"Ellis Island is a symbol of America’s immigrant heritage. From 1892 to 1954, this immigrant depot processed the greatest tide of incoming humanity in the nation’s history. Nearly twelve million landed here in their search of freedom of speech and religion, and for economic opportunity." ~ www.ellisisland.org


These images were shot with the pictures of my father and his family, as well as my mother and her family floating through my mind's eye as I walked through this very historic space on Ellis Island today. I mused over those nagging questions of why we seem unable to embrace each other, respecting all those varied differences while we rejoice in all that brings us together in our similarities...


My father's journey to America was a circuitous one as a Holocaust survivor and although he didn't enter New York via Ellis Island, it was New York Harbor that greeted him, after he made the often-difficult passage to America from Poland to Italy and then through Havana, finally to Miami. My mother's parents left the Bay of Naples during one of the earlier waves of immigration in search of the "new opportunity" in that place called America, in search of a place to call "home."


There will be many more images added in due time, with scanned images of my own family who once upon a time passed through those halls of Ellis Island and New York Harbor.

"Once I thought to write a history

of the immigrants in America.

Then I discovered that

the immigrants were America."

~ Oscar Handlin, Professor Emeritus of American History, Harvard University

"First they came for the socialists,

and I did not speak out because I was not a socialist.

Then they came for the trade unionists,

and I did not speak out because I was not a trade unionist.

Then they came for the Jews,

and I did not speak out because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me,

and there was no one left to speak for me."

~ Pastor Martin Niemoller, Nazi Germany, circa 1945.

"The United States should be

'an asylum for the persecuted lovers of

civil and religious liberty.' "

~ Thomas Paine

"The making of an American begins at the point where he himself rejects all other ties, any other history, and himself adopts the vesture of his adopted land."

~ James Baldwin (1924-1987) African-American writer

"Where do I go? Follow the river

Where do I go? Follow the gulls

Where is the something, where is the someone

That tells me why I live and die..."

~ James Rado, "Hair"

"We all live with the objective of being happy, our lives are all different and yet the same."

~ Anne Frank

“I believe all Americans who believe in freedom,

tolerance and human rights have a responsibility

to oppose bigotry and prejudice based on sexual orientation.”

~ Coretta Scott King

"In the truest sense, freedom cannot be bestowed; it must be achieved."

~ Franklin D. Roosevelt