So they crafted and clung to the tale of the funny thing that happened to Grandpa at Ellis Island. But to tell their children that story would prove that America is not all that different, that here, too, Jews face prejudice, discrimination and violence. In her new book People Love Dead Jews Reports from a Haunted Present, author Dara Horn quotes from a letter she received from Denise, a women who had read. Then they discovered that they couldn’t get a job as Rosenberg but could get hired as Rose. They had come to a land that they thought promised the American Dream. Her answer: If Jews tell the truth about American antisemitism, they look like fools. Relying on the historian Kirsten Fermaglich’s meticulous research into New York City name-changing petitions that proved, beyond a doubt, that immigrants’ names were not altered at Ellis Island, Horn asks why Jews cling to the fiction that some misguided immigration agent changed their ancestors’ names. She turns away from Varian Fry rescuing Jewish artists in Vichy France and the Syrian synagogue smashed to rubble on her flickering screen. Encountering murderous antisemitism on American soil forces Horn to confront history closer to home.
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