Ellis Island

Ellis Island is a landmark work of history that brings the voices of the past vividly to life, transforming our understanding of the immigrant experience.

Whilst living in New York, journalist Malgorzata Szejnert would often gaze out from lower Manhattan at Ellis Island, a dark outline on the horizon. How many stories did this tiny patch of land hold? How many people had joyfully embarked on a new life there—or known the despair of being turned away? How many were held there against their will?

Ellis Island draws on unpublished testimonies, memoirs, and correspondence from many internees and immigrants, including Russians, Italians, Jews, Japanese, Germans, and Poles, along with commissioners, interpreters, doctors, and nurses—all of whom knew they were taking part in a tremendous historical phenomenon.

It tells the many stories of the island, from Annie Moore, the Irishwoman who was the first to be processed there, to the diaries of Fiorello La Guardia, who worked at the station before going on to become one of New York City's greatest mayors, to depicting the ordeal the island went through during the 9/11 attacks. At the book's core are letters recovered from the Russian State Archive, a heartrending trove of correspondence from migrants to their loved ones back home. But their letters never reached their destination; instead, they were confiscated by intelligence services and remained largely unseen.

Far from the open-door policy of myth, 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 that reshaped the United States. But its true history reveals that today’s immigration debate has deep roots. Now a master storyteller brings its past to life, illustrated with unique archival photographs.

"To me Malgorzata Szejnert embodies the image of Poland...She has grace, a gentle tone, and a serene gaze."
—Svetlana Alexievich, winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature and author of Secondhand Time

"Making extensive use of primary documents, including letters written by immigrants to family in the old country, the author captures the mingled hope and fear experienced as people entered the massive main building ... Szejnert does not scant the fear of 'degraded, backward' people 'unfit to join into American life' that culminated in the 1924 law that basically slammed the door on Italian and Jewish immigration. But her emphasis is on the immigrants' fortitude and resilience and the empathetic assistance of Ellis Island personnel - many themselves immigrants ... Warmly human and extremely moving—a welcome addition to the Ellis Island literature." STARRED REVIEW
—Kirkus Reviews

"With fine-grained details and fluid writing, Szejnert humanises the immigrant experience in late 19th- and early 20th-century America."
—Publishers Weekly