Ellis Island Virtual Field Trip: Culture, Identity, Disability & Migration

One of the central claims of this course is that it is a fallacy to claim any monolithic "European perspective." Rather, "Europe" always contained a myriad of perspectives based on geography, ethnicity, language, religion, socio-economic status, and ideology.  Our Ellis Island virtual field trip showcases this diversity.  As the archived photographs at the New York Public Library reveal, different groups from across Europe (indeed across the world) came through its doors every day. These photographs and the Library of Congress modules on the experiences of Germans, Italians, Russians/Polish, Scandinavian, Irish, and Jews illustrate the myriad of factors which pulled families and individuals to the United States and/or which pushed them out of their native lands.  From our vantage point, the photographs' labels can be extremely specific, overly simplistic, and sometimes jarring. For example, individuals are labeled as having come from the Ottoman Empire, often without clue as to whether they were Greek, Assyrian, Turkish. In tracing my heritage, I discovered that many Assyrians, for example, left the Ottoman Empire (due to religious persecution) during this period for Ellis Island and eventually made their way to Boston. We see others that we might not have expected until the mid-20th century, such as a South Asian young man, a North African man, and Caribbean women.  

As seen in the video, photographs, and data table, borders were relatively open at some points in history. At other times, immigration laws serve to exclude or restrict entry. During Ellis Island's operation, according to John Cunningham, the percentage deported did not rise above 2%.  Emigrants did undergo questioning and testing upon arrival. Sometimes they might be deported, for example, as "likely to become a public charge" due to lack of funds or "diminished mental or physical capabilities." Disability historians point out the ableism underlying this latter criterion.  Rejection also might occur due to what the National Institutes of Health terms "medical prejudice," whereby fears of disease outbreak might target a specific group, such as the Irish in the 1830s (cholera) or Jews in the 1890s (tuberculosis). According the February 22, 1905 edition of the New York Times, the group of Hungarian gypsies depicted in the photograph below were deported.  The National Institutes of Health points out that “immigrant physicians, community spokespeople, newspapers, and religious and fraternal groups . . . disseminated public health information to their respective communities in culturally sensitive manners and in the languages the newcomers understood, offering crucial services to immigrants and American public health officials.” During the COVID-19 pandemic of 2020, New York’s failure to conduct similar outreach to community leaders of the Orthodox Jewish community was widely criticized.

Prep: European Immigration Overview

Graphic Organizer for Virtual Field Trip 

Ellis Island Interactive Field Trip 

Ellis Island 1892 Footage below: 

Photos Below Taken from The New York Public Library Archive (1902-1920)

Ottoman Turkish man

Dutch women

Guadeloupe (Caribbean) women 

"Hindu boy" 1911

Algerian man

Italian woman

Greek Orthodox priest

Romanian shepherd

Romanian woman 

Slovakian woman 

Swedish girls

German stowaway

Bavarian man 

Girl from Alsace-Lorraine

Group likely from Ottoman Empire, perhaps North Africa

Group likely from Ottoman Empire

Hungarian gypsies

Russian Cossack

Russian Cossack

A "book" of photographs from the digital collection of the New York Public Library may be accessed here.

Jewish Emancipation, Acculturation & Antisemitism (Adapted from Facing History)

Understanding the Life of the Shtetls

WATCH VIDEO HERE (4 minutes, 28 seconds)

Identity in a Changing World 

WATCH VIDEO HERE (3 minutes, 52 seconds) 

A World in Transition: Emancipation, Acculturation and AntiSemitism Part I 

WATCH VIDEO HERE (6 minutes, 20 seconds) 

A World in Transition: Emancipation, Acculturation and AntiSemitism Part II 

WATCH VIDEO HERE (1 minute, 10 seconds) 

OPTIONAL VIDEO (6 minutes)

Sholem Aleichem in America

You may rent the entire documentary excerpted above HERE. 

Zoom Protocol for EU Mock Council

Zoom Protocol for EU Mock Council

(5 minutes): Opening ceremony of EU Charter Preamble and “United in Diversity” statement read in 7 languages. 

(5-10 minutes): “Share my Screen” Political proposal videos shown (e.g., Croatia’s A Strong Europe in a World of Challenges). 

(35 minutes): Students manually sorted into political, economic and cultural identity breakout rooms. Negotiations proceed, building consensus toward an EU Response that aligns with nation team’s individual priorities. Students record Conclusions on its assigned, blank Google Slide. 

(10 minutes): Whole class share-out by breakout room of the Conclusions negotiated as well as any impasses. 

1) Each nation’s team should work together to figure out what is happening in their nation and the general sentiment toward the European Union right now. Your team needs a coordinated policy, meaning that your individual proposals should not be contradictory (e.g., one student is arguing for regional integration while another is arguing for sovereign control).  Having trouble figuring out how to engage in this activity? 

Political Questions/Vocab   Economic Questions/Vocab Identity Questions/Vocab

2) Each student will prepare a roughly 1-page individual proposal, specific to your chosen topic (political, economic, or cultural identity) with footnotes for at least six, well-evidenced sources. This may include your textbook.  Gerst sample here.

3) Each nation’s team will prepare a very short political video (think: commercial) of your total nation proposal going into the Council (Zoom meeting). Your example is Croatia’s EU video (3:35-6:35) we used in class at the beginning of second semester.  (Make these fairly short, please. No shorter than 1 minute (which would be 20 seconds per topic) and no longer than 3 minutes. Note how it ends with a strong thesis: “A Strong Europe in a World of Challenges.” Appeal to the lessons of history you’ve learned in this class this year. This also will ensure your group has coordinated across classes to ensure consistency.

4) Each class period will work together in its final Zoom meeting, scheduled on the date listed on the special assessment calendar for the final week of school, for approximately 60 minutes, or until complete. 

One student will be assigned the co-host role, so that the break-out room sessions may be recorded,  and Ms. Gerst and Mr. Janus can view them afterwards. After each class period finishes their Google slides, Ms. Gerst will share first the slides of the individual class and then all the classes, so that everyone may reflect on the different Conclusions that were negotiated.  The grading rubric used by Ms. Gerst and Mr. Janus may be found HERE: all of your work (individual paper, political commercial video, and breakout room performance) will be used in calculating the core and enrichment categories. 

FULL RULES LINKED HERE

Preamble

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1kjazXtr0adHTPuL0UGUcrFLZjWkxp4q1AW_Ak4UdwcA/edit

Protests Against U.S. Racism Spreads to Berlin and London

https://m.dw.com/en/anti-racism-protests-spread-to-berlin-and-london/a-53643710

United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Personal Narrative Virtual Field Trip

The historian Marvin Perry asks students to answer the question of the meaning of the Holocaust for Western Civilization, for Jews, for Germans, and for Christians. This strikes at the very heart of the “kaleidoscope” (a/k/a "shifting perspective") method at the root of this class.  Please take a Virtual Field Trip to the United States Holocaust Museum in Washington D.C. to find personal narratives of the survivors of the Holocaust to enrich and expand your understanding of the horrors of the Holocaust for the 6 million whose lives were extinguished, often having suffered fates worse than death, as well as the aftermath as survivors took on new identities as displaced peoples, orphans, refugees, and survivors. Both primary source written and video accounts of survivors are exhibited on these pages.

Step 1: Please go to exhibit entitled Personal Histories https://www.ushmm.org/exhibition/personal-history/

Step 2: Notice the navigation bar on the left that sub-divides the personal histories as follows:

·      Aftermath

·      Camps

·      Children

·      Deportations

·      Ghettos

·      Hiding

·      Individuals

·      Liberation

·      Refugees

·      Rescue

·      Resistance

·      Survival

Step 3: Begin to explore the personal histories exhibited. Find personal histories that enrich and expand your pre-existing knowledge of the meaning of the Holocaust. Think in particular about living in the aftermath as a survivor.  It is a difficult task to exactly pinpoint how many Jews perished in the Holocaust, though estimates suggest upwards of 6 million. (USHMM) Please find at least 6 survivors to focus on and read their accounts and listen to their stories.

Step 4: Get ready for Harkness discussion. In our next reading, Perry will argue "The Holocaust was heightened irrationality and organized evil on an unprecedented scale. . . . Auschwitz, Treblinka, Sobibor, and the other death factories represent the triumph of human irrationality over reason—the surrender of the mind to a bizarre racial mythology that provided a meta- physical and pseudoscientific justification for mass murder. They also represent the ultimate perversion of reason. A calculating reason manufactured and organized lies and demented beliefs into a structured system with its own inner logic and em- ployed sophisticated technology and administrative techniques to destroy human beings spiritually and physically. Science and technology, venerated as the great achievement of the Western mind, had made mass extermination possible. The philosophes had not foreseen the destructive power inherent in reason."  Based on the sources provided from the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, what is the meaning and legacy of the Holocaust for Western civilization? For Jews? For Christians? For Germans?  

The EU Mock Council Officially Begins

2020 EU MOCK COUNCIL WELCOME VIDEO 

COMPLETE INSTRUCTIONS FOR 2020 EU MOCK COUNCIL

We must rescue the ideal of a united Europe.  European identity vs. National Identity

Are we in a world war one stalemate with COVID-19?

Will the post-coronavirus economy come roaring back? Lessons from 1918 and the Roaring 20s

A World of Hardening Borders? 

Note the new "tabs" on the Blog with current event articles from past years on all topics. Great historical context for our present crisis. Politics  Economy Cultural Identity