ellis island
...ify that we were Jewish. If I was caught without my star I would be beaten by one of those soldiers. People would not let us ride on the same bus with them or be in the same theatre. Our Germany was not the same as it had been, and my father was concerned that it would never be the same. He had been threatened by the soldiers to leave his dry goods business and go away. My mother was terrified that my father would disappear as did her good friend’s husband. People were leaving their families and being sent to places in Poland that none of us had heard of before. My entire world as I knew it was being swallowed up by hatred of our religious beliefs by people who didn’t even know us. I was confused and did not know what to think about my homeland of Germany. I knew nothing else nor did neither my parents nor my grandparents. We had fought for Germany and prospered for Germany, but now we were not wanted by our own country because of wheat we believed in. I was dreading the trip across the ocean unlike my brothers who were too young to realize what we were doing. The morning we left I watched for a long time as my grandparents got smaller and smaller and we soon were at sea in waves so high that they made all of us sick. My parents could only encourage us to keep going because America was a place of freedom and a land of opportunity. I wanted my friends back, my old school and my grandfather. Yet we were going to this place called America. After weeks and weeks, I saw the lady of liberty and the island we would go to. The island was Ellis Island and we were soon in a line that stretched on and on and then we were given a variation on our name and told w...