In The Last Ships from Hamburg, Steven Ujifusa tells the story of the second Exodus that, between 1881 and 1914, brought two and a half million Russian and Central European Jews to the United States. This mass migration was precipitated by outbursts of antisemitic violence following the 1881 assassination of Russia’s Czar Alexander II. The Jews became the scapegoat, as they had been so many times before. Risking all they’d ever known, they illegally escaped from Russia by train, heading to Hamburg, Germany, where they boarded steamships to the shores of the United States. Many were drawn to the US by the “disestablishment” clause of the constitution that allowed freedom of religion, as well as economic and educational opportunities and the possibility of owning land.
Their hazardous passage was made possible by the coordinated efforts of two Jewish men: one in Germany, Albert Ballin, and the other in the United States, Jacob Schiff. Ballin was a visionary. As managing director of the Hamburg-America shipping line, he worked hard to retrofit existing ships and build new ones — all of which helped tremendous numbers of Jews set sail for America. Schiff, the philanthropist and managing partner of the banking firm Kuhn, Loeb and Co., was likewise devoted to rescuing Jews from Russia and Eastern Europe and bringing them to the United States. As a railroad and banking magnate, he raised large sums of money to facilitate Jewish immigration and resettlement in America. In addition to donating to multiple Jewish charitable causes and bankrolling the Jewish immigration networks, Schiff also attempted to enlist the support of the US government, whose immigration policies were being influenced by eugenicists such as Henry Cabot Lodge, Harry Laughlin, and Prescott Farnsworth Hall. However, Schiff’s efforts to sway the government were unsuccessful. In 1824, Congress passed the restrictive Johnson-Reed Immigration Act, which established a quota limiting immigration to two percent of each group’s population.
Ujifusa’s meticulously researched and well-written work illustrates the vast influence these generations of immigrants had on American culture and society. Sadly, this was the last major wave of Jewish immigrants allowed to start new lives in the United States.
Lynn Davidman holds a Ph.D. in sociology from Brandeis University and is the author of three books, the first of which, Tradition in a Rootless World: Women Turn to Orthodox Judaism, won a National Jewish Book Award. In the course of her career she has taught at the University of Pittsburgh, Brown University, the University of Kansas and most recently, Bryn Mawr College.
