Ellis Island

The story of the island where the immigrants went when they came to America looking for a better way of life and the museum that preserves these memories.

From 1892 to 1954, Ellis Island was the gateway to a new life in the United States for millions of immigrants. In later years, the island was deserted, the buildings decaying. Ellis Island was not restored until the 1980s, when Americans from all over the country donated more than $150 million. It opened to the public once again in 1990 as a museum. Learn more about America's history, and perhaps even your own, through the story of one of the most popular landmarks in the country.

You choose which path you would take if you were an immigrant arriving at Ellis Island.

This dramatic true story--told by the daughter of Russian immigrant Jehuda Weinstein--reveals the joys, fears, and eventual triumph of a family who realizes its dream. Full color.

A landmark work of history that brings the voices of the past vividly to life, transforming our understanding of the immigrant's experience in America. Ellis Island. How many stories does this tiny patch of land hold? How many people had joyfully embarked on a new life here -- or known the despair of being turned away? How many were held there against their will? To tell its manifold stories, Ellis Islanddraws on unpublished testimonies, memoirs and correspondence from many internees and immigrants, including Russians, Italians, Jews, Japanese, Germans, and Poles, along with the commissioners, interpreters, doctors, and nurses who shepherded them -- all of whom knew they were taking part in a significant historical phenomenon. We see that deportations from Ellis Island were often based on pseudo-scientific ideas about race, gender, and disability. Sometimes, families were broken up, and new arrivals were held in detention at the Island for days, weeks, or months under quarantine. Indeed the island compound has spent longer as an internment camp than as a migration station. Today, the island is no less political. In popular culture, it is a romantic symbol of the generations of immigrants who reshaped the United States. But its true history reveals that today's fierce immigration debate has deep roots. Now a master storyteller brings its past to life, illustrated with unique archival photographs.

Ellis Island has become an invaluable resource center on immigration and genealogy as well as a national tourist attraction, widely praised for its excellent displays and informative exhibits. Now, the best of the Ellis Island Museum is available to readers in this book that provides an exciting overview of the island, placing it in historical context with a concise history of immigration and global migration. Photos, charts, map, graphs & cartoons.

If You... series.

Die Vereinigten Staaten werden als eine der vordersten Flüchtlingsorte, und kein anderer Ort symbolisiert das mehr als Ellis Island. Mehr als zwölf millionen Einwanderer--von fast jeder Nationalität und Rasse--sind auf dem Weg zu neuen Erfahrungen durch Ellis Islands Hallen und Toren eingetreten. Mit einer erstaunenden Array von Fotografien aus den neunzehnten uns zwanzigsten Jahrhunderten führt Ellis Island den Leser durch die faszinierende Geschichte dieser kleinen Insel in New Yorker Hafen, von ihrer Vorgeschichte als einer des Hafens "Austerninsel" bis ihre spektakulare Jahre als Flagschiff-Station des U.S. Bureau of Immmigration (Einwanderungsbehörde) bis ihre aktuelle Verkörperung als das größte Museum des National Park Service.

Dramatic and defining moments in American history come vividly the life in the Cornerstones of Freedom series.

For millions of people, leaving home and coming to America meant giving up family and all things familiar. For more than sixty years, one site was the first place in America all new immigrants saw. Find out why Ellis Island holds such an important place in America's history.