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Padre Santo Pio


Televideo di Padre Santo Pio

Incredible stories by our Emigrants

I am one of the one hundred million people whose ancestor entered America through the immigration offices on Ellis Island in New York.

This fortunate ancestor was my grandfather and when I was a child he used to tell me over and over again the story of how he got to America and of how he became a citizen of the United States. From his little Sicilian village he had arrived in the huge city on the other side of the Atlantic. The way he told me his story made me look everything magic and legendary. My grandfather had to return back to Italy while, closing the family circle, I live now in Texas maybe because I was fascinated by his first American tales. I remember that grandpa Gaetano used to get excited when he described the day he got to New York. On the unstable boat where almost everyone had been seasick all the passengers had run to the side rails and in the misty morning they had finally caught sight of the Statue of Liberty, beautiful and gigantic.

Then they had gone through the inspection on Ellis Island. The U.S. Immigration facilities built there since January of 1892 consisted of three floors and covered an area of about five thousand and six hundred square meters. The newcomers were taken there to go through the physicals and their papers controls. --Twelve million people, more than seventy percent of the immigrants who arrived to America at the end of the nineteenth century had to go through that inspection on the island that has become the symbol of immigration to our great Country. An important museum can be found on Ellis Island to remind us also of the dream that did not always come true and that was associated with the United States. These immigrants came from every corner of the world and from Europe that was afflicted by wars, poverty and hunger.

I will never forget the plain and shameless words of an Italian American lady, who now owns a very successful restaurant, according to which her parents had been able to have at dinner their first plate of meat only when from their poor Sicily they had finally immigrated to America.

My grandfather used to tell me that almost everyone was afraid of that inspection and of missing the opportunity to enter the new Country that offered a job and the chance to give a decent life to their family. Unfortunately not everyone had the requirements necessary for the admission. Poverty and hunger had spread in Europe illnesses like tuberculosis that killed a large number of people mostly in the poor areas of the Old Continent among which there was also southern Italy. Grandpa explained to us that among the immigrants who got to Ellis Island together with the joy of those who were accepted there was also the frustration of those who were rejected.

America continues to offer hope and periodically we discuss to slow down or stop this flux of people who want to enter into our Country.

But, how can become merciless and indifferent a people like ours that is formed also by the children and the grandchildren of other immigrants?

According to another story heard from one of my high school teachers, at the end of WWII when on board a ship that was taking many Italian prisoners to America the news arrived that the war was over and that the boat now had to turn around and to go back to Italy, many of those prisoners cried desperately. For them the American dream was over.

But..........................

Not all Emigrants that came to North America found Heaven.  All those that disembarked at Ellis Island or Pier 21 in the period of the great migration witnessed incredible stories of anguish and overwhelming human dramas.

Monongah, Marcinelle americana

Monongah with its dead today is the icon of the sacrifice of our workers forced to emigrate in order to survive.

Compracci

Click here to see photos of the boats our emigrants used to go to their various destinations

Photos Della Madonna delle Grazie