and tea from the steerage galley, they would be sustained at sea...
...Sprucing themselves up as best they could, they gathered on deck ready to ! meet America...
...And when they arrived, they were once again locked up—this time behind the high walls of emigrant hostels...
...Then physicians examined the travelers to make certain they did not carry any "loathsome or contagious diseases...
...Occasionally, the agent even wired His Highness, the Emperor of America, to see if he would grant the emigrant permission to enter his dominions...
...Then, while the baggage was shipped in wagons to the other side, the smugglers led the emigrants across the frontier on foot at night...
...Because Russian law prohibited emigration, soldiers carefully guarded every kilometer of the western frontier...
...Kosher galleys gave then, ! an advantage in the competition for Jewish emigrants...
...Agent competition for the travelers was so intense that at one railway depot runners of rival agencies prepared themselves as a train filled with emigrants approached...
...Consequently, fewer than 10 percent of the emigrants bothered with passports, opting, instead, to steal furtively over the frontier in what was often the most dangerous part of their journey...
...What seaport had the fastest ships...
...Perhaps here the emigrants paused a moment, thankful that "by the grace of God, blessed be He," they had left behind the pogroms and poverty of Eastern Europe to begin life anew in the land called the goldene medineh-America...
...Marcus Ravage remembered the effect that the reappearance of one such successful immigrant had upon his friends and neighbors...
...Thus, the introduction of kosher galleys proved to be in the economic interest of the shipping companies...
...In the alarm clock scam the agent made the emigrant pay to send a telegram to Hamburg to see if there was room on board the ship...
...money is made in carrying passengers...
...Locked below, the emigrants had to wait their turn...
...This meant that emigrants no longer risked their lives setting sail across the ocean...
...Had they had passports, the emigrants could have crossed the frontier openly or they could have sailed to America from either Libau or Odessa...
...Border police could capture the emigrants or shoot at them...
...Moreover, after 1891, steamship companies paid the costs of the return voyage for emigrants rejected at Ellis Island as unfit to immigrate...
...How much did all this cost...
...No wonder it was regarded by immigration officials as "the most complete emigrant station in Europe...
...Agents knew more invidious ways to cheat emigrants...
...The emigrants traveled by foot or by wagon or by train towards their first stop, the western frontier...
...Which ones had kosher kitchens...
...Imperial Russia's equivocal attitude towards Jewish emigration forced the Russian Jews to leave their homeland by crossing this border illicitly...
...When the Jewish passengers asked for herring, the captain flew into a rage...
...Sailors loaded the ship, officers shouted, children cried and steamers sailed past sounding their whistles, while hundreds of passengers of different nationalities swarmed on deck...
...The forced fasts of these passengers holds the key to one of the more unusual developments of the steerage-the appearance of kosher galleys onboard many steamships...
...DON'T ASK...
...Agents, who worked indirectly for the giant European steamship lines, the Hamburg-American, North German Lloyd and Cunard companies, made their commissions by selling tickets...
...Where to stay...
...Often the ; food was so rotten that the passengers ! pitched it overboard...
...Anticipation of separation from loved ones colored those final days at home...
...It was comprised of 40 buildings including dormitories, hotels, dining rooms, a canteen, a hospital, a music pavilion, two churches, a synagogue and a ko-- sher kitchen...
...These cooking utensils, no less than his ritual garments, symbolized the traditional halachic world of East European Jewry...
...Only when their cousin, who was to have met them, failed to appear, did they discover they were in London, the victims of an unscrupulous agent who had taken money for passage to America, but written tickets valid only as far as England...
...Yet, given the open secret of this way of fleeing Russia, this could hardly have happened frequently...
...Many, perhaps most, of the two million East European Jews who migrated to America during the years 1881-1914 found the voyage "a kind of hell that cleanses a man of his sins before coming to the land of Columbus...
...At last, he "finally closed with one whose straightforward sincerity inspired confidence...
...As Sholom Aleichem's Mottel said, only after you've floundered in a flood of tears, sailed for 10 days and 10 nights, been imprisoned on Ellis Island and heard with your own ears "all the troubles and tribulations, all the sorrows and miseries of the immigrants," only then can you know how the immigrants felt-when at last they set foot on American soil...
...While the authorities turned a blind eye to this exodus, the emigrants dared not flaunt their violations of Imperial law and brazenly march out of Mother Russia...
...Some 70 years after he had come to America, Sami Silverman could still write, "I will never forget this trip as long as I live...
...But as Davidson stole over the border, the cup began to rattle inside the pot...
...Send back...
...How many feather pillows to bring, since, as everyone knew, there were no feather pillows in America...
...What was the best place to cross the border...
...Fearing detection, Davidson threw them away, the "first step on the downward path" that in America would lead to a dismantling of tradition...
...However, not all ships' captains were willing to make the needed special provisions for Jewish passengers...
...But for devout Jewish emigrants rotten food was an inconsequential problem compared with the paramount issue of whether or not the food was kosher...
...An eyewitness reported that "blood flowed freely" as thugs from each agency, armed with clubs and whips, fought to capture as many emigrants as possible...
...Typically, emigrants arranged for their border crossing before they left home...
...The New York agent for the North German Lloyd line boasted that each of these stations was "completely equipped for the comfort and convenience of its passengers...
...Built by the steamship companies as the final link in the chain of controls on the passage of emigrants through Germany, these hostels provided lodging for the emigrants waiting for their ships-and, conveniently, also kept the emigrants off German city streets...
...Emigration produced, both for those who were leaving and those who were left, intense emotional strain akin to bereavement...
...However, the technological advances that had made such speed possible had not led to any significant improvement in the quality of the journey...
...Emigrants who failed either of these tests were swiftly returned across the border, while those who passed were bathed and their luggage disinfected in preparation for the rest of their journey...
...As long as they had remained on land, the East European Jews had received kosher food from the local Jewish communities whose philanthropies fulfilled the traditional obligation of caring for wayfarers...
...At that point, another class of agents, really bands of smugglers, led the emigrants out of the country...
...But when the immigrant Mary Antin described her family's experiences at a station, a rather different picture emerged...
...a millionaire and envoy of the American government" had returned...
...the more passengers, the more money...
...And so they were, though not legally...
...From that day "everybody who was anybody had either gone or was going to America...
...You've got to ride and ride until-you get there...
...Washroom facilities and lavatories were grossly ' inadequate...
...But as emigration swelled, the Auswanderhallen grew...
...But at sea, pious Jews were on their own...
...An alarm clock in a back room rang to signal when the telegram was dispatched and a reply received...
...Still, stumbling around unfamiliar terrain in the dark at the mercy of smugglers and within range of a soldier's rifle made the emigrants' parting from Russia quite dangerous-and even more frightening...
...in every respect a model institution...
...Three days after boarding ship, twelve delighted Chotzinoffs landed in "New York...
...On the contrary: rather than granting steerage passengers more room and greater conveniences, steamship technology had enabled as many as two thousand passengers to be crammed into the steerage decks...
...I never saw her again...
...As she embraced me for the last time, her sobs became violent...
...As these emigrants saw it, the choices were clear...
...As they stole across the border, some travelers sensed the changes that would follow in the wake of their emigration...
...On one ship the kosher food that the observant Jews brought ran out 10 days into their 17-day voyage...
...Emigrants complained that this prison's walls were covered with wire and nails that prevented even the most adventurous child from climbing up to look at the sea...
...But the privileged j passengers, those in the cabin classes : who had amused themselves by throwing pennies down to the steerage deck, debarked first...
...After all, "The aim of every steamship company is to make money...
...The solution to this conflict of interests lay in designing a program to control every stage of the emigrants' path through Germany, from the moment they crossed the frontier until they exited board a steamship bound for Americajn 1895, Gerrrtany opened a series f control stations along the frontier...
...While the shipping magnates welcomed Jewish emigrants, German officials were considerably less enthusiastic...
...Taken "to a lonely place," separated from their friends, driven about by "strange-looking people" who inspected them as if to ascertain their full value, bathed by harried attendants while children cried "in a way that suggested terrible things," Antin found the control station a confusing and frightening place and feared they would all be murdered there...
...The emigrants' first sight of the ship conveyed some sense of what to expect...
...s soon as the emigrants had crossed ,ne border, they were arrested by German soldiers and taken to a control station There, police interrogated them to see if they had the tickets and money necessary to travel through Germany and beyond...
...After seven, 10, 14 or sometimes more days at sea, the emigrants eagerly awaited the cry, "Land ahead...
...There was despair in her way of clinging to me which I could not then understand...
...But what remained uppermost in their minds, as they packed pillows and baked the kuchlech they would eat if their ships had no kosher food, was that all too soon they would bid farewell to friends and relatives, parents and places that they knew they would never see again...
...I understand it now...
...In the end, East European Jews accounted for one-third of the steerage travelers on the German lines...
...There they waited in lodging houses until the smugglers put together enough people to make it profitable to bribe the guards...
...From the control stations the East European Jews were locked inside special emigrant trains for the trip to Hamburg or Bremen...
...But Libau and Odessa ships were notorious for their rotten steerage accommodations...
...Almost every traveler recalled this illegal exit with terror...
...Because these and numerous other questions were outside the experience of the emigrants, a class of middlemen-agents-emerged to help the emigrants with their travel plans...
...Not content with commissions from legitimate ticket sales, crafty agents used other means to line their pockets...
...As they jumped off the barges that carried them from Ellis Island to Manhattan, they stared at the buildings, the people, the bustling streets and markets...
...Like Mottel, the emigrants wondered how they would get to America...
...She seemed calm and resigned...
...Unlike the sailing steerages of an earlier era, the steamship offered the speed of a journey of "only" one or two weeks...
...But the journey that seemed a grand adventure in the hands of a master storyteller had a darker side...
...One's view of these control stations depended on where one stood-on the outside, looking in, or locked inside, looking out...
...Amidst derricks swinging cargo on board, the emigrants fought to find their compartments, grab the best berths and get the bedding and utensils that they would need at sea...
...As a result, conditions were awful: "All human and physical needs were so miserably provided for, or else entirely ignored, that it was not at all strange if the passengers developed and showed some animal propensities...
...themselves and setting off for America...
...They imagined that the East European Jews would spread disease, burden the poor houses, incite anarchy or-worst of all-settle in Germany itself...
...But when the train drew into the station, she lost control of her feelings...
...Half-starved immigrants were less likely to pass the Ellis Island medical exams...
...Overjoyed at being in America at last, justifiably proud that they had come through a difficult journey, perhaps already wistful for the world left behind, the emigrants nervously began their new lives...
...Not content to wait for the emigrants to come to them, enterprising agents went to the emigrants...
...Yet, recognizing in emigration a solution to Russia's Jewish problem, unofficial government policy proclaimed, "The western borders are open to you Jews...
...Once across the German border, waves of Jewish emigrants encouraged a tremendous growth in the German shipping industry...
...The steamship lines, the Hamburg-American and North German Lloyd, needed very many emigrants to fill their huge steerage holds...
...Meals were served, as one '. traveler put it, "a la mob...
...They could either eat treif on the way to America or starve before they ever landed there...
...Stealing across the border was so common that at least one family paid an agent to smuggle them over the frontier even though they had already bought passports...
...Horse dealers, coachmen, boardinghouse keepers, money exchangers, liquor sellers and every type of adventurer found a niche in the emigrant-smuggling business...
...They feared the specter of hordes of Jewish emigrants descending upon Germany...
...And obtaining a passport meant tackling the muddled Russian passport system...
...Some claimed they had heard about people shot or drowned while stealing across the border...
...And so, seven days later, the devout emigrants landed, exhausted and famished...
...Worried about unscrupulous agents, nervous about how they would cope with imposing gendarmes, impersonal physicians, immigrant inspectors, hotel keepers and the sailors in whose hands their destiny now lay, the emigrants prepared for the day of departure...
...From this point on, the noise, tumult and confusion never abated...
...The largest and most important of these hostels was the Hamburg-America line's Auswanderhallen, built in 1891...
...Whereas all remembered a "slouchy, unprepossessing youngster with his toes out of his gaping boot-tips...
...How to buy tickets...
...Even President Teddy Roosevelt knew that agents could "wheedle and cajole many immigrants" into uprooting Pamela Nadell is Assistant Professor of Jewish Studies at The American University, Washington, DC...
...What people did America let in...
...Calling the Jews barbarians, he declared that if the Jews did not eat his food, they could starve...
...With these words Sholom Aleichem's orphan Mottel, the cantor's son, begins the tale of his great adventure to the golden land...
...They were convinced there was no other way to enter Germany...
...Emigrants often heard rifle fire...
...As the saltwater sprayed their faces and the tugboats whistled in the harbor, the East European Jews at last stood on the docks, prepared to embark on the final stage of their journey-the much dreaded crossing of the Atlantic in steamship steerage...
...All I know is that it's far away...

Vol. 10 • March 1985 • No. 3


 
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