Journey to America

From The Peopling of NYC

Unlike other groups in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, families came together to the U.S., instead of a father working in the U.S. to bring home money for his family. Numerous obstacles stood in the way of coming to America, a steamship ticket cost $34 per person and more money was needed for passports and bribes along the way. Many sold their possessions and arrived to the country literally penniless. For some assistance, many Eastern European Jews (700,000 between 1905 and 1914), came to Germany as a halfway point. German Jewish groups like Hilfsverin der Deutschen Juden, and philanthropists like Baron Maurice de Hirsch, developed vast programs for international resettlement for these families.

Once in the United States, immigrants had to go through immigrant processing facilities, the largest being Ellis Island, opened in 1892. Ellis Island was overcrowded with the massive wave of immigration. An average of 5,000 immigrants per day passed through. The immigrants were checked for TB (“The Jewish Disease”), “dull-wittedness”, eye and scalp problems, contagious and other “loathsome” diseases, and other “defects.” The top destination for Jewish immigrants was the Lower East Side. More than 73% of the Jews who arrived in NYC between 1881 and 1911 remained there.