My parents came to this country in their twenties, my friend's parents at a much younger age. What we both have in common is the fact that they never talked to us about what they went through coming to America. My mother and father shared very little of their lives in Europe, let alone about what they went through getting to this country.
The movie takes place in a small village in Sicily at the start of the last century. It's about a small family called the Mancusos. The eldest son has heard the tallest tales of America, that there are rivers of milk, that coins grow on trees and that there are giant man-sized carrots.
In Yiddish, the expression that the Jewish people used was "we are going to the goldena medina." "we are going to the golden land." Another expression is, "going to the land of milk and honey."
(MIRAMAX FILMS)
The only thing I know about my mother's trip is that she and her sister came from Russia, had to go to a port in London, stayed over night and then went, "steerage." That's for passengers paying the lowest fare. While in London their papers and the few pictures they had were stolen. What wasn't stolen were a pair of candlesticks that my son now has in his dining room.
(MIRAMAX FILMS)
To quote part of a review of the film by Wesley Morris of the Boston Globe:
"...the filmmakers give us an unseen, but utterly felt storm that leaves people crushed to death beneath their fellow passengers. It evokes both Middle Passage slave-ship woes and certain disaster movies. Watching this sequence, you're forced to think, This is what some ancestors endured to get to the Golden Door of Ellis Island: a trip through hell for the rumor of paradise?"
(MIRAMAX FILMS)
The family finally arrives at Ellis Island where they endure bizarre medical exams and quizzes meant to determine who is "fit" for citizenship.
There is nothing to laugh about in this film but I did get one chuckle - The family has to spend the night at Ellis Island and in the morning they are served breakfast. The leading character, "Salvatore" bits into a white piece of bread and he says, it tastes like a cloud. It must have been "Wonder Bread."
The only living family member that I have who might be able to tell me about my parents experiences, is a cousin who is in her nineties.
I'll give her a call tonight and hopefully I will learn things about their lives before and after they arrived in America.