I had an opportunity to visit Ellis Island over the weekend. My wife and I were in NYC over the weekend visiting with our oldest daughter. My wife signed us up for the Ellis Island tour on Sunday. My grandfather was the first of his family to immigrate to the United States at the age of 23. It was by shear coincidence that Sunday was the 114th anniversary of him arriving in America (March 3, 1905). The Ellis Island tour helped helped fill in a lot of blanks on why he left the old country and what he was about to encounter.
A park service ranger told a group of us about the big room where new immigrants were processed (scrutinized). Families could be split up if any member was deemed to be strain on the public. A senile grandparent could be sent back to their country of origin never to be seen again. My grandfather was an officer in the army of Austria Hungary. He was a Slovak and forced to stay in the army. Slovaks were not treated well by their government. He apparently connected with a coal mining company in Pennsylvania to come to work for them in return for passage to the US. The park ranger told me he likely did not divulge this because this because the new immigrants were questioned if they already had a job lined up. Immigration authorities tried to prevent the importation of labor for the coal mines because they were basically slave labor camps. The longer you worked for them, the more in debt you became. Most of these folks died in the coal mines. She commented that another tourist a few day before said his grandfather died in the mines. My grandfather apparently soon figured this out according to one of my uncles. He migrated to Newark, NJ to work in factories.
The park ranger we were talking to then had me pass by her and walk down staircase number 3 where my grandfather would have been directed to go. She told me to swipe my foot across the first step. She commented that I had just stepped on the place where my grandfather took his first step into America. A very humbling experience.
