Communities and new Americans: the process of joining and building communities among 1880-1920 immigrants and world war II refugees

During the late 19th and early 20th century, the United States faced substantial changes in the nature of European immigration to the country. Unlike previous phases of immigration, many of the European arrivals were from Southern and Eastern Europe, and as a result struggled to identify existing culture groups or resources to assist in the adjustment process. World War II brought new changes to America's migrants from Europe, as first refugees fleeing Nazi Germany and later Displaced Persons fleeing the instability of postwar Europe moved to the country. They too faced novel challenges as they arrived in the country, having to adapt to a new nation without the benefit of a more deliberate transition than was available to their predecessors. Due to the circumstances that each period of migration encountered, both phases developed their own unique adjustment process. Immigrants during the earlier period of migration commonly developed entire neighborhoods, with their origins in all-male boardinghouses which single men used to cut housing costs. In contrast, while Displaced Persons did build their own communities, they also had more opportunities to integrate into existing structures. However, despite major differences in both the type and timing of their movement to the United States, immigrants and refugees nonetheless also shared some commonalities in their efforts to adjust to America. Both groups participated in community building efforts, often in an effort to both establish cultural connections with their European pasts and to address shortcomings in whatever existing institutions offered new arrivals. The distribution of immigrants and refugees provides another commonality, with both groups concentrating in cities and urban areas for economic and cultural reasons, and resisting efforts by American observers to suppress the trend.

COMMUNITIES AND NEW AMERICANS: THE PROCESS OF JOINING AND BUILDING COMMUNITIES AMONG 1880-1920 IMMIGRANTS AND WORLD WAR II REFUGEES by Landon Troester A Senior Honors Thesis Submitted to the Faculty of The University of Utah In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Honors Degree in Bachelor of Arts in Teaching History Approved: ____________________________ Julie Ault, PhD Thesis Faculty Supervisor ___________________________ Benjamin Cohen, PhD Chair, Department of History ____________________________ Eric Hinderaker, PhD Honors Faculty Advisor ___________________________ Sylvia D. Torti, PhD Dean, Honors College April 2019 Copyright © 2019 All Rights Reserved ABSTRACT During the late 19th and early 20th century, the United States faced substantial changes in the nature of European immigration to the country. Unlike previous phases of immigration, many of the European arrivals were from Southern and Eastern Europe, and as a result struggled to identify existing culture groups or resources to assist in the adjustment process. World War II brought new changes to America’s migrants from Europe, as first refugees fleeing Nazi Germany and later Displaced Persons fleeing the instability of postwar Europe moved to the country. They too faced novel challenges as they arrived in the country, having to adapt to a new nation without the benefit of a more deliberate transition than was available to their predecessors. Due to the circumstances that each period of migration encountered, both phases developed their own unique adjustment process. Immigrants during the earlier period of migration commonly developed entire neighborhoods, with their origins in all-male boardinghouses which single men used to cut housing costs. In contrast, while Displaced Persons did build their own communities, they also had more opportunities to integrate into existing structures. However, despite major differences in both the type and timing of their movement to the United States, immigrants and refugees nonetheless also shared some commonalities in their efforts to adjust to America. Both groups participated in community building efforts, often in an effort to both establish cultural connections with their European pasts and to address shortcomings in whatever existing institutions offered new arrivals. The distribution of immigrants and refugees provides another commonality, with both groups concentrating in cities and urban areas for economic and cultural reasons, and resisting efforts by American observers to suppress the trend. ii TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT ii INTRODUCTION 1 IMMIGRANTS IN THE LATE 19TH AND EARLY 20TH CENTURY 3 WORLD WAR II REFUGEES 14 AMERICAN CONCERNS OVER IMMIGRANT CONCENTRATION IN CITIES 24 CONCLUSION 34 WORKS CITED 40 iii 1 INTRODUCTION During the late 19th and early 20th century, the United States experienced a large growth in immigration from around the world. In particular, immigration from Eastern Europe and Italy grew rapidly, beginning in the 1880’s and continuing to varying degrees until dramatic restrictions in immigration during the 1920’s and 30’s. During this time, these immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe who were previously only on the fringes of migration patterns became the source of over 70% of America’s immigrants from Europe.1 These new immigrants arrived in a country where there were only small existing ethnic communities and limited resources for easing the transition to the United States. In addition, these new migrants were in many cases people who, at least at the start, left their family in Europe in order to establish themselves on their own. A number of them also only intended to remain in the United States for enough time to build up their financial future and then return home.2 As Europe entered World War II, however, the nature of European migration to the United States changed. Starting slowly in the 1930’s and dramatically expanding in the late 1940’s, new arrivals from Europe came not as immigrants, but as refugees. These refugees were first fleeing the rise of Nazi Germany and its spread across Europe in the 1930’s. As World War II drew to close, hundreds of thousands of what the Allied powers would eventually call “Displaced Persons” chose to flee the continent in response to the lack of food and housing and, for some, due to the difficult legacy of the Holocaust. As a result, these refugees left Europe not as deliberate immigrants searching for only 1 United States Immigration Commission, Reports of the Immigration Commission (Washington D.C.: GPO, 1911), 23, https://archive.org/details/reportsofimmigra01unitrich/page/23. 2 United States Immigration Commission, 24. 2 improved “economic circumstances,”3 but as the battered remnants of farming towns, communities, and families. For Jewish survivors in particular, they came as the “tiny remnant of a group that had been targeted for murder” with devastating accuracy.4 Because of these factors, while these refugees were not the first of their countrymen to arrive in the country, they nonetheless lacked some of the resources available during an orderly transition to the United States. These two groups of migrants came from very different Europes, and arrived in different United States. Nevertheless, the differences, and similarities, of their experiences in the United States shed greater light on the process of assimilation and adjustment for 19th and 20th century arrivals. How these immigrants entered the cultural life of the United States, both through existing community structures and through the formation of new ones, help to illustrate and add nuance to the process of ‘Americanization’ over which many contemporary politicians, researchers, and citizens worried. Further, their participation in the American workforce illustrates the staying power of concerns over how best to “distribute”5 new arrivals and mitigate their participation in urban workplaces. In turn, these concerns and the attempts to address them negatively impacted immigrant and refugee attempts to establish themselves in the United States, both financially and culturally, because of the disruptions they caused. This paper examines the process of immigration for 1880-1920 immigrants and World War II era refugees through two lenses. First, it addresses the similarities and 3 United States Immigration Commission, 25. Beth B. Cohen, Case Closed: Holocaust Survivors in Postwar America (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2007), 2–3. 5 “Powderly Gets Unions’ Aid,” New York Times, January 18, 1909. 4 3 differences in migrant efforts to adjust to American life and their process of assimilation. By examining how both groups worked to join communities of interest, and build their own, it will chart the adjustment process. In addition, it will examine how the community-building efforts of immigrants in the early 20th century laid some foundation for the refugees of World War II, though its effects varied widely. Second, it discusses the recurring concern of many Americans over the location of these migrants. While legislated restrictions regarding the distribution of immigrants across America were not a major factor in the late 19th and early 20th century, concerns that new migrants would overburden urban areas and increase unemployment played a role during the period and eventually coalesced into restrictive laws which affected World War II era refugees, providing another commonality in their adjustment efforts. Through these factors, this thesis illustrates how both periods of immigration shared a number of tendencies while also examining how these two groups diverged and why. JOINING AND BUILDING COMMUNITIES: IMMIGRANTS IN THE LATE 19TH AND EARLY 20TH CENTURY European immigrants during the late 19th and early 20th century, who were increasingly from Southern and Eastern Europe, faced both economic and cultural pressures which shaped their integration into American society. Immigrants during this period were oftentimes not motivated by “absolute economic necessity” but instead were “impelled by a desire for betterment” outside of any sort of harsh condition at home.6 These immigrants, with the exception of those fleeing pogroms in Eastern Europe and the 6 United States Immigration Commission, Reports of the Immigration Commission, 25. 4 nascent USSR,7 were oftentimes arriving in the United States in an effort to improve their financial condition in Europe. For many, their ultimate goal was to spend a short time in the United States to earn the money promised by industrial work in America “which would enable them to achieve their larger goal of increasing land holdings at home.”8 This was not an all-encompassing trend, Jewish survivors of pogroms in Eastern Europe often fled their home country “even if [they] had to crawl on all fours” due to risk of violence as opposed to purely economic concerns – for them, returning home was not an option in the short-term.9 However, even in these cases, the family did not necessarily stick together for the trip: one family sent their daughter ahead of them because there was a visa available for her alone.10 The nature of this movement contributed to several developments in their communities in the United States. Many immigrants, both those who intended to remain in the United States indefinitely and those who planned on returning to Europe eventually, arrived in the United States alone. Unlike refugees or other groups who moved as a family unit, adult men first arrived alone in many cases, be they married or bachelors. This posed economic challenges, as immigrants attempted to support their family despite being on opposite Such as Bertha Fox, a Jewish immigrant who arrived in the 1920’s fleeing pogroms in Ukraine. However, these arrivals came later in the period. See: Jocelyn Cohen, Daniel Soyer, and Yivo Insitute for Jewish Research, eds., My Future Is in America: Autobiographies of Eastern European Jewish Immigrants (New York: New York University Press, 2006), 204–7. 8 Mark Wyman, Round-Trip to America: The Immigrants Return to Europe, 1880-1930 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1993), 49. 9 Cohen, Soyer, and Yivo Insitute for Jewish Research, My Future Is in America: Autobiographies of Eastern European Jewish Immigrants, 208. 10 Her parents ultimately did not survive, as by the time she was established enough to support her parents’ move to the United States, her parents had died and her old town was occupied by Nazi Germany: Cohen, Soyer, and Yivo Insitute for Jewish Research, 208, 230. 7 5 sides of the Atlantic,11 and also influenced the nature of immigrant communities. For one, these immigrants lived in closely packed boarding houses, run by their employer or by an immigrant who had come to America earlier. Built from cheap materials and designed to squeeze tens of men into small buildings, immigrants packed in tightly to keep their costs to a minimum.12 Despite being unskilled, having often been a farmer in Europe, these laborers could save relatively substantial sums of money by spreading housing costs among a large number of fellow immigrants. The necessity of these new boardinghouse communities also illustrates the small size of existing communities before the ‘new wave’ of immigration in 1880 and onward. Italians, for example, only arrived in the hundreds or low thousands per year before 1880,13 meaning their existing social structures were small and regional. When their numbers rose to the tens of thousands annually in the 1880’s and 90’s, and later to hundreds of thousands per year after 1900,14 these immigrants needed to establish their own networks. At a glance, these boarding houses and cost-minimizing efforts appear to suppress the ability of immigrants to build a cultural community. One steelworker noted that many immigrants would “save money, work all time, go home, sleep, no spend [sic]” in an effort to return to their own country with fairly substantial savings.15 However, these Ivan Čizmič, “Yugoslav Immigrants in the U.S. Labor Movement, 1880-1920,” in American Labor and Immigration History, 1877-1920’s: Recent European Research (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1983), 178–79. 12 Issac Rothbart, “Work, Family, and Protest: Immigrant Labor in the Steel, Meatpacking, and Anthracite Industries, 1880-1920” (PhD diss., University of California, Berkeley, 1988), 79–80; United States Immigration Commission, Reports of the Immigration Commission, 37. 13 Susan B. Carter et al., Historical Statistics of the United States Millennial Edition Online, Table Ad106120: Immigrants, by country of last residence-Europe: 1820-1997 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006), http://hsus.cambridge.org/. 14 Carter et al. 15 Charles Rumford Walker, Steel: The Diary of a Furnace Worker (Urbana: Project Gutenberg, 2012), 30, http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/38932. 11 6 boarding houses provided immigrants with a reliable group of coworkers who were from similar regions in Europe, and who spoke the same language. In time, as immigrants chose to remain longer in the United States, these boardinghouses provided a foundation upon which other structures could establish themselves.16 Fellow boarders, even if from varying parts of Europe, oftentimes worked in the same industry, spent time in the same part of the city, and drank at the same taverns. As such, even as immigrant laborers lived and worked without their family, their living and working arrangements enabled the start of the formation of ethnic communities. The depth of these communities expanded as laborers ‘settled down’ and began forming families in America. These families predominantly were located in urban areas, as because immigrants were generally involved in industrial work, they moved to the urban areas which provided those jobs.17 As Polish workers established themselves in various industries during this period, groups of workmen would ultimately form a Polish boardinghouse. One of these workers eventually “assumes the initiative, brings his wife as soon as the situation seems settled, rents a large apartment, and takes the others as roomers or boarders.”18 These boarders, according to contemporary observers, then work to encourage other Poles to come to the area, helping the community feel less isolated among the ‘milieu’ of Americans and other immigrants.19 While clearly a relationship that begins as practical, these communities become important to the various ethnic groups Rothbart, “Work, Family, and Protest: Immigrant Labor in the Steel, Meatpacking, and Anthracite Industries, 1880-1920,” 255–57. 17 As Wyman puts it: “They flocked to industry, which meant they largely flocked into cities.” Wyman, Round-Trip to America: The Immigrants Return to Europe, 1880-1930, 48. 18 William I. Thomas and Florian Znaniecki, The Polish Peasant in Europe and America, ed. Eli Zaretsky (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1984), 242. 19 Thomas and Znaniecki, 241–43. 16 7 who are arriving in America during the period. These boardinghouse neighborhoods act as a starting point to more substantial community interaction, with the expansion to family members being an important first step. That being said, these communities did act as an insular form of society, which aided in adjusting to life in the United States, but which also created a sort of “social distance” between Americans and newcomers.20 As immigrants began establishing family units, with families coming across the Atlantic to join the father and bachelors starting families of their own, these working communities changed and grew in both size and cultural significance. Immigrants began building their own structures, oftentimes leading with a form of mutual assistance society, a sort of informal insurance which aids families during sickness, injury, and death.21 Communities of all sorts developed some form of these organizations, including Jewish ‘Landsmanshaftn’ that often functioned as a replacement for the village support network which had been left behind.22 While the exact nature of these early organizations vary, the developing immigrant communities establish organizations which provide “very positive services for their members by maintaining their sense of social responsibility to Julian Leon Greifer, “Neighborhood Center: A Study of the Adjustment of a Culture Group in America” (PhD diss., New York University, 1948), 10–11. 21 Thomas and Znaniecki, The Polish Peasant in Europe and America, 244–45. 22 Jacob Rosenberg, “The Perfect Storm of Jewish Evangelism: How Jewish Immigration, the Russian Pogroms, Dispensationalism, Pre-Millennialism, Zionism, and Hebrew Christianity Coalesced into the Foundation for Modern Jewish Missions in New York City Between 1880-1920” (PhD diss., Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, 2012), 58–59. 20 8 some type of community”23 while also helping newly arrived immigrants adapt to the United States.24 One major community organization, constructed in the image of institutions in the ‘old world,’ was the religious center. Among Catholic immigrants, including Slovaks in Chicago neighborhoods, this was spurred by local action but in effect was an extension of a national organization. As opposed to joining any existing Catholic community, Slovaks successfully established their own parish and secured a permanent pastor. Lutheran Slovaks, while decidedly in the minority, also established their own churches in Chicago.25 Some groups attracted pastors through formal organizations, while others successfully pulled clergyman from their home country to establish and run the new church.26 Immigrant groups from various nations established their own religious parishes, which commonly grew to become the major community center for these neighborhoods. This included Jewish immigrants, who joined or established various congregations as they entered America.27 For Jewish immigrants, congregations were built in large numbers as they arrived in the United States. Synagogues, notes researcher George Kranzler, were not only the 23 Robert Ezra Park and Herbert Adolphus Miller, Old World Traits Transplanted (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1921), 307; as cited in Greifer, “Neighborhood Center: A Study of the Adjustment of a Culture Group in America,” 24. 24 Rosenberg, “The Perfect Storm of Jewish Evangelism: How Jewish Immigration, the Russian Pogroms, Dispensationalism, Pre-Millennialism, Zionism, and Hebrew Christianity Coalesced into the Foundation for Modern Jewish Missions in New York City Between 1880-1920,” 59. 25 Mary Lydia Zahrobsky, “The Slovaks in Chicago” (Master’s thesis, University of Chicago, 1924), 35– 37. 26 Čizmič, “Yugoslav Immigrants in the U.S. Labor Movement, 1880-1920,” 180–81. 27 Jewish Synagogues were established depending on the background of the community’s faith, such as Ashkenazic, Chassidic, etc. as discussed in: George Kranzler, “The Jewish Community of Williamsburg, Brooklyn, New York: A Study of the Factors and Patterns of Change in the Organization and Structure of a Community in Transition” (PhD diss., Columbia University, 1954), 208–9. 9 “house of prayer and the seat of organized Jewish religion, but the focus of the entire community.”28 With only a few Eastern Jewish congregations in the United States prior to the large immigration waves after 1880,29 building synagogues was an important step for many new arrivals. These congregations were predominantly small-scale organizations, commonly built by immigrants who came from the same region in their old countries, though also simply by those who had come together in the United States.30 In some cases, they acted as important networks for aiding new immigrants: one arrival who came in 1903 found necessary assistance through a Jewish learning center, in which he found a man who would rent him a room but not require any rent until he found a job.31 These networks also provided immigrants with access to observant Jewish communities, a useful resource for Jews who lacked any connection to the United States, or whose American family no longer observed orthodox traditions, such as keeping kosher.32 Religious immigrants of many denominations used religious organizations as a unifying and socializing element for their new communities, and oftentimes created them in an effort to maintain one connection to their prior lives in Europe. While secular services remain, and grow, following the establishment of parishes, their actions were often taken in concert with religious organizations once established.33 As these religious and cultural centers became more prominent, their roles expanded and larger structures of community developed. Commonly, religious centers 28 Kranzler, 242. Greifer, “Neighborhood Center: A Study of the Adjustment of a Culture Group in America,” 150. 30 Greifer, 150. 31 Cohen, Soyer, and Yivo Insitute for Jewish Research, My Future Is in America: Autobiographies of Eastern European Jewish Immigrants, 115–16. 32 Cohen, Soyer, and Yivo Insitute for Jewish Research, 115. 33 Thomas and Znaniecki, The Polish Peasant in Europe and America, 247–51. 29 10 grew to establish their own parochial school for children of these national groups, thus deepening the community’s ties to their religious center and rebuilding traditions from their home country.34 The education in these centers provided immigrant children with connections to their cultural past that were not available elsewhere. These educational resources, which replaced public education for many youths in these communities, were also an important way to foster “continuity through successive generations” by maintaining a community’s language, religion, and cultural tradition.35 However, it is also important to note that some communities, particularly orthodox Jewish synagogues and their learning centers, struggled to maintain their influence as their original communities aged, assimilated, and became more affluent later into the 20th century.36 Separate from religious education, cultural centers also began to build local branches of national groups. Many of these groups adapted the model of existing ‘fraternal unions’ in the United States to form groups according to their nationality in many cases, with growth highly dependent on the available population from a given region.37 These groups took on different roles, such as the expanded role of Landsmanshaftn organizations, which primarily organized social events, contrasted with more traditional fraternal societies such as the Croatian National Union among Yugoslav immigrants, which took on expanded ‘mutual assistance’ type roles.38 More broadly, Thomas and Znaniecki, 252; Zahrobsky, “The Slovaks in Chicago,” 36–38. Thomas and Znaniecki, The Polish Peasant in Europe and America, 252–53; Zahrobsky, “The Slovaks in Chicago,” 36–38; Cohen, Soyer, and Yivo Insitute for Jewish Research, My Future Is in America: Autobiographies of Eastern European Jewish Immigrants, 69, 93. 36 Kranzler, “The Jewish Community of Williamsburg, Brooklyn, New York: A Study of the Factors and Patterns of Change in the Organization and Structure of a Community in Transition,” 243–44. 37 Čizmič, “Yugoslav Immigrants in the U.S. Labor Movement, 1880-1920,” 180–81. 38 Greifer, “Neighborhood Center: A Study of the Adjustment of a Culture Group in America,” 151–52; Čizmič, “Yugoslav Immigrants in the U.S. Labor Movement, 1880-1920,” 182. 34 35 11 foreign language newspapers also experienced major growth in the 1880’s-1920’s, and provided communities in many urban areas with stronger ties to their national origins. Newspaper circulation in Chicago illustrates the dramatic expansion of these papers: in 1890, ten years into the major expansion of the foreign-born population, over a third of all daily papers were in foreign languages; in 1930, that number had more than doubled and accounted for two thirds of dailies in Chicago.39 These papers acted as important cultural linkages, several were directly supported by cultural and fraternal organizations, while many others were available in community halls even if not sponsored by them.40 In addition, foreign-language papers participated in the efforts of immigrants to adjust to their new lives in America, and provided a platform for immigrants to debate political and ideological views.41 Be they extensions of national groups, or wholly local undertakings, formal community organizations and foreign-language press provided immigrants with a broader community for people of similar ethnic backgrounds. Social settlements, fraternal orders, and more regional mutual assistance groups were established in many communities, helping their members adjust to America and rebuild a social life. These groups were a mix of both secular and religious, though the line between them could become blurred as the community established itself. Immigrant communities also developed a wide variety of foreign-language papers, and while these publications would encounter hardship and decline later in the 20th century,42 they Jon Bekken, “The Chicago Newspaper Scene: An Ecological Perspective,” Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly 74, no. 3 (Fall 1997): 492. 40 Bekken, 493–94. 41 Bekken, 494. 42 German-Language papers in particular suffered during and after World War I, when German-Americans faced intense scrutiny: Leah Weinryb Grohsgal, “Chronicling America’s Historical German Newspapers and the Growth of the American Ethnic Press,” National Endowment for the Humanities, July 2, 2014, 39 12 provided new arrivals with another venue where they could “debate the pressing issues facing their communities, shape a common response, and mobilize their participation in the broader polity.”43 Through these processes, ethnic groups which were once primarily men in boarding houses, with a few women to provide support, developed into neighborhoods and communities which helped to recreate the social bonds which were left behind. These gathering places would also serve another purpose for immigrants, as a base for expanded participation in national union organizations. While newly arrived greenhorns faced resistance from nativists in a number of unions, the history of many immigrants during the 1880’s-1920’s indicates that immigrants were willing to join unions and support their goals. A number of immigrant communities joined, or built, union groups throughout this period in their effort to secure greater economic independence.44 These unions also acted as a sort of community organization for new arrivals. For many immigrants, access to unions came through the boardinghouse community, where unions interested in new arrivals could find taverns full of working immigrants who were looking to send more money home or earn more for a better life in America.45 One example of active recruitment is the National Union of Granite Cutters, which published important union changes in Italian, and had a dedicated Italian-language column in its journal in order to drive participation in the union.46 https://www.neh.gov/divisions/preservation/featured-project/chronicling-americas-historic-germannewspapers-and-the-grow. 43 Bekken, “The Chicago Newspaper Scene: An Ecological Perspective,” 497. 44 Robert Asher, “Union Nativism and the Immigrant Response,” Labor History 23, no. 3 (June 1982): 325–26. 45 Rothbart, “Work, Family, and Protest: Immigrant Labor in the Steel, Meatpacking, and Anthracite Industries, 1880-1920,” 256–57. 46 Edwin Fenton, “Italian Immigrants in the Stonworkers’ Union,” Labor History 3, no. 2 (March 1962): 193–94. 13 Through recruitment to unions, some immigrants found a different sort of community, one which was concerned with work but could also assist with adjusting to the United States and socializing new immigrants to other groups. That being said, it is important to note that not all immigrants found unionization as an option, and while one union would court immigrants,47 others would lambast the them as “unorganizable”48 or alternatively far too radical to be allowed entrance.49 For immigrants who were not able to enter established unions, due to nativist sentiment or for their politics, forming their own organizations was one way to circumvent the limitations. In response to difficult conditions, Yugoslav immigrants who had “brought with them socialist ideas and experience” began to form socialist movements which bridged the gap between local activism and national politics.50 Eastern Jewish immigrants in particular contributed to the development of socialist ideology in their communities, establishing the Workmen’s Circle during this period as a labor and political organization which also served to educate immigrant families about Jewish tradition.51 Separate from labor organizing, parts of the newly arrived Jewish community were active in socialist politics, as illustrated by multiple autobiographies in My Future is in America.52 Through forming unions and political organizations, such as the Workmen’s Circle, immigrant communities worked to rebuild support networks and improve their condition in their new home. “Wants Aliens in Unions: Gompers Advises Labor to Win Immigrants after Canal Opens,” New York Times, November 30, 1913. 48 Fenton, “Italian Immigrants in the Stonworkers’ Union,” 188. 49 Asher, “Union Nativism and the Immigrant Response,” 336. 50 Čizmič, “Yugoslav Immigrants in the U.S. Labor Movement, 1880-1920,” 185–87. 51 Cohen, Soyer, and Yivo Insitute for Jewish Research, My Future Is in America: Autobiographies of Eastern European Jewish Immigrants, 200–202. 52 Cohen, Soyer, and Yivo Insitute for Jewish Research, 70, 80, 134. 47 14 Immigrants during the ‘new wave’ of immigration in the 1880’s through the 1920’s found a rapidly industrializing nation whose prior immigrant populations were primarily from Western and Northern Europe. As a result, these immigrants needed to build many of their own community-level structures to both provide mutual assistance – a critical resource for working-class immigrants in America – and to provide a sense of belonging in the so-called milieu of differing races and languages in America.53 The communal ties of some organizations were incidental: boardinghouses were a pragmatic step to cut costs for immigrants who intended to return home in the future. However, others were deliberate steps to recreate a sense of home in their new land while also helping new arrivals adjust to American life. Many of these organizations, including fraternal orders and neighborhood religious organizations, helped immigrants retain a sense of their old identity from Europe. While these organizations proved valuable and were spurred by local action, many of these organizations were local extensions of national or international groups, and not wholly original structures. These organizations assisted in the transition to American life, though were not necessarily forces for ‘Americanization.’ JOINING AND BUILDING COMMUNITIES: WORLD WAR II REFUGEES European refugees and Displaced Persons faced very different circumstances from those in the 1880’s-1920’s, both in the Europe they left and in the United States they entered. Europe in the years leading to World War II and in the immediate postwar period was a place of substantial disruption, Germany and Central Europe were particularly unstable post-World War II. Eastern Europe was facing occupation by the 53 Thomas and Znaniecki, The Polish Peasant in Europe and America, 254. 15 USSR, while Germany had been left “bankrupt and starving amidst a pile of rubble” with millions of displaced people wandering the country.54 Refugees to the United States attempted to flee the worst of the destruction following the rise of Nazi Germany and its expansion through Europe. Their numbers increased “by the day,”55 though their efforts to flee were hampered by highly restrictive US immigration law that limited their numbers to a few hundred thousand.56 Following the end of World War II, the United States endeavored to loosen their immigration restrictions in the face of the humanitarian crisis in war-torn Europe.57 These efforts culminated into the Displaced Persons Act (DPA) which enabled some 400,000 Europeans who qualified as Displaced Persons (DPs) to enter the United States in the postwar period.58 In short, these refugees and DPs who arrived in the United States were no longer making the move for deliberate economic reasons as their predecessors had, but instead in an effort to rebuild their life following the devastation of World War II and for many, following the devastation of the Holocaust. Due to the different situation in Europe and America for refugees and DPs, the patterns of migration for those leaving the continent were quite different from those seen in the earlier immigration phase. Unlike the tendency for fathers to first establish themselves before bringing the rest of their family to America in the earlier immigration 54 Martin Kitchen, A History of Modern Germany: 1800 to the Present, 2nd ed. (Chichester: WileyBlackwell, 2012), 303. 55 Kranzler, “The Jewish Community of Williamsburg, Brooklyn, New York: A Study of the Factors and Patterns of Change in the Organization and Structure of a Community in Transition,” 14. 56 Haim Genizi, America’s Fair Share: The Admission and Resettlement of Displaced Persons, 1945-1952 (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1993), 7. 57 The Displaced Persons Commission, “The Final Report of the United States Displaced Persons Commission” (GPO, 1952), 9–10, https://hdl.handle.net/2027/mdp.39015040761580. 58 The Displaced Persons Commission, 9. 16 period, around 75% of all Displaced Persons were in a family unit, most of the rest being single men.59 In addition, unlike prior groups, many refugees did not expect to return to Europe, especially among those who left after the war.60 These changes, particularly for refugees who fled pogroms or the Holocaust, meant that this new phase of immigration to the United States was one-way, and was not a round trip as it was for a number of immigrants in the past. Both of these trends led to a migration to the United States that was much more disruptive to migrants, having knock-on effects in efforts to reestablish communities in the United States. As a result of these factors, new refugees faced unique circumstances in their efforts to find a sense of community in America, in addition to the substantial challenges they faced economically. Isolation was a major concern, particularly for older refugees, and one contemporary researcher found that among older refugees “the inability to make deep friendships, as (the refugees) had in Germany, is a greater loss in many cases than formal material wealth.”61 Participating in communities was an important goal for many new arrivals, both by joining existing American structures and through developing their own, and their efforts illustrate the correlations between refugees and DPs in the World War II period and their predecessors earlier in the century. Unlike some immigrants from the earlier period, most refugee nationalities were reasonably well represented in the United States already due to the large influx of eastern 59 The Displaced Persons Commission, 246. Displaced Persons, including Jewish Holocaust survivors but also German and Eastern European refugees, were being assisted with “resettlement” to the United States, as opposed to merely “immigrating” to it: Genizi, America’s Fair Share: The Admission and Resettlement of Displaced Persons, 1945-1952, 114. 61 Beranrd Baum, “Personal Adjustment in Old Age of a Group of German Emigrees to the United States (1933-1949)” (Master’s thesis, University of Chicago, 1953), 29. 60 17 Europeans through to 1920 by the time refugees arrived. For some Jewish refugees, the existing Jewish communities encouraged them to integrate into religious neighborhoods. Marshall Sklare, a sociologist who examined American synagogues in the period, found that Jewish immigrants living in the so-called “ethnic ghetto” as first-generation arrivals were particularly reliant on orthodox synagogues to “absorb the shock of acculturation”62 throughout Jewish immigration history. As such, communities like Williamsburg in Brooklyn, which had a fairly large Jewish orthodox community that organized during the earlier wave of immigration in the 1920’s attracted orthodox Jewish refugees.63 This community, though generally more moderate than the highly orthodox refugees which joined them, was welcoming and supportive on the whole.64 This welcoming attitude and existing base of Jewish community life encouraged refugees fleeing wartime Europe to settle in the area among people of their same heritage and common language. While the intensity of the influx of refugees to this Brooklyn neighborhood was unique according to the researcher who investigated the area, other Jewish refugee stories also tell of efforts to join Jewish communities. One young refugee, who fled Europe on the Kindertransport and arrived in the United States while the war in Europe still raged, attested that he quickly “gravitated to some (Jewish) children” and that his neighborhood was at times called the “fourth or fifth Reich” due to the number of German Jews in the area.65 Non-Jewish refugees also found communities to integrate into, though their Marshall Sklare, “Conservative Judaism: A Sociological Analysis,” (PhD Diss., Columbia University, 1953) as cited in: Kranzler, “The Jewish Community of Williamsburg, Brooklyn, New York: A Study of the Factors and Patterns of Change in the Organization and Structure of a Community in Transition,” 242– 43. 63 Kranzler, 10–11. 64 Kranzler, 10–13, 320–21. 65 Oral History Interview with John H. Lang, Transcript, October 15, 2010, 43–44, USHMM, https://collections.ushmm.org/search/catalog/irn42207. 62 18 availability varied depending on the refugee’s English acuity. Lutheran church groups, and by extension their parent churches, along with organizations like the YWCA (Young Women’s Christian Association) were one such option for refugees with strong English skills and a Lutheran background.66 Because of the need for English, many traditional ‘American’ structures, including religious ones like the YWCA and secular ones such as Parent-Teacher Associations, were only available for some refugees and DPs. However, others were able to join neighborhoods which were strongly rooted in European languages, mitigating the need for English.67 By doing so, refugees and DPs with limited language skills were able to participate in community life with other families, refugees and otherwise, though one woman critiqued her parents’ decision to stay in those neighborhoods, saying “I always had the feeling that my parents never really – never really became Americanized, and allowed themselves to live a really full life.”68 Through these efforts, refugees and Displaced Persons of varying religious and ethnic backgrounds, and those of varying English proficiency, worked to integrate into existing community structures. While efforts to integrate into existing community organizations was one method for refugees to adjust and adapt to the United States, they were not the only source of community for new arrivals. Refugees not only joined existing groups, but also built new organizations that were designed to welcome and assist them in their difficult transition Nancy Moore Krueger, “Assimilation and Adjustment of Postwar Immigrants in Franklin County, Ohio” (PhD diss., Ohio State University, 1955), 64–65. 67 Krueger, 58–68; Amy Rubin, Oral History Interview with Anita Sockol, Transcript, August 13, 1999, 38–39, USHMM, https://collections.ushmm.org/search/catalog/irn506713; Oral History Interview with John H. Lang, 43. 68 Rubin, Oral History Interview with Anita Sockol, 38–39. 66 19 to the United States. These organizations acted as a supplement to, and for some a replacement for, established communities in America. By focusing on refugees as their membership, they provided support and assistance that was sometimes lacking in other organizations. At a more basic level, they provided refugees a space where they did not have to face “the continuous strain of having to cope with a foreign environment” by offering linkages to their cultural past.69 Williamsburg, which originally acted as an established community for newcomers to join, increasingly became a refugee-oriented and refugee-managed community. The neighborhood, which became a Jewish-centered neighborhood during the immigration waves of the 1880’s-1920’s, was revitalized and recreated as successive waves of European refugees arrived.70 Before World War II brought newcomers and economic growth, the neighborhood had an ageing population and increasing numbers of young people leaving orthodox Jewish life.71 However, as more refugees arrived during World War II, this trend reversed, becoming younger, more economically active, and more orthodox. New patterns of social life emerged, Chassidic synagogues brought by refugees acted as the cultural center of Williamsburg, and with the increase in population the neighborhood reversed its previous trend towards social “disintegration.”72 While the regrowth of Williamsburg was at a uniquely large scale, it illustrates how Jewish refugees Anton Lourié, “Social Adjustments of German Jewish Refugees in Los Angeles” (Master’s thesis, University of Southern California, 1953), 90. 70 The process by which successive waves of immigration revitalized and changed Williamsburg is effectively summarized in Kranzler, “The Jewish Community of Williamsburg, Brooklyn, New York: A Study of the Factors and Patterns of Change in the Organization and Structure of a Community in Transition,” 270–302. 71 Kranzler, 273–74. 72 Kranzler, 301–2. 69 20 sought to build strongly orthodox communities which would allow them to practice the lifestyle for which they had been brutally targeted in Europe. Separate from the redevelopment of entire neighborhoods, refugees also established societal organizations at varying scales in response to the cultural challenges of America. Nationally, refugees established organizations which would allow them to keep connections with their European past, with the refugee newspaper Aufbau being a useful example. In survey conducted in the 1950’s, researcher Anton Lourié determined that many Aufbau readers found the paper as a useful connection to Europe and its readership as the unique community of refugees who could understand the hardships of the past decade.73 Other refugee-centric organizations fulfilled a similar role as Aufbau, providing refugees with a community of other World War II survivors, which were fluent in European languages, and which could support a social life in America. The Jewish Club of 1933 in Los Angeles was one such local organization, and the similarity of its role to Aufbau’s for refugees is fairly evident: 90% of surveyed members read Aufbau regularly.74 Through national organizations like Aufbau and through local refugee-created structures, a number of refugees were able to build communities through a shared connection to Europe and a shared loss of their cultural life there. In addition to formal community organizations such as churches, synagogues, and newspapers, refugees also formed small scale communities in their own backyards. Partially in response to the disruption of social life, new arrivals naturally sought out “former compatriots, among whom he enjoys his former social status.”75 Refugees Lourié, “Social Adjustments of German Jewish Refugees in Los Angeles,” 107–8. Lourié, 110–12. 75 Lourié, 101–2. 73 74 21 formed new social circles as they arrived to the United States, and many formed them out of the refugees in the area. Bernard Baum, who investigated how old-age emigres adjusted to their situation, commented that “the primary factor in making satisfactory adjustment (to America) in old age possible for this group is the German-Jewish community in which they live” because the broader community enables many of them to meet people who survived the same crisis in Europe. Because of the societal disruption caused by war and their flight from Europe, these refugees were “suddenly de-classed” and found themselves in the United States where social structures were much looser than in Europe.76 Former patterns of socialization from Europe, which Baum argues were enmeshed with rigid class structures, no longer applied.77 By seeking out people in the same situation, these refugees were able to make the transition together, even though they did not have the structure of a formal organization. Refugees from World War II found community and a sense of belonging in both existing American structures and in new, refugee-oriented communities. Through joining existing neighborhoods, church groups, and other organizations, refugees could find assistance in adjusting to the United States. These groups, while still unfamiliar to refugees, provided them with guidance and help Americanizing while also providing some familiar structures, especially in religious groups. In addition, some of these groups were the legacy of the earlier immigration phase, illustrating how that phase provided some foundation for the refugees and DPs which arrived in the 1930’s and onward. However, a number of these organizations, along with refugee resettlement groups such Baum, “Personal Adjustment in Old Age of a Group of German Emigrees to the United States (19331949),” 30. 77 Baum, 30. 76 22 as the United Service for New Americans (USNA), failed to provide the emotional support and family connections for which refugees were desperate.78 In existing communities, “the longing for family was too often one-sided:”79 Kristallnacht survivor John Lang, after seeking out and making friends with American Jewish children in New York, learned that their father didn’t want them to associate with John. His new friend said “my father doesn’t wish – wish me to play with you anymore” because of John’s stories of survival during Kristallnacht.80 One other survivor simply said that “nobody wanted to hear anything” of her experiences in concentration camps when she got out of Europe.81 While individual experiences vary, the difficult situations which wartime refugees had escaped made integration into existing structures difficult. Refugees formed their own communities, in part, as a response to the weakness of existing community structures to provide sufficient emotional and moral support for new arrivals. Through these organizations, as mentioned, refugees could find other survivors, be they survivors of war and displacement alone, or of the Holocaust as well. For many Jewish survivors, these new communities allowed refugees to maintain their religious beliefs for which millions of others had died: “Of the 147 members of my family only thirteen had survived. And it was hard starting all over, as if nothing had happened…I had succeeded even during the harrowing years of the camps in never letting a day go by without putting on Tefillin82…I had no intention of acting differently in the United 78 Cohen, Case Closed: Holocaust Survivors in Postwar America, 47. Cohen, 47. 80 Oral History Interview with John H. Lang, 44. 81 Bill Williams, Paulette Shaw Interview 35131, Video Recording, August 11, 1997, sec. 165, USC Shoah Foundation Visual History Archive, http://vhaonline.usc.edu/viewingPage?testimonyID=35282&returnIndex=1#. 82 Tefillin are black leather boxes containing Hebrew quotations from the Bible. Observant Jews are expected to wear them during morning prayers. 79 23 States.”83 Secularly, these organizations enabled immigrants to recreate some form of the society which they had left, helping ease the jarring transition to American life. Wellorganized groups provided assistance in naturalization and employment, along with “social gatherings and the like.”84 Regardless of size, these efforts to organize refugeecentered communities illustrate how refugees worked to adjust to American life while also attempting to recreate familiar structures from their former homes despite being some of the only survivors from their old community. Through efforts to both join and create cultural institutions in the United States, refugees worked to better adjust to their new home. However, while in general, participation in community organizations tended to indicate increased success in refugee integration into America, not all refugees were able to make a successful transition. Refugees who were older and in poorer financial conditions tended to struggle in their shift to America, as survey research conducted at the time indicates.85 Immigrants who were older, who had fewer friends, and who were in more difficult financial situations tended to be more insular and less adjusted to the United States. As a result, these lessadjusted refugees and DPs were less likely to participate in ‘American’ organizations, and instead were likely to turn to refugee-created organizations to find a sense of stability (as suggested by the readership of Aufbau, who tended to be less adjusted to American life).86 As such, while refugee organizations played an important role in filling shortfalls in existing US cultural offerings, they were not necessarily forces for assimilation into Kranzler, “The Jewish Community of Williamsburg, Brooklyn, New York: A Study of the Factors and Patterns of Change in the Organization and Structure of a Community in Transition,” 428–29. 84 Lourié, “Social Adjustments of German Jewish Refugees in Los Angeles,” 110. 85 Lourié, 97, 105–6, 120; Baum, “Personal Adjustment in Old Age of a Group of German Emigrees to the United States (1933-1949),” 21, 24, 28. 86 Lourié, “Social Adjustments of German Jewish Refugees in Los Angeles,” 105–7. 83 24 American life, because of their role in recreating cultural structures that were lost to refugees after fleeing Europe. AMERICAN CONCERNS OVER IMMIGRANT CONCENTRATION IN CITIES As part of community trends among immigrants and refugees, the tendency of both groups to congregate in cities is a distinct similarity in their efforts to adjust in the United States. In this common tendency, there are also a number of common concerns among policymakers and observers during both periods of immigration over the crowding of many immigrants into cities. A number of arguments which were made during the 1880’s to 1920’s period of immigration were reused as refugee resettlement expanded during and after World War II. In addition, some concerns voiced in the earlier phase were used to justify restrictions to the types of refugees accepted during the passage of the Displaced Persons Act. This section charts the motivations for migrant settlement in predominantly urban areas during both phases, and the similar concerns this concentration raised in the two periods. Immigration during the 1880’s to 1920’s coincided with the vast expansion of industrial enterprises in the United States. These new enterprises led to both improved economic opportunities in urban areas and a simultaneous reduction in the need for labor on farms.87 As a result, new arrivals faced existing pressures which guided them towards urban industrial work, as opposed to wage labor on farms – according to one observer of the urbanization of the economy, industrial farming implements cut back the daily need 87 Issac A. Hourwich, Immigration and Labor: The Economic Aspects of European Immigration to the United States (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1912), 8, https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/000956489. 25 for farm hands by well over one million people, thereby making farm work “the least remunerative of all occupations” for unskilled labor.88 This existing pressure within the United States economy combined with the desires of the large majority of new immigrants in the country. Many immigrants who left Europe during this period were commonly not fleeing poor conditions (with the notable exception of Eastern European and Russian Jews) but were instead moving to the United States in search of better economic circumstances.89 Immigrants settling permanently and immigrants intending a short-term stay in the United States were both working to solve what the Immigration Commission called primarily an “economic problem.”90 As a result, despite often being former farmers themselves, these new arrivals instead focused on industrial work, which necessitated concentrating into cities where these factories were located. Industrial emphasis oftentimes also combined with practicalities: New York and its sister cities on the East Coast were the primary arrival point for new immigrants, and were the transportation hubs of the country in the East Coast.91 Many immigrants who came to the United States during this period, particularly those from Southern and Eastern Europe,92 chose to do so in order to work in cities, not to continue the agricultural lifestyle they had left. 88 Hourwich, 9. United States Immigration Commission, Reports of the Immigration Commission, 25. 90 United States Immigration Commission, 25. 91 Wyman, Round-Trip to America: The Immigrants Return to Europe, 1880-1930, 48–49; United States Immigration Commission, Reports of the Immigration Commission, 40; Čizmič, “Yugoslav Immigrants in the U.S. Labor Movement, 1880-1920,” 178. 92 While only around 39% of America’s foreign-born population lived in cities of over 100,000 in 1900, a majority of Poles, Italians, and Russians did so. Wyman, Round-Trip to America: The Immigrants Return to Europe, 1880-1930, 48. 89 26 Conditions in the US economy coupled with immigrant preferences to lead to a substantial concentration of new arrivals in urban areas. By the 1900 census, while there remained a reasonably large percentage of foreign-born workers in agriculture, approximately 22% of non-native workers, the great majority of those workers were from older immigration phases.93 These trends concerned observers of immigration patterns, including the Immigration Commission, an outgrowth of the 1907 Immigration Act. Some concerns were related to health and overcrowding, with the Immigration Commission noting that while among immigrants, “average conditions were found materially better than had been anticipated…bad conditions still prevail” and health concerns continue, especially among boarding houses for single-men.94 Other commentators shared these health concerns, repeatedly mentioning the “congestion” of cities and factory towns while also asserting that the new arrivals wished to buy farms of their own in America.95 As a result of these concerns, the Department of Immigration requested help in organizing “the distribution of immigrants away from the congested centers” in partnership with State administrations, manufacturers’ associations, and unions.96 These efforts were designed to aid in the effort to spread immigrants to other sections of the country, especially where they could participate in agricultural pursuits.97 Most of these initial efforts were focused on influencing the decisions of new immigrants, hoping to push them to less populated areas of the nation. 93 United States Immigration Commission, Reports of the Immigration Commission, 39. United States Immigration Commission, 36–37. 95 “The Immigrant Army,” New York Times, September 11, 1914. 96 “Powderly Gets Unions’ Aid.” 97 United States Immigration Commission, Reports of the Immigration Commission, 46. 94 27 In time, concerns over immigrant distribution culminated into legislated restrictions designed to limit the importation of unskilled labor. While formal restrictions targeting these immigrants were not yet present during the bulk of this period of immigration, the Immigration Commission ultimately recommended quotas on different races of immigrants, which were instituted through the 1920’s.98 These restrictions were in response to public concern over the dramatic increase in immigrants from Eastern and Southern Europe, though also had their origins in concerns over immigration levels from China, Japan, and other places in Asia.99 These restrictions and rhetoric over accepting unskilled labor would continue to play a role as refugees began to arrive in the 1930’s, 40’s, and 50’s. Refugees, who started arriving in the United States in the 1930’s, faced a highly restrictive immigration system that posed major barriers to many refugees. The United States was, beginning in the 1920’s and to a much greater degree following the Great Depression, increasingly closed to refugees. Following the outbreak of World War II, existing restrictions coupled with wartime limits on people with ties to Nazi-dominated regions of Europe, and “the gates of America were practically closed to refugees.”100 The limitations for refugees in the 1930’s represented the peak of the restrictionist approach to immigration that had risen in response to unskilled labor immigration earlier in the century, and was amplified during the Great Depression.101 98 United States Immigration Commission, 47–48. United States Immigration Commission, 47; “Letter: Land for Immigrants,” New York Times, October 13, 1909. 100 Genizi, America’s Fair Share: The Admission and Resettlement of Displaced Persons, 1945-1952, 7. 101 Genizi, 7–8. 99 28 The Displaced Persons Act, passed in 1948, provides another lens into American concerns over the distribution of new arrivals. With increased pressure to accept greater numbers of European refugees, Congress eventually passed the DPA.102 While this act enabled a substantial liberalization of immigration restrictions, ultimately assisting some 400,000 displaced persons to leave Europe for the US,103 it nonetheless is also a representation of America’s past nativist views of foreign immigration. These views include concerns over the congestion of new arrivals in urban areas, and broader concerns over the number of refugees arriving to the United States. Nativist sentiment and congestion rhetoric led to a number of restrictions in the text of the DPA. One major restriction required that 50% of all Displaced Persons be from agricultural backgrounds, and that they have an agricultural job in the United States.104 By establishing this restriction, Congress hoped to “assure a general distribution of those persons who were admitted” across the United States.105 In addition, the original text of the Act also called for 50% of DPs to be from a “place of origin or nationality (which) has been annexed by a foreign power,” meaning primarily the Baltic States and Eastern Poland.106 The original Act also required that DPs have housing secured before leaving Europe, further alluding to concerns over urban overcrowding. There were other restrictions as well, however, these requirements were the most targeted towards The Displaced Persons Commission, “The Final Report of the United States Displaced Persons Commission,” 9. 103 The Displaced Persons Commission, 350. 104 The Displaced Persons Commission, 22. 105 The Displaced Persons Commission, 23. 106 The Displaced Persons Commission, 22. 102 29 addressing concerns over the proper distribution of immigrants vocationally and geographically. Many of these restrictions also attracted the most ire from proponents of more liberal immigration policies for European DPs. Senator McGrath attacked these provisions as being so restrictive that they would make it unlikely that “the maximum number (of DPs) provided for in this bill…would be able to enter…because of housing and vocational requirements”107 in conjunction with other restrictions. He also found the agricultural requirement unrealistic, considering the great demand for labor in urbancentered industries.108 Other critiques came from Jewish and Catholic communities, which noted that the combination of restrictions was particularly problematic for admitting a sufficient number of people from Jewish and Catholic communities in Europe.109 The New York Times further lambasted the bill as a “sorry job” which threw aside the “high humanitarian principles” which inspired the bill in the first place.110 In response to consistent pressure from a number of sources, including President Truman, the final version of the 1948 Act had fewer restrictions after an amendment period: the agricultural requirements were reduced to 30% of accepted DPs, and several geographic restrictions were lifted. These restrictions were eventually culled entirely 107 The Displaced Persons Commission, 25. The Displaced Persons Commission, 25. 109 The Displaced Persons Commission, 23–24; Norman Gerstenfeld, “Admitting Displaced Persons,” The Evening Star, June 16, 1948, The Library of Congress-Chronicling America, https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83045462/1948-06-16/ed-1/seq12/#date1=06%2F16%2F1948&index=0&rows=20&searchType=advanced&language=&sequence=0&wor ds=Admitting+Displaced+displaced+person+personal+Persons+persons&proxdistance=5&date2=06%2F1 6%2F1948&ortext=&proxtext=&phrasetext=&andtext=admitting+displaced+persons&dateFilterType=ran ge&page=1. 110 The Displaced Persons Commission, “The Final Report of the United States Displaced Persons Commission,” 26. 108 30 during a major overhaul in 1949 and 1950.111 However, the existence of these restrictions illustrate the major concerns held by many in Congress, and in America at large. The caveats placed in the Displaced Persons Act are something of a legacy of what researcher Haim Genizi called America’s “restrictionist approach” during the 1920’s and 30’s.112 They also echoed the steadily increasing commentary among Americans during the earlier phase of immigration, which worried over the congestion of new immigrants in urban areas and the shrinking number of foreign-born laborers in farm work. Even following the removal of many statutory restrictions that pushed DPs towards agriculture and rural areas, it was, argues Beth Cohen, “the mandate of the Displaced Persons Act: the avoidance of a large concentration of refugees in major urban areas.”113 Restrictions in immigration were at their peak during the period of refugee immigration in the 1930’s and 40’s. As the Displaced Persons Commission worked to ease these restrictions, its work nonetheless reflected continuing concerns over the proper distribution of new arrivals and hesitancy to accept too large a number of unskilled industrial workers. These concerns impacted the distribution of Displaced Persons, leading 20% of them to be placed in rural areas with very small populations, and 26% to small cities and towns of less than 100,000 residents.114 However, due to pressures both economic and cultural, over 50% of DPs in rural areas left those regions in 1950 and 1951.115 111 The Displaced Persons Commission, 29, 37–38. Genizi, America’s Fair Share: The Admission and Resettlement of Displaced Persons, 1945-1952. 113 Cohen, Case Closed: Holocaust Survivors in Postwar America, 35. 114 The Displaced Persons Commission, “The Final Report of the United States Displaced Persons Commission,” 244. 115 The Displaced Persons Commission, 252–53. 112 31 Economically, DPs struggled with a number of challenges when facing rural community life. To begin, a number of DPs who were placed in rural areas to fulfill job restrictions lacked substantive experience in farming communities. This situation both discouraged newly arrived DP families, who lacked the knowledge to quickly adapt to the craft, and irked DP sponsors, who had been promised farm labor.116 In addition, with a number of workers being placed in the rural south, they also faced changes in climate in addition to the difficult work of cutting and picking cotton.117 These changes in the type of farming also made adjustment difficult for refugees who had farming experience, as they faced new farming styles in a new climate. Further, wage labor, already shrinking during the earlier phase of immigration, had continued its downward trend since 1920. The Displaced Persons Commission noted that “Displaced Persons, like native Americans, left farming areas and sought jobs in urban areas,”118 thereby matching the labor tendencies of the United States as a whole. In addition, DPs could find work fairly easily in urban areas, such as a DP farmer who had been dissatisfied in Texas, abandoned his sponsor, and found work in Los Angeles within a month of moving to the city.119 With the relatively strong employment situation in cities, DPs were pressured by both the unsavory nature of their current work, and the strong attraction to unskilled and semiskilled work that was available in cities. Refugees and Displaced Persons also faced a number of non-economic pressures which contributed to their preference for urban parts of the United States. Immigrants 116 The Displaced Persons Commission, 227. Ella E. Schneider Hilton and Angela K. Hilton, Displaced Person: A Girl’s Life in Russia, Germany, and America (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2006), 132. 118 The Displaced Persons Commission, “The Final Report of the United States Displaced Persons Commission,” 257–58. 119 “Home in the West,” The San Francisco Chronicle, December 9, 1951, NewsBank. 117 32 during the 1880’s to 1920’s did ultimately establish communities, which attracted more immigrants to the area once established.120 As researcher Beth Cohen noted, “important as employment was, it would be myopic to infer adjustment according to that criterion alone.”121 As refugees contemplated their future in America, they found existing European-American communities, or the lack thereof, a contributing factor which led them to resist long-term stays in rural areas. The isolation of rural communities tended to be one major pressure for DPs placed there. For one DP, her entire family, “including the children, was to be ready for work by 6:00 AM daily” and lacked any practical way to go into town to shop or spend time on the few days they had to themselves.122 Because of the distance from the local town, farmers were reliant on their sponsors for transport, and so lacked the freedom to make new associations in many respects. For DPs who were placed, or who moved, to relatively larger rural areas, other challenges remained. For young people, inclusion was a concern, and the daughter of a family which moved into town from an isolated farm provides the clearest illustration: “At Holly Springs High everybody was friendly, but I was seldom included in any weekend activities…after the (American football) game there were always parties to go to at somebody’s house. I never got an invitation. Walking home my soul hurt, I wanted to belong.”123 Ultimately, families like this one were sometimes able to form some connections, but those connections were sparse compared to the size of the town they lived in. This young woman would come to see leaving Holly 120 Thomas and Znaniecki, The Polish Peasant in Europe and America, 242. Cohen, Case Closed: Holocaust Survivors in Postwar America, 116. 122 Hilton and Hilton, Displaced Person: A Girl’s Life in Russia, Germany, and America, 132. 123 Hilton and Hilton, 157–58. 121 33 Springs for college as her “day of deliverance,” when she could finally leave the rural town for new opportunities in community and employment.124 For most DPs, language barriers also posed a challenge. While younger DPs were able to take up English in time, older DPs struggled to learn the language and were oftentimes isolated as a result. For rural areas, these language barriers were a major factor, as one older woman in a nursing home noted: “Whenever they want to bathe me or put me in my chair, they talk to me in English. I don’t understand…” This woman was increasingly isolated as she remained a foreign language speaker in an English-speaking part of America.125 In contrast, DPs and refugees in urban areas didn’t necessarily have to learn English to participate in community life. One refugee’s mother “never really perfected her English, neither did (her) father.” While this did pose a problem for migrants in rural areas, it was little concern for these refugees, because they lived in a German speaking part of New York.126 Urban areas provided DPs with access to foreign language communities, where older DPs who preferred to speak their native language were able to do so and still participate in their local community. With pressures caused by isolation and language present in rural areas, a number of families instead searched for opportunities elsewhere in America, where communities offered shared cultural traditions and languages. Despite coming to the United States in very different circumstances, immigrants and refugees both sparked concern among Americans, and raised questions regarding the proper distribution of the new arrivals. Existing labor trends in both periods, in 124 Hilton and Hilton, 164. Hilton and Hilton, 172. 126 Rubin, Oral History Interview with Anita Sockol, 38. 125 34 conjunction with the preferences of first immigrants, and then refugees, encouraged a large majority of new arrivals to congregate in urban areas during both periods of migration. However, partially in response to concerns over “congestion” in cities during the 1880-1920’s immigration phase, the United States had tightened immigration from Southern and Eastern Europe and thereby limited the number of refugees who could flee Europe before World War II. While the Displaced Persons Act undid some limits, it also was itself a continuation of the United States’ concern over urban congregation because of its efforts to distribute Displaced Persons across the country. Despite these efforts, large numbers of DPs duplicated the trend of immigrants forty years earlier and settled in urban areas against the wishes of resettlement agencies.127 While this was a constant source of consternation for aid groups and resettlement committees,128 the trend illustrates how refugees and DPs focused on urban areas much like their predecessors, and for similar but distinct reasons. CONCLUSION During the two periods of migration examined, millions of immigrants, refugees, and Displaced Persons came to the United States for a number of reasons. The drivers of these movements varied, however each phase tended to have distinct patterns of migration. Immigrants during the earlier phase in the 1880’s to 1920’s were commonly 127 As illustrated by Lily Voip, who refused to be resettled in a rural area because of poor employment opportunities in Mississippi: Fern Niven, Oral History Interview with Lily Voip, Transcript, January 24, 1989, 29–30, USHMM, https://collections.ushmm.org/search/catalog/irn510744. 128 Cohen, Case Closed: Holocaust Survivors in Postwar America, 34; “DP Committee Quits,” The Evening Star, February 7, 1950, Library of Congress-Chronicling America, https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83045462/1950-02-07/ed-1/seq2/#date1=02%2F07%2F1950&index=0&date2=02%2F07%2F1950&searchType=advanced&language=&s equence=0&lccn=sn83045462&words=Anne+Arundel&proxdistance=5&rows=20&ortext=&proxtext=ann e+arundel&phrasetext=&andtext=&dateFilterType=range&page=1. 35 moving for economic concerns,129 though pogroms in Eastern Europe did drive Jewish immigrants as well. For a number of immigrants, their time in America was intended to be temporary, and fully 35% of immigrants returned home.130 For immigrants who came to America permanently, their movements were still focused on economic concerns, and as a result both types of immigrants commonly came alone. For those immigrants who remained, families would eventually be sent for as the father established himself. As a result, the first arrival to the United States was often the father or a young bachelor. In contrast, refugees and Displaced Persons generally moved to America as a family. For DPs in particular, everyone who had a family left alive came as a unit, with most non-family DPs being single men.131 Their reasons for leaving Europe were focused on either fleeing Europe on the eve of World War II or escaping the continent after the war’s conclusion. In addition, those who fled generally did not intend to return to Europe, particularly those who had survived World War II and were now getting out. Unlike the relatively structured approach for many earlier immigrants, where a parent would find work and accomodations before bringing their family, refugees and DPs were focused first on getting out of Europe, and then on finding a way to adjust to the United States. Because of these different factors that drove migration to the United States, both groups of migrants had unique patterns of adjustment within the country. Earlier immigrants were much more reliant on building their own structures as opposed to joining existing organizations. Because these immigrants were the first major phase of 129 United States Immigration Commission, Reports of the Immigration Commission, 25. Wyman, Round-Trip to America: The Immigrants Return to Europe, 1880-1930, 10. 131 The Displaced Persons Commission, “The Final Report of the United States Displaced Persons Commission,” 246. 130 36 migration from their region in Europe, they had to build the structures which existed for more represented groups. National fraternal groups, foreign-language press, and religious organizations were all built to varying degrees, and provided immigrants with cultural linkages to their past even as they adjusted to America. Refugees and Displaced Persons built new organizations as well, but also were able to integrate into existing structures to larger degrees. Jewish immigrants were able to join the communities and synagogues which had been constructed in earlier immigration phases, such as the Williamsburg, Brooklyn neighborhood.132 Other families, because of their strong grasp of English, were able to participate more directly in American civic life through English-language organizations such as the YWCA and PTA.133 Finally, DPs and refugees who lacked English skills were able to move to neighborhoods that were multilingual, removing English as a barrier for participation in civic life.134 These neighborhoods were established before refugees arrived, and though refugee participation would change their character to varying degrees, they also existed as a sort of foundation for refugees to build on. However, while refugees and DPs did have some existing ethnic communities to participate in, they also undertook community building of their own. Further, while both immigrants and refugees did build their own communities, the impetus for refugee communities was in many ways in response to the weakness of existing structures. Survivors of Kristallnacht, who fled Europe before the Holocaust, at times were Kranzler, “The Jewish Community of Williamsburg, Brooklyn, New York: A Study of the Factors and Patterns of Change in the Organization and Structure of a Community in Transition,” 10–14. 133 Krueger, “Assimilation and Adjustment of Postwar Immigrants in Franklin County, Ohio,” 64. 134 Oral History Interview with John H. Lang, 43; Rubin, Oral History Interview with Anita Sockol, 38–39. 132 37 ostracized from the Jewish community because of their troubled past.135 While other interactions were more positive, with a number of aid organizations assisting DPs in their adjustment to America, there nonetheless were shortcomings in these assistance efforts which led DPs to form their own communities. A number of the organizations which assisted DPs, including groups like the USNA and NYANA,136 which were supported by Jewish communities who were established in America already, were overly focused on “finding work and getting the refugees off of relief.”137 As a result, many refugee-created communities were formed in response to the lack of emotional support provided by established Americans, even those who originated from the same area of Europe, a unique trend in this phase of migration. However, while the process of adjustment varied among these two groups, it also illustrates a commonality among both migration phases. Through these efforts, both immigrants and refugees endeavored to find a community with a common memory of their European past. For immigrants in the earlier phase, this involved first establishing boardinghouses with coworkers from the same region in Europe, and using them as a starting point for more substantial community development. In doing so, immigrants helped to address the economic strains of life in America by establishing mutual assistance organizations and education opportunities, while also developing a community life modeled on their European past through religious communities, fraternal organizations, and other efforts. For refugees and DPs, their new organizations were in some ways a response to the shortcomings of existing US institutions. For Jewish 135 Oral History Interview with John H. Lang, 44. The United Service for New Americans and the New York Association for New Americans were sister organizations, which tended to focus on Jewish DP resettlement. 137 Cohen, Case Closed: Holocaust Survivors in Postwar America, 51. 136 38 refugees in particular, building their own communities allowed them to practice their orthodox faith with a community of other survivors. While the nature of these communities was varied between both phases of migration, their common drive was often the desire to create familiar structures that could provide assistance in adjusting to the United States along with a cultural life. As these phases of migration became more established, their distribution in the United States also raises another commonality across these groups: immigrants and refugees both tended to concentrate in urban areas. For the early immigrants in the 1880’s-1920’s period, this was largely an economic consideration, as most industrial work was available in cities.138 As these working neighborhoods became more established, they attracted other workers of the same ethnic background, growing the neighborhood community further. Through this process, new European immigrants reacted to both economic and cultural pressures and congregated in cities, despite the efforts of some in the United States to encourage broader regional distributions.139 Refugees and Displaced Persons in the World War II period continued these trends. In spite of statutory and implicit focuses on distributing DPs in rural areas, many Displaced Persons instead remained in, or moved to, cities. Over half of DPs who were placed in rural areas in 1950 and 1951 left them after resettlement often before their year of work was completed, and many DPs left the southern United States entirely.140 These shared preferences by both earlier immigrants and later refugees and DPs reflect the economic 138 Wyman, Round-Trip to America: The Immigrants Return to Europe, 1880-1930, 48. “Powderly Gets Unions’ Aid”; United States Immigration Commission, Reports of the Immigration Commission, 46. 140 The Displaced Persons Commission, “The Final Report of the United States Displaced Persons Commission,” 250, 252–53. 139 39 and cultural pressures which were driving new Americans to cities, and their holding power as they affected people from 1880 and 1950. The escalating efforts of United States policymakers to spread new arrivals out and cut down on the number of foreign unskilled laborers throughout these two periods also effectively illustrates the rise of America’s so-called “restrictionist approach” to immigration.141 The process of adjustment and assimilation for these two diverse groups of newcomers to the United States was as varied as the two time periods in which these groups arrived. However, despite these different situations, there remain several correlations in the efforts of European arrivals to find work and community in America. Examining these common factors helps to illustrate the staying power of several influences which ultimately affected both of these groups despite their distance from one another. The drive for both groups to build their own communities that could properly memorialize their histories helps to explain why organizations which reflected their European origin grew as immigrant and refugee numbers increased. These organizations did not resolve the economic and cultural hardships which immigrants, and especially refugees and DPs, faced as they started their lives in America. However, they do shed light on how these groups worked to reestablish cultural linkages, both through integrating into existing structures and through building structures of their own. As posited by Haim Genizi, and discussed in more detail earlier. Genizi, America’s Fair Share: The Admission and Resettlement of Displaced Persons, 1945-1952. 141 40 WORKS CITED Asher, Robert. “Union Nativism and the Immigrant Response.” Labor History 23, no. 3 (June 1982): 325–48. Baum, Beranrd. “Personal Adjustment in Old Age of a Group of German Emigrees to the United States (1933-1949).” Master’s thesis, University of Chicago, 1953. Bekken, Jon. “The Chicago Newspaper Scene: An Ecological Perspective.” Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly 74, no. 3 (Fall 1997): 490–500. Carter, Susan B., Scott Sigmund Gartner, Michael R. Haines, Alan L. Olmstead, Richard Sutch, and Gavin Wright. Historical Statistics of the United States Millennial Edition Online. Table Ad106-120: Immigrants, by country of last residenceEurope: 1820-1997. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006. http://hsus.cambridge.org/. Čizmič, Ivan. “Yugoslav Immigrants in the U.S. Labor Movement, 1880-1920.” In American Labor and Immigration History, 1877-1920’s: Recent European Research. Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1983. Cohen, Beth B. Case Closed: Holocaust Survivors in Postwar America. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2007. Cohen, Jocelyn, Daniel Soyer, and Yivo Insitute for Jewish Research, eds. My Future Is in America: Autobiographies of Eastern European Jewish Immigrants. New York: New York University Press, 2006. “DP Committee Quits.” The Evening Star. February 7, 1950. Library of CongressChronicling America. https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83045462/195002-07/ed-1/seq- 41 2/#date1=02%2F07%2F1950&index=0&date2=02%2F07%2F1950&searchType =advanced&language=&sequence=0&lccn=sn83045462&words=Anne+Arundel &proxdistance=5&rows=20&ortext=&proxtext=anne+arundel&phrasetext=&andt ext=&dateFilterType=range&page=1. Fenton, Edwin. “Italian Immigrants in the Stonworkers’ Union.” Labor History 3, no. 2 (March 1962): 188–207. Genizi, Haim. America’s Fair Share: The Admission and Resettlement of Displaced Persons, 1945-1952. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1993. Gerstenfeld, Norman. “Admitting Displaced Persons.” The Evening Star. June 16, 1948. The Library of Congress-Chronicling America. https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83045462/1948-06-16/ed-1/seq12/#date1=06%2F16%2F1948&index=0&rows=20&searchType=advanced&lang uage=&sequence=0&words=Admitting+Displaced+displaced+person+personal+ Persons+persons&proxdistance=5&date2=06%2F16%2F1948&ortext=&proxtext =&phrasetext=&andtext=admitting+displaced+persons&dateFilterType=range&p age=1. Greifer, Julian Leon. “Neighborhood Center: A Study of the Adjustment of a Culture Group in America.” PhD diss., New York University, 1948. Grohsgal, Leah Weinryb. “Chronicling America’s Historical German Newspapers and the Growth of the American Ethnic Press.” National Endowment for the Humanities, July 2, 2014. https://www.neh.gov/divisions/preservation/featuredproject/chronicling-americas-historic-german-newspapers-and-the-grow. 42 Hilton, Ella E. Schneider, and Angela K. Hilton. Displaced Person: A Girl’s Life in Russia, Germany, and America. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2006. “Home in the West.” The San Francisco Chronicle. December 9, 1951. NewsBank. Hourwich, Issac A. Immigration and Labor: The Economic Aspects of European Immigration to the United States. New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1912. https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/000956489. Kitchen, Martin. A History of Modern Germany: 1800 to the Present. 2nd ed. Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, 2012. Kranzler, George. “The Jewish Community of Williamsburg, Brooklyn, New York: A Study of the Factors and Patterns of Change in the Organization and Structure of a Community in Transition.” PhD diss., Columbia University, 1954. Krueger, Nancy Moore. “Assimilation and Adjustment of Postwar Immigrants in Franklin County, Ohio.” PhD diss., Ohio State University, 1955. “Letter: Land for Immigrants.” New York Times. October 13, 1909. Lourié, Anton. “Social Adjustments of German Jewish Refugees in Los Angeles.” Master’s thesis, University of Southern California, 1953. Niven, Fern. Oral History Interview with Lily Voip. Transcript, January 24, 1989. USHMM. https://collections.ushmm.org/search/catalog/irn510744. Oral History Interview with John H. Lang. Transcript, October 15, 2010. USHMM. https://collections.ushmm.org/search/catalog/irn42207. Park, Robert Ezra, and Herbert Adolphus Miller. Old World Traits Transplanted. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1921. 43 “Powderly Gets Unions’ Aid.” New York Times. January 18, 1909. Rosenberg, Jacob. “The Perfect Storm of Jewish Evangelism: How Jewish Immigration, the Russian Pogroms, Dispensationalism, Pre-Millennialism, Zionism, and Hebrew Christianity Coalesced into the Foundation for Modern Jewish Missions in New York City Between 1880-1920.” PhD diss., Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, 2012. Rothbart, Issac. “Work, Family, and Protest: Immigrant Labor in the Steel, Meatpacking, and Anthracite Industries, 1880-1920.” PhD diss., University of California, Berkeley, 1988. Rubin, Amy. Oral History Interview with Anita Sockol. Transcript, August 13, 1999. USHMM. https://collections.ushmm.org/search/catalog/irn506713. The Displaced Persons Commission. “The Final Report of the United States Displaced Persons Commission.” GPO, 1952. https://hdl.handle.net/2027/mdp.39015040761580. “The Immigrant Army.” New York Times. September 11, 1914. Thomas, William I., and Florian Znaniecki. The Polish Peasant in Europe and America. Edited by Eli Zaretsky. Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1984. United States Immigration Commission. Reports of the Immigration Commission. Washington D.C.: GPO, 1911. https://archive.org/details/reportsofimmigra01unitrich/page/23. Walker, Charles Rumford. Steel: The Diary of a Furnace Worker. Urbana: Project Gutenberg, 2012. http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/38932. 44 “Wants Aliens in Unions: Gompers Advises Labor to Win Immigrants after Canal Opens.” New York Times. November 30, 1913. Williams, Bill. Paulette Shaw Interview 35131. Video Recording, August 11, 1997. USC Shoah Foundation Visual History Archive. http://vhaonline.usc.edu/viewingPage?testimonyID=35282&returnIndex=1#. Wyman, Mark. Round-Trip to America: The Immigrants Return to Europe, 1880-1930. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1993. Zahrobsky, Mary Lydia. “The Slovaks in Chicago.” Master’s thesis, University of Chicago, 1924.