Sophie Wolf, 83, is a small, solid woman with curly white hair. She speaks softly but forcefully in faintly accented English. One day not long ago Sophie visited Ellis Island. The cold weather reminded her of the raw foggy day 57 years ago when she saw Ellis for the first time.
She was Sophie Steurer then, 25 years old, one of eleven children born to a German hatter and his wife. They had lived comfortably in Ebingen, about 40 miles south of Stuttgart. But the inflation and unemployment that ravaged Germany in the 1920s changed all that. By 1923 a loaf of bread cost up to 3 million marks. Sophie could find work only half a day a week —sewing men's shirts. Her friends sought jobs in The Netherlands and Spain. "But for me," Sophie recalls, "America was the thing." She was fortunate in having a sponsor: an uncle who ran a bakery in Madison, Ind. He paid for her steerage-class ticket and sent $25, the amount needed to prove to the U.S. that she would not become a public charge.
With only one suitcase, filled with clothing and favorite photographs, she set sail from Bremen on the steamship Munchen. "I had seen the Rhine, but this was the biggest puddle of water." The ship reached New York on Dec. 11, 1923. The spectacle of the Statue of Liberty and the New York skyline lavishly lit up at night seemed to be a sign of America's astounding wealth. "At home, lights were out after 9," says Sophie. Her overwhelming sensation was fear: "If you didn't pass the tests, they would send you back."
For a place once so feared, Ellis Island has a surprisingly welcoming air today, though most of its 35 buildings have badly deteriorated from decades of neglect and vandalism. It would take an estimated $150 million to save them all. "It sure looked better then," admits Sophie. The low-slung main building of warm red brick with limestone trim has large paned windows to let in air and light. Trees and lawns sweep to the gently lapping waters of the harbor. But at the time, immigrants like Sophie did not notice such things. They simply felt lost, especially in the great registry hall, where 5,000 immigrants a day were processed. A constant babble of incomprehensible tongues rose like flocks of starlings to the ceiling. Sophie did not speak English, but managed to comply with directions: "I just followed the pointing."
"It was so impersonal," she says.
"Bring the cattle in and ship them out." There was a rapid legal examination. In two minutes, inspectors aided by interpreters fired 29 questions at a newcomer. Among them: "Are you an anarchist?" And the trick question: "Do you have a job?" A few proud would-be citizens could truthfully answer "Yes." But a yes answer raised suspicion that the newcomer was a strikebreaker—or had been conned into a slave-labor agreement.