Jewish immigration was important to our survival
I recently came across an immigration document: “Alien Immigrants Arriving at the Port of Baltimore,” 1892. Listed on the document are my great-grandmother, Chieh Berman; my grandfather, Alexander Berman; and his sisters. Their origin is “Grosen Russland” (Great Russia), which included Lithuania, their home.
This document is from familysearch.org, a free genealogical service from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
I wondered about the alien immigrants: were they legal or illegal? In those days, illegal aliens were not much of a problem. The first time the United States restricted immigration from an ethnic group was the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882. Such restrictions culminated in the Immigration Act of 1924, which virtually excluded Jews, Asians and others deemed inferior. North and South Americans had largely free rights to immigrate here until 1965.
If my ancestors had not immigrated here before those restrictions took effect, they probably would have died in the pogroms and Holocaust.
Elizabeth B. Appelbaum, Ph.D.
Overland Park, Kansas
