Transcripts For CSPAN3 Jewish Immigrants In America 20140615

Of immigrants and how they shaped america. Many thanks to the Historical Society for partnering with us on this and making this happen. This kind of program is the perfect fit with the work we do. We hold a permanently valuable records of our federal government and those includes immigration records, pension files, census material. Our shelves are filled with documents that tell the story of those who come to america, those struggles and achievements that you will hear about tonight. We are not only going to hear from a stellar panel of authors shortly, but following the program will have a reception and book signing with the panel in the theater lobby just outside. But first, i want to introduce the chair of the board, and president of the foundation of the National Archives. The foundation for the National Archives provides invaluable support for this and every program. And every event that we hold here at the archives. We are always thankful to amelia and to the other members of the board. And we love being your partner. The archivist of the United States, david who is not here tonight, we are always grateful to him. Good evening. On behalf of the foundation for the National Archives, it is my pleasure to welcome you to the William G Mcgowan theater. As a private Foundation Partner of the National Archives, we are a group of historians and history lovers, history makers sometimes. And people who love our mission. I do help raise awareness of the archives, and am supportive its educational initiatives. You can learn more about us at the Archives Foundation at archivefoundation. Org. It is my pleasure to introduce tonights moderator, nick cox, who is known to us as the husband of mary lynne cox. [applause] they are a dynamic duo, and great friends of the National Archives. They also inspire us with their great love story. No one is more devoted. Nick is a journalist and author. Among his journalism honors is a Pulitzer Prize for national reporting, while he was a reporter with the Washington Bureau of the des moines register. His story on unsanitary conditions in meatpacking plants helped lead to the wholesale meat act of 1967. His book judgment day, laws that changed america, examines civil rights legislation of 1964, 65, and 68 as we celebrate the 50th anniversary of that legislation. Something im sure that cspan audiences will appreciate, it received a starred review from publishers weekly. As nick will tell you tonight, sometimes the most fascinating and the most challenging stories literally are right in our own backyards. The stories of our families. The parents and grandparents, and great grandparents who gave us life, and who charted the past that we now follow. Nick and i, as well as the other panelists, share a particular affinity, or peculiar affliction for researching Family History in particular. We are trying to take a small family story to tell a larger american story, that fully fleshes out the fabric of our rich diversity as a people, and as a nation. From census records to society page blurbs, from land documents to newspaper advertisements, nick has pieced together an intricate mosaic of a family in the hardest makers dream. Before we hear from that, i would like to welcome applebaum to the stage, thank you for your partnership tonight. [applause] on behalf of our board of directors, we want to thank the National Archive for partnering with us. I think this is the fourth year for jewishamerican heritage, and this program. Especially susan clifton, who was always easy to work with. I am very honored to asked to introduce this panel tonight. Just up the street, jewish immigrants arrived in the decade before the civil war, and formed the Jewish Community in washington. It seems fitting that we are here at the bottom of the street, or i know many of our grandfathers and grandmothers frequented. Up the hill, the other hill on capitol hill, an immigration bill is wilting. My husband said, dont say that, it is too political. I didnt say dying, i think it is fitting that our panelists know the scars we know, and recording a story about a different american journey. We will hear from three journalists who brought their keen reporting skills to bear in authoring recent books about immigration to our country. I would refer you to your programs on bios for the general. We are very familiar with the legend of a store in downtown san antonio. Nicks cousin is a longtime member and supporter, the cast is our supporters as well. We are all [indiscernible] here. Joining us is a familiar face to washingtonians and news junkies, he is the author of from every end of this earth, 13 families and the lives they made in america. Also on the panel is the author of fresh blood, the new american immigrant. He is completing his tenure as the president of goucher college, and previously he worked as the director is the voice of america, so we have three real experts. I would now like to welcome the panel to the stage, and turn the program over to the monitor, nick cox. [applause] i guess im up. [laughter] first of all, we would like to express our great appreciation to this national treasure, the heart of the National Archives and records of frustration. Tonights program, the history of immigration in the United States, could not have a better venue. Both for its history, and for its current public conversation. We are profoundly grateful to the archivist of the United States, david fiero and his staff, for his consummate care of the documents that define United States. The declaration of independence, the constitution, the bill of rights, you can see them all out in the rotunda. It still gives me a thrill every time i go through there. We should also note what the archives is accomplishing today. In the midst of an information revolution. A revolution which is making our National History far more available, not just for historians, but for the growing number of citizens who are interested in researching their familys pasts. At a time when there are many studies revealing our abysmal ignorance of our own National History, we can hope that this new electronic access to billions of records held here, as well as in the president ial archives, will encourage students and the rest of us to learn more about American History. Walking through this building tonight, im amazed at how the National Archives foundation, with private funds, as in a few years help transform this building from a Storage Facility to todays vibrant learning center, in which citizens can enjoy and explore our history. It is encouraging to see dozens of students every day sitting at computers here interacting with American History. 10 years ago, i began research here, on what became the harvest makers dream, the rise of south texas. It tells the story of how my jewish grandfather, at age 17, escape from the russian czarsmurderous cossacks, came to america, and became a pioneer texas merchant and rancher. Unusual for jews at that time. But the book also tells a broader story of how Nathan Kallison and millions of other americans copes with events that defined the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The archives was a very different place than it was when i started my research. It used to be, you came into the building, went past the guards, went up to a secondfloor reading room where clerks rolled out on pallets huge volumes, on which were stored the National Archive records. With good enough eyesight, and great patience, we might pull from census records, if you could read them. Today, anyone from students to family researchers can sit in front of a computer and gain instant access to a vast range of information, not only from the archives census files, but from many other sources. If you could forward, one more time. Sandy younger, Steve Roberts and i each have written a book on the lives of immigrants in america, we will explore that history with you tonight. We americans like to view ourselves as a nation of immigrants, open to the poor, the oppressed, and those yearning to be free. It is a claim that we lived up to, more than most countries. With many stumbles, and at times we have angrily slammed shut our doors. Controversy over immigration is a long turbulent history, john jay, the first chief justice of the supreme court, called for a wall of brass to keep out catholics. Thomas jefferson wished for a river of fire between europe and the United States, to block foreigners from our shores. But there have also been the stories in which immigrants have changed the face of america. The single largest wave brought 24 Million Immigrants into america between 1880, and 1924. For the first time, millions came from eastern and southern europe, 4 million from the austrian hungary empire, more than 4 million from italy. 2 million were jews, including the forbearers of your three speakers tonight. Without that historic wave of 24 million farmers, factory workers, merchants, scientists and bankers, one must wonder just how successful wouldve been our industrial revolution, and americas rise to world power . In 1924, however, with the johnson reed act, america slammed shut its doors to all but a few immigrants, except for those from england, ireland, and germany. President Calvin Coolidge proclaimed, america must be kept american. Reasons for this widespread immigration ban ranged from fear of communists and other subversives, to just plain ignorance, to out right prejudice against anyone not from anglosaxon stock. 40 years later, with the 1965 immigration act, signed by president johnson at the statue of liberty, our national doors again swung wide open. The next 30 years brought a second wave of 18 million new immigrants. Once again, they changed the face of america. With the lifting of a ban against asians, and highly Restricted National quotas, the largest numbers came not from europe, but from all over asia, africa, and the middle east, and from latin america. Today, congress and the country are again locked in controversy. This time over the fate of 12 million undocumented and Illegal Immigrants. Whether to grant them a path to citizenship, or leave them in legal limbo, or as one president ial candidate suggested, ask them to repatriate themselves to mexico and other countries. As Steve Roberts researched his book from every end of the earth, and sandy younger his fresh blood, they interviewed dozens of immigrants to america from all over the world. Steve and sandy talk to us about the lives of these immigrants, how they have fared here, and how theyve affected america. Sandy . Thank you. I i set out on doing this because do you want me to tell how i came to write this book . If thats what you want. We want to know what you learned in the book. Lets talk first about that then. I will explain later how i came to learn it, and why this became an obsession of mine. I was struck that there were myths about immigration that everybody came from certain places, as you suggested. That immigrants you know people use to say when they traveled, they traveled to prague, or to stockholm, ireland, dublin, poland. They said these people look just like americans, it was amazing to them. The reason for this was that we have all come from those places, of course we look like those people. What changed, and you alluded to this, what changed in the mid60s, what began to change dramatically years later, the stream of immigrants to this country no longer looked just like the people in these favorite european destinations. Admittedly, they werent all favored european destinations, but you get the point. Suddenly, certain places they went look familiar. Suddenly, americans were confronted by the fact that there were immigrants who didnt look like everybody, who looked different, and it was a stretch to try and understand who they were, what the customs were they brought with them, spokesman of some different languages that we werent accustomed to in many cases. They were asians, africanamericans. As i said, discover who the new american immigrants were, that was sort of the conceit of the book, i found that they had come here for the exact same reasons as our ancestors came here. Precisely the same reasons. Very often, policymakers on capitol hill say its ok if they come for political reasons, but not for economic reasons. People said whatever they had to say about why they came here, but for the most part, most immigrants came here for economic reasons, to better themselves and to have families that would have more of a hope of getting a piece of prosperity. There were many irish immigrants, or swedish immigrants, who were coming arguably for political reasons, but they were coming because of famine and they were starving at home. This was a place they could get food, shelter, clothing, chance to have a decent life. All of this was exactly true of koreans who came here, koreans were one of the groups that i particularly looked at. It was true of hispanic immigrants who came to this country, and people from all over the world. The very interesting sort of case study of modern america was the cubans, and i believe it is true to this day that any cuban who can make it to the shores is automatically admitted no questions asked, because there are still cold war policies towards cuba. But then we discovered the cubans were black. That wasnt supposed to be the case. They were supposed to be Just Another Group of americans who looked just like the american majority. And so, it has been a big adjustment, thereve been all of these efforts to make english an official language of the United States. Of course, everyone said is ok if people come here, as long as they learn our language. Traditionally, immigrants to this country spoke a different language at home, if they were lucky, learned english to speak outside the home. Or their kids taught them. Or the children were there, immigrants from Southeast Asia had such a hard time learning, their kids would be their parents interpreters. This notion that you could legislate what language people would speak at home was ridiculous. What eventually happened, in a lot of groups particularly the poles, in chicago and koreans among others, as the generations stayed here, the children forgot polish, or forgot korean. The parents had to send them to school on the weekends to learn the language of their grandparents. To learn polish, or korean, or what have you. I set out to show how immigration was different, what i proved to myself was that immigrants were not different. The process of immigration was not different actually, it was the same, but it tested people were different, they were not the popular groups of immigrants anymore. It tested americas tolerance, its racial its willingness to accept people of many different racial backgrounds as equal americans. Steve, you have most recently among the three of us, interviewed a bunch of immigrants and immigrant families. I had some of the same motives as sandy, im particularly pleased to be here at the National Archives because you mentioned the ship records and this spring is the 100th anniversary of my grandfather coming to america. I know that because i have the ship record, he arrived in april of 1914. Many of us can now research those histories. I grew up in new jersey, the town was 90 immigrant. I thought everybody grew up that way. I went away to harvard, i left new jersey it was like going to mars. Everybody i met had immigrant grandparent, they were irish, italian, and polish, and russian. I never met a grandmother who didnt have an accent. Even my own, who lived in the house with me. I go to the harvard, i see these names on the building elliott, winthrop. The names are short. They ended in consonants. Not in new jersey. One of our friends is a very known figure here in washington, a distinguished lawyer. I met him, and i thought he has a first initial, and his last name only has four letters. A first initial . We didnt do that at home. M. Poli polaski . That wasnt our style. Part of my interest was being soaked in this immigrant culture. I had one grandparent in the house with me, the others were three blocks away. I was privileged to hear the stories. When we try to write, particularly for jews, about our history, we are often walled off from our history. So many of our ancestors who came to america, if you ask them to talk about the past, they dont want to. We fled the cossacks, we fled poverty, we fled persecution. So, they didnt want to talk about it. But i was blessed by one grandmother did want to talk about it. I was the grandson who wanted to listen. But that was unusual. When you asked, not only the terror that they fled with, but the holocaust, the iron curtain, it is extremely difficult for many of us to reach back through these walls, and to connect to our own history. So, i was motivated partly by that. But then i had this experience as a teacher. I teach at George Washington university, i teach a writing class. I encourage students to write about their families. Your grandmother never says no comment. [laughter] it turns out to be not entirely true, but true enough. I started i had a similar experience with you sandy. I start to getting these wonderfully vibrant stories from my students, of immigration. They were not coming from ireland and italy, they were coming from vietnam, and they were coming from el salvador, they were coming from rwanda. And that was really the motivation for the book, i wanted to retell the modern stories that my grandparents had from a hundred years before. Like sandy, i discovered the eternal truth. Immigration is one of the most profound and elemental of human experiences. Even though people speak different languages, and they come from different countries, that does reshape the experience. I discovered some things that were different. The single biggest difference was communication. When my grandfather lived in new jersey, he was out of touch with his own sister in moscow, for 50 years. 50 years. He didnt even know she was still alive until a distant relative got to israel and called him, and said by the way, your sister is still alive in israel. Today, the students that i talk to, they talk to their relatives back in villages in india every day. On cell phones. Or they skype. That dimension is different. The ability to stay in touch with the home country has changed. The other thing that has really changed is commerce. The fact is there are a lot of immigrants, particularly asian immigrants, i looked a lot at chinese and japanese immigrants. They have an enormous advantage in terms of brokering trade with their home country. Because they speak the language, they know the culture, and they have cousins back home who they can deal with. I profile one family my book, this guy is an importer of fireworks from china. He basically commutes to china from San Francisco every two weeks, he gets on a plane and flies to china. Heres a guy whose family had fled communists and terror, his father had fled the communist revolution in the 40s, got to hong kong. The son, one generation, is back doing business in mainland china. In fact, he had to teach his son chinese to be able to join the business, and go back and import fireworks. He is such an important figure in china now that the rising sun hotel, he gets the same hotel room. He basically commutes. One generation away from having fled in terror. That would not have happened to our jewish ancestors a century ago, steve, i think this communication , this daily communication back and forth is really a phenomenon of the last 15, 20 years. Until then, people really were it is true, but there are also universals, as you point out, and one of the women i profile in my book is vietnamese. Her daughters name is thai c. , and she has the name because her mother was fleeing, and they landed in thailand, and thai c. Was born in the philippines, named after the two countries that gave her family haven. But her mother in her broken english said to me once we are the sacrifice generation. It is a very resonant phrase because what she meant by that, to the generation who makes the journey, they are never fully american. But they cannot go home either. Steve and that is true of every immigrant in the history of the world. You were extraordinarily lucky that you had a grandfather that wanted to talk. Endlessly [laughter] my experience was unfortunately quite different. Growing up as a kid in texas. My mother and i lived with my grandparents. Pop was my buddy. My mother dropped us off at the uptown theater, this was a rancher who liked to watch westerns on saturday. When we went to the beach the jewish john wayne. [laughter] i saw him as that, 50 years later. When we went to Corpus Christi in the summer, pop and i were the first people up in the morning. We waded out into the gulf of mexico. My favorite experience with him was on sundays we went out to his ranch, and he let me follow him around as he checked the barbed wire fences, looked at the crops, examined his herd of prized animals, and we got up on horses, we road into the beautiful hill country, and he identified trees, bushes, flowers, and warned me about rattlesnakes. That is why i am telling you the story. But when i was asked to write this book, the way the book came about was his kallison ranch, the most beautiful part of it, became part of a texas state park, and they wanted somebody to explore the families, the ranchers whose ranches comprised this part. I knew virtually nothing. Neither i nor my cousins, and maybe our parents as well, knew the history. Some people thought that, i think hopefully thought, that the family had come from sweden, not from russia. Kallison can pass as a swedish name. But we were sort of in the 1930s, 1940s, 1950s. This was the ultimate attempt at the melting pot. In the south, we were jews, we were practicing reform jews, but in almost every way, Nathan Kallison, his wife, my mother, her brothers and sisters, had been totally integrated into they were texans and americans, they were nonjewish immigrants from russia, and so when i started working on the book, i learned all the things that you explained most people do not want to talk about the past because of the hardships they came from. And some members of my family wanted to cover up the past, so i started from scratch to learn about how this 17yearold kid by himself traveled a couple thousand miles across europe, mostly by foot, got on a ship, arrived in the United States not speaking a word of english, but he had a craft. He was a harness maker. He was an apprentice harness maker, and for jews in russia, who were banned from many occupations, leather work was considered dirty and jews could do it. And as i learned his story, i learned so much that i did not know about what he and millions of immigrants went through. In 1894 in the midst of the largest depression in American History until the 1930s, he opened his own harness shop. He had one employee, two, three, and then he was a farsighted man. He saw automobiles puttputting across michigan avenue, and he decided hey, the harness business is not going to do very well here, so he moved to texas with his wife and two young children, where im going to go back and look at ok, here is and i bet your family is on here, too. Here is nathan, his wife, my grandmother, anna, and their two young children. And the lady with the stern look and there is somebody with a stern look in every one of these families. [laughter] more than one, actually. Almost always female. And she had pushed her sons out to america, and then they brought her over. But very quickly, we see a different nathan. That was what they lived in in the ukraine. Just a few years later, here is Nathan Kallison as a rancher in texas. Quite a change. Here he is with my uncle perry, who for 46 years broadcast farm news to people throughout texas. So what i got out of this experience was an extraordinary appreciation of how immigrants lived, what they brought to the fabric of this country. Sure we were in favor, we are the land that accepts the immigrants, but i knew that as sort of a trite expression. Learning the history of this family made it very real. Now, tell us a little bit about your family. What are you doing there, steve . In america, the family name on my birth certificate is rogo. My cousins still have that name. And as i say, i grew up with a rogo three blocks away. We talk about the lawyers and the businessman. Abe was a professional shyster. He ran gambling games at Amusement Parks. One of the few benefits of this as a young child is my dad sometimes worked, and he knew how every game at an Amusement Park was rigged, so when we were kids, we would go to the county fairs, and i always won the biggest teddy bear because my father could look at a roulette wheel and say bet 17 red. You know exactly it is a minor skill, but it was very useful. And abe lived his whole life in america, and there was one word that abe hated more than any other word in america tell us what he is doing. The red arrow, that is abe in military school before he became a zionist pioneer in palestine. And this is abe, this is tel aviv. This is a sand dune. This was the first road ever built in tel aviv, and abe was on the road gang. Than what happened here . This is miriams family. For those of you who have been to the holocaust museum, there is the wonderful exhibit of photographs from one village, and that is grandma miriams village. Eishishok. But the sign i was standing under, we were talking earlier about how hard it is to reach back in history and connect, and i had always heard the stories of grandpa abes. He was the one who would talk about it. And in the early 1990s, we decided we were going to eastern europe, we had a niece living in vienna. I said if we are going, i want to go back to poland to the town that abe was originally from. And we got there and we got a guide and we were on the outskirts of the town, which is about 2. 5 hours east of warsaw. And it is one of these towns where every few blocks there is a monument to some atrocity to the jews. In one quarter, 3000 jews were burned in a synagogue. In this field, 600 jews were gunned down by the nazis. It was a depressing visit. But i said to the guide, i have always heard that the family name, the family came from a village around here and the name was from a village. And i said before we went to eastern europe, i want some sign that my family had been here. Maybe a gravestone, or a land record, some sign. We go down this road in rural poland, and there is my name on the roadside sign. Without the o. I mean, that is my name, that is my family name. It was a very moving moment. You can see how rural it is. They still had horse carts. Nathan kallison would have still had business. They were still using harnesses. I will say briefly one story, which i think many of you can relate to because i said to our guide i want to go to the railroad station because i heard all of the stories from my grandfather. As a young man, it was a railhead, it was a provincial capital. He did a lot of errands from his father. When he stole money from his father and went to palestine for the first time, he went from that rail station. I had heard 100 stories about that rail station. And he said to me you are in luck because i know the place, and it is the only building, still looks the way was when your grandfather was here a hundred years ago. As i said, i had gone to the jewish graveyard, there was an obelisk with 60 names of people who had been killed around 1905, 1906. I realized as i looked at those names, my grandfather probably knew many of them, and that none of them had lived to have children and grandchildren who had made it to america. They had been killed as young people, so i went to the railroad station and i walked down to the platform, i knew i had stood in his footsteps. I knew he had been there. And i had what i can only describe as a mystical experience. I felt his presence. And i said to him, pop, we survived, and im here to prove it. And i broke down and wept. I could not control myself. This mystical connection to the past that we all feel and it is so hard to reach. It is so hard to reach that moment wherein you can feel that. Sandy, what did you learn through your parents, and what did you learn when you made a similar trip . I have a story that is sort of in between both in a way. I never knew any grandparents, i was born as a replacement child to my parents, that is a whole other long story but i have written about elsewhere, but i grew up in a small town in pennsylvania, not very much like yours, there were mafia people down the side, towards scranton, they were in scranton. [laughter] we had them around the corner. But i was the child of people who had been in this country for a very long time. My father, not my grandfather, but my father came in 1910 at the age of 15. So my father was born in 1895. That still blows my mind that my father was born in the 19th century. He came as a young man, 15, on his own from a village in what was then upper hungary in the austrian hungary empire, later part of slovakia. He came and stayed with family who spoke only hungarian and yiddish, so he knew he was not going to get very far, this language issue, so we heard about some relatives who lived in northeastern pennsylvania, went to live with them, they spoke english, they ran a grocery store, so that is what he became is a grocer. And my mother came in i think about 1909, a year earlier than my father at the age of seven with her family. And my fathers parents never left their village in what is now slovakia because for a variety of reasons they resisted my parents entreaties to come to america. They would not like it here, it would not be clean enough here, and they also had a son who was still subject to the draft. And my grandfather, whom i apparently resemble, was able to tell his children whether they would leave or not, and he told some of his daughters they were not to leave, so they stayed, and the result was that my father lost several of his siblings and his parents in the holocaust. They never left. My mothers parents came and lived in northeastern pennsylvania, and it was always said that my mothers father was in the dry goods business. I learned later that he was a peddler and he eventually had a shop, but he was a peddler when he first came. By the time i came along, i was born in 1945, my fathers parents had died in the holocaust, my mothers parents were long since dead, and my family was quite assimilated. I did not have anybody telling me stories about where they came from. I mean, i would hear some stories, but that wall was up. What did you learn . Fastforward to 1988, i am working on a Public Television documentary about czechoslovakia. I knew i was going to be going to some of these cities in slovakia. Most people would go to prague, but we were going to be in other places. Before i went, i still had a living uncle in los angeles who was by that time in his late 80s, but he was very robust, and i said to him i think i might be near this village that our family is from, and he said well, let me tell you how to get there. I tell you, it was like calling the aaa. He had not been there in the 60 some years, but he drew me a map, and he said, if you are in kosice, you go to the end of town, you turn left, and you eventually get to this little town where there will be some funny trees, and then you turn right, and you follow the river left of the brown cow. [laughter] yes. And then you get to tusice. So one day, the film crew is at a steel mill, and they were doing some filming, this was to be a Television Series about the communist countries of central and eastern europe, and by the time the first was produced, the berlin wall was coming down. The other ones never got produced. They took a long time to do the pilot. Only in public broadcasting. But i want to tell you about so we are at the steel mill, and i had this map of slovakia, and i saw that we were not very far from this village, so i borrowed the driver and the car, and this young woman who was our interpreter, and we found this village, following my uncle leos map. We found it, and we came into town, and i saw somebody who looked old. It turned out she was in her early 50s. [laughter] but wearing black and looked like an old person, and i said through the interpreter, through this young woman can you tell us anything about a family that was called ungar in this town . This was actually the name. Ungar in german means hungary. It is a very characteristic hungarianjewish name. And she guided us to the very spot on which my father had grown up. There was a new house, it was changed. It was a very strange kind of house construction. You had to get to the second floor with a ladder from the outside of the house, but she claimed, and i can believe it, to remember my grandparents and to remember them being taken away by the nazis. The slovaks were so eager, they got paid to deport the jews from slovakia. And i went into this house, and the guy was a slovak who had lived in chicago, and he told me this extraordinary story that he had bought the house from my cousin in 1948. I had a cousin who had survived the holocaust, first cousin, who is now in his 90s, living in israel, and he had seen his grandparents house on a list of unclaimed property, and he went and tried to live in this little village, which must have been a ridiculous thing to try to do, and eventually he found it was impossible, so he decided he was going to leave and go to palestine, and he sold the house to this gentleman, this slovak guy, and he says to me in 1988, tell me, did he ever make it to palestine . And i was able to tell him that he had. At this cousin of mine had gone, now lives in israel. That was an issue that was very different with the immigrants when our grandparents and your parents came over. In those first waves, the 1880s, 1890s, immigrants did not necessarily stay in the United States. Quite a significant percentage of them still had Strong Enough ties that they went back, and what happened when they went back is part of the tragedy. My grandfather grew up in a little village. A lot of the jews got out. There were others where the head of the family said no, you have got to stay here with me. When i looked into going to the village from someone else who had gone there, i learned that the jews who did not get out in 1942 when the nazis and germans were sweeping east, and village after village, they lined up the jews who had remained, and that was true in this village, and killed them all in a firing squad. So what is it, do you think, steve, what distinguished the people who left, who got out and came to america from those who did not . That is a very good question, nick. For a lot of jews, of course, going back was not an option. Because as you mentioned, about the draft. I mean, both of my grandfathers left because they were escaping the czars army. Reading today about the cossacks in the ukraine, i have these flashbacks the cossacks beating up jews is nothing new. I almost am grateful for the cossacks because that is why they came. One of my grandfathers actually allowed himself to be drafted, abe rogo. He spent about three hours in the czars army. [laughter] because once you were drafted, you were the armys problem. But what is the story of abe coming, what did he have that other people did not . The gut, ambition, he had resiliency, and tenacity. The history of america is the history of each ancestor, each family. The ones who came were the most ambitious. And the strongest because the weakest did not survive. It was the history of america on one level, is the history of natural selection. But some of it was luck, wasnt it, steve . But some o, wasnt it, steve . Who could get out and who could not. It was, but you make your own luck. I mean avram rogowsky and Nathan Kallison and your family, the less aggressive, the less resilient, they were there when they did not get out and they were gunned down by the nazis. I am a Firm Believer that this is still true today. When i look at the story of modern immigration, the ones who came were the ones who were the most imaginative, the most ambitious, and if you want to understand the genius of america, you have to look at this dimension of it because they are the ones who constantly replenish americas spirit with that new vitality that our ancestors brought 50 or 100 years ago. And that is when things, when you give your introduction about the history of American Immigration, youre always right, we have always been ambivalent about this. And i have read it, the words are almost exactly the same in each generation it is the next group that is going to spoil our culture. It is the next one, right . In 1840s, it was the irish who were going to change america for the worst. In the 1880s, it was the chinese. In the 1920s, it was the italians. The language is almost the same. Because the fear was that the next group would somehow change what it meant to be american. Final point the haters were always wrong. They were right on one level. These groups to change america. They changed it for the better. And that is what they always got wrong. That is what they always got wrong. Lets talk a little bit about the melting pot. When the kallisons went from chicago to texas, everybody liked the theory of the melting pot. You come to america, you blend in, you become a part of a homogenized american society, and that is ok. And then we learn that the melting pot did not necessarily melt. You all have written about the asians, africans, people from all parts of the world who did not look like the anglosaxons and to have maintained their own cultures, their own languages. How has that made it different . Have they done as well in america as the earlier immigrants who blended in . Well, the blending in i think was really a kind of racial distinction. At first, people thought others who look different, darker people could not blend in. But that really has changed, and i think that there are a lot of the newer immigrants who have managed to be great successes, and we all know stories about them. Not everybody, by any means, but we know the stories of the hotels, motels, and the patels. The patels come from india, and some of them are immensely successful in this country. There will always be some immigrants who do better than others, and that has been true all along, but there are people coming from vietnam, from india, from china. Steve described the guy who goes back every month. There are people who do very well just as some immigrants did here before. And i think now overall, i would like to think that americans are more accepting of that idea. That you can succeed as an immigrant who is different, who looks different, who sounds different, who has a different history. And are we more tolerant as a society . Well, everybody in this room is. [laughter] i think the rhetoric is the same. I found in a scrapbook of president rutherford b. Hayes this newspaper clipping he pasted in 1881 when he decided not to run for reelection as president , he had pasted a clipping of a sermon at the church of the holy trinity in new york city, which was a diatribe against immigrants. I have read his work, too. Steven payne. Yeah. He said people came here just to better themselves, not to better the country. And this rhetoric you hear now from groups, i mean, the center for immigration studies, i love its name because every study that is ever done is antiimmigrant. And every one has been wrong, too. That is right, but it has this academic veneer to it, but it is constantly turning out arguments against immigration. And you know, there was something what was it called . The f. A. I. R. , the federation for American Immigration reform, die without it should be called on fair. What they and i always thought it should be called u. N. F. A. I. R. What they wanted to do was to put restrictions on immigrants. The thing i have not figured out is exactly what triggers those ways of antiimmigrant sentiment. Some of it is clearly related to economics. I do think, sandy, like right now, you have people saying well, we had to keep newcomers out because they are taking jobs from americans. But they create jobs. The problem is they create the jobs that no one else seems to want to do. At is true, but one of the things that has struck me about this when you ask about assimilation, i do think of some ways is different because, as you point out, we now have much more diverse sources. Even though there were times, there were places in america, new orleans, i write about this in my book, where italians were considered nonwhite because they were dark skinned southern europeans, so racism and xenophobia are as american as we can get over this. This resentment and fear, periodically, these spasms of resentment, and it is very much a part of our history. But the history also shows that each group does assimilate. And that is very clear. And i spoke to our Muslim Students Association Last year, and all these women in headscarves, and we were talking about the media treatment of muslims. They were saying it is so hard for us. We wear the hijab and we are subject to determination. And i said wait, history shows that well be all right and it always has been. And that is not a pollyanna thing. The other thing that happens is as these groups rise in american life, the models are there. You look at, for instance today, you look at any study of education levels, by far, the highest education levels and america are asian people. By far. Not even close. That also has an effect. The japanese and chinese immigrants might not look like the italians and poles that we grew up with, but the compliments help ameliorate there is an irony that way into the 20 century, there used to be quotas for jews because the jews had the best grades and would take up a large part. Now people want quotas for asians. Because they make the grades and on the basis that fight is going on in the university of california right now. Precisely. In a couple of minutes, we would very much love to hear what you all have to say, and questions that you have. There are microphones on either side, and we encourage folks to come down to those microphones. I want to ask each of us one last thing, and then lets go to the questions. How has the research that you have done and the writing of these books, actually, steve has written two books, one was more about his own family. How has that changed each one of you . And i ask you that question because it seems to me that our lack of knowledge so many people our lack of knowledge of our own families and how they came to america and what they went through is really a stumbling block, so were you changed by going back, by going through this whole business of writing these books . Oh, yeah. You go first. A very quick answer. I thought of myself as an immigrant, i thought of myself as a member of an immigrant family. And when i was growing up, immigrants were other people. Some of them were related to me, who had come later, much later, and they talk funny, looks funny, they were people we were uncomfortable with. But i, especially after i went to the village, and by the way, i saw things in this house that i was quite convinced had been looted from my grandparents long ago, i identified with them, and ever since i have regarded myself as an immigrant, even though i was not. Let me tell you how my views changed about what is history. All of us have been reporters, journalists, writing books for a long time. I used to think that American History was the history of wars, the history of politics, who won, who lost. After the experience of doing the research for the harness makers dream, i have become far more convinced that the real history of america is adding up the history of all of these families. What their Life Experience has been, how they have made in america, the discrimination they went through, the triumphs. This is a human story. And i understand my country much better after having done this. I agree with you completely. And i would add one other point. I have become an evangelist on the subject of everybody capturing their familys history. Because once it is gone, it will be gone. And this is particularly true for immigrant families because you get disconnected. When the New York Times reviewed the other books that nick mentioned called my fathers houses, which is basically an memoir, and they did not minutes of a consummate and they said well, this book reads as if robert has wrote these stories down for his grandchildren. And my reaction was and your problem with that exactly would be what . Because that is exactly what i did, and i can tell you one of the great moments of my writing life can just recently when one of my grandchildren took the book to school as part of an immigration project, and there are two reasons for this. First of all, these stories might not be worth putting between hard covers, but every one of them is worth it for the family. Every Single Family has a story worth telling. Writing down, capturing the history. And i have always believed this, and then recently read a study done by researchers. There was a piece in the New York Times last spring summarizing studies that have been done about what makes strong families. The number one variable that all this research came out with was telling stories as the source of strength and families. Because when you tell stories, their art to things. One is you give children a sense of a larger place in the world, a larger sense of who they are, and a larger sense of where they come from, and that adds to their sense of resilience, their sense of confidence, their sense of identity. And then a researcher added one footnote to that. He said the process of telling the story is as important as the content of the story. Because when you sit down and share these stories with the next generation, the warmth and the connection, like what the jewish Historical Society is all about. That is that the core of the experience, is not since the content of the story, but the process of sharing the story. We have got a big audience here tonight. The subject of immigration interests you. Please, come to the microphones and tell us or ask us questions that you have on your mind. Including something that we have not talked about, and that is the current debate and where people stand on it about Illegal Immigrants. People dont talk. I have a gentleman making his way to the microphone on that side. And you can ask questions to anyone of us or all of us. Just a comment and then a question. I have been a physician and a medical practice for 52, 53 years. In my early medical career, training in the 1950s and 1960s, the intellectual creme de la creme of american medicine were jews. If you go to harvard or Johns Hopkins or ucla or any place like this, and the great professors and the people who did the research and publish the articles were overwhelmingly jewish, way above their percentage in the population. Most of them were second, third generation. Now, the last 15 or 20 years, you go to medical school, the vast majority are east asians or indians. The vast majority. Go to georgetown tomorrow morning the place is there will be 50 people in there, and 40 of them will be asians. And most of them are firstgeneration. They are here, and they had not been here long, maybe just their parents or so, but they have moved right up to the top very quickly. You look at our latino population, and they are way, way down. How do we help move them up into the education level so that they can move on up in, say, medicine or any of the other professions . I think the answer to that can be found by looking at first the jews and then the asians. My grandparents did not have much education, but there was a tremendous commitment on their part and on jewish families in general and they did not have the education, but they were determined that their children would get it, and today, the asians you take the standards in japanese schools, chinese schools, are much more rigorous than ours are. It is the people to whom education is almost a religion. Well, i think there is a little more to it than that. I want to add, which is i think that when people get here, somebody needs to give them a leg up. In many cases. But what happened i think with both jewish immigrants and asian immigrants is that there was a sort of solidarity, there was a feeling within the community, within the ethnicity that they were here for a reason, they were going to get a taste of things. I think the many immigrants who have compromised in america, especially mexico, have not had people helping them necessarily as quickly. I have been running a college for the last 13 years, and i have seen that really everybody is equally capable, that the difference is opportunity. The difference is making opportunity available, and i stood on the Mexican Border watching families literally run across when i was working on my book, and a file this one, i remember one night i saw this one kid clutching a big trash bag, which probably had a lot of his familys possessions, theory and his eyes. And i said how do we know he is not an einstein . We have no idea what he can be until he gets here, get an education, get an opportunity, and i think for some ethnic groups that have taken longer, and it is a parallel to what has happened with domestic minorities in this country. It is also a statistic you have got to remember, which is the real parallel to the mexicans are really the italians because if you see education levels, it is very clear that it takes an extra generation of people come the original italian immigrants were very poor and uneducated peasants from southern italy. It took an extra generation, that is all, and they caught up. I will happen to the mexicans, too. The education level allowed the immigrants is a little lower. It takes an extra generation to catch up. History shows that. This piggybacks on that. There were several references to the grippers living in the home. It failed first and Second Generation immigrants by offering things that are meant to be support but are not culturally sensitive, so for example offering to subsidize eldercare, which would require the grandparents moved out of the household where the cultural tradition is to keep the grandparent in any household. I was wondering if anybody would mention maybe a small but telling way that as you looked at these case histories of these family stories that american systems either regional or state level could prove a little bit more welcoming by being flexible and sensitive to the cultural defense of coming in one of the ways to do that is to allow the community, to help the communities, but let them make their own decisions. A very good example is the Chinese Community in Montgomery County. 5 of Montgomery County today is chinese. But the older generation does not speak english, and they are often in difficult circumstances, but what has the Chinese Community done in Montgomery County . They have had help, but they have help during the day. What the county has helped do is create a service that preserves the integrity of the cultural tradition of the family and allows the crib parents to stay in the home, to know the grandkids, but at the same time, allows them to live in Montgomery County where there is not a village taking care of them. I think that is a very good example. Two questions, one for sandy ungar. You mentioned in passing you were amazed that you had grandparents who came over as immigrants at the turn of the century. I was curious as to why you were amazed at that. I am a child of the 1940s like you, and my parents and my grand parents came over in the late 1890s and the early 1900s, so i was just curious what prompted that. I think you misunderstood my point. The notion that here i sit in the year 2014, that my father, not my grandfather, but my father was born in 1895 and came to this country 104 years ago is just mindboggling to me because of the sweep of history in that period of time. I mean, my father was the way he quickly became an american citizen, as i understand it, if he was drafted into the American Army and went back and fought in world war i. My father fought in world war i against the country he had come from. In the trenches in france. It might be a very common story. In that period, yes, but usually it was the grandfather. Not the father of people my age. But a lot of people were sent back. There is a wonderful book called the long way home, a terrific book about exactly this point, about people who came and were drafted. That is really what i meant. It seemed so distant to me that my father had had those experiences, still something that is hard to digest. Can i ask is there a broader theme in your view to the antiimmigration feeling today than in past decades . And is it related in some fashion to the vast media swarm we have 24 hours a day on 100 different channels . [laughter] i think that the antiimmigrant bias is fueled today by the fact that we have 12 million to 14 million socalled Illegal Immigrants in the country, and what to do about them, but my experience has been working with and hiring some immigrants is if the Illegal Immigrants stopped working tomorrow, and they did have a two day work stoppage a few years back, if they stopped working, the meatpacking factories, the restaurants, the people who work at the lower levels in the hospitals, the Construction Industry in america would shut down, and that argues very strongly that we should bring these people in, give them a path to citizenship, they are here, they are working, they are conserving to american society, and we need to get them on the tax roll. You are absolutely right about the contribution of the socalled undocumented immigrants. I would hate to have to prove that my father was a legal immigrant. I think a lot of our families came here often with somebody elses papers or you know, i think we are a little prissy about that today, and we dont really own up to some of the actuality of the conditions of the circumstances under which people came. By hook or by crook because they were desperate economically. And by the way, they are on tax rolls. And one of the key differences between the American Economic situation in europe and why europe is in so much more difficult straits in terms of affording expensive social services, one of the key differences is immigrants. We have young people here who are working and paying taxes in much greater numbers than they do in europe. It is one of the key economic advantages we have is those taxpaying just as it was a hundred years ago. We have time for a couple more questions. Yes, this kind of leads into what you were just talking about in some ways, and it also leads us in, i think, to our Current Situation in the country. I come from a family that is not an immigrant family. We have been here since well before the revolution of us i could say well, i represent those people who were discouraging, and some of the words, lets see, i represent the people who were not welcoming to all the immigrants, and i was wondering who those people are now, and why what are their reasons . In fact, in your study of history, what were the reasons back then that the people who were already here americans. They looked like americans, why did they reject immigrants . I heard one very dramatic scene in the United States senate when the 1965 Immigration Reform law was being considered, and which brought millions of new immigrants. Senator ervin from North Carolina was chairing this hearing, and senator ervin there was not as much Political Correctness in the 1960s as there is today, and senator ervin was arguing that the anglosaxons, the people who came and populated the south had made that he was implying a much greater contribution to america, and he was immediately taken on by two other senators, senator hiram fong from hawaii. He spoke up and he said my parents were indentured servants before they came to the United States. And senator jacob javits from new york told a similar story. So the prejudice, aside from people who make arguments about jobs and so forth, the prejudice is people who want to keep out people who are not like themselves. Yes, sir. Also, you have got to remember some of this is religious. If you like the antiirish, antiitalian ways, a lot of this is anticatholic. The known Nothing Party in 1840s was built on anticatholicism and also antigerman, by the way. So the question is people have a totally distorted view of america. They think somehow it is freeze dried in history and at this moment we have somehow perfected america, and without having a grasp at all about how each wave does regenerate and revive a country, and they also misunderstand the economics. It is a huge myth you hear from members of Congress Everyday that newcomers are taking jobs away from americans. They are not taking jobs they create jobs. Some of them create google and some of them run a Corner Grocery store and hire two people, but they are both job creating engines. Also, all of the immigrants are buying cars, they are buying gas, they are buying clothes. If you Read Economic studies, it is very clear, but people do not. Lets have one last question, and we invite all of you to join us out in the lobby. There is some drinks to be had and some snacks. And if you are interested in buying any of these books, the three of us will be out there, and we would be very glad to sign them. Yes, sir. Nick, i apologize, i do not want to be the skunk at the garden party, but i was a jewish boy brought up in boston, and i got beat up by the irish kids, and the jews and the italians, and the irish were all elbowing each other. So we need to talk about that, and all the bad guys who came to this country, too, including the mafia. [laughter] i do not think anybody is pretending and my parents, like all the jewish parents, just closed their ears and eyes when i heard about a jewish gangster. We have been trying to be very candid about the fact that immigrant groups were rivals and did not like each other. I got beat up, too, by the polish kids because, you know, the jewish Basketball Team beat them in a game, and so i do not know quite how we did that. [laughter] because we were all short and slow. [laughter] but you are certainly correct in saying that often in immigrant communities there are intense rivalries. The cyo Basketball League, all the churches leagues in bayonne, it was not just catholics. The cyo Basketball League in bayonne, if you played for them, you were italian, and if you played for mount carmel, you were polish, and this was holy war. There were in enormous rivalries, economic, religious, tribal resentments. So that is absolutely true, and i certainly would not pretend that in bayonne there were no jewish gangsters. In fact, there was a mafia boss. And my grandfather, avram rogowsky, did business with the mob. I had friends whose fathers went to jail. So anybody who pretends the jews were not any mob certainly did not live in new jersey. [laughter] there were numbers in the new bedford, mass. There were a few bad guys here too before the immigrants came. Some of the immigrants learn how to do their work from people who were here before them. I think the answer to your question is when my grandfather lived in the Near West Side of chicago, it was the most densely packed area in the United States, as dense as bombay. There were greeks, italians, poles, jews, and they did fight each other, but as the historian who was most knowledgeable about san antonio and all of its diverse groups, they all had their own clubs, they all maintain their own cultures, but