• User Image



    Between 1920 and 1930, 4,197,209-recorded immigrants made their way across land and sea to find a better life in America. My name is Cresentia Neumann, and I am one of those people. This is my story..



    June 28th, 1921

    I can’t stop thinking about Mama and Tata. They were so strong and so hopeful. I remember that night, the night I lost all hope in my country. It was my fifth birthday. That’s twelve years ago today. Mama had spent all day making a chocolate cake, picking the best coconut at the market the previous day for the best icing possible. She always put so much emotion into her cakes. I was just about to blow out the candles when they came, the soldiers, the ungeheuer. There was no knock, no simplicity, no. Everything had to be complicated with them. They kicked down our door, screaming louder than I’ve ever heard. I was young and naive, clueless, but I knew they were trying to take my Tata away from me. They wanted him to fight for the country. They kept screaming “gehen sie schneller!” go faster, go faster. Tata did not want to leave. Mama yelled at these men, fearless. She was always fearless so she hit them and hit them. And that’s when it happened, the shot my Mama, took my father and left. Those monsters left me, a five-year-old girl in a musky house, with nothing but a German chocolate cake and a bloody corpse. I must have sat there for hours, silent and thoughtless. The neighbors must have called them, my Aunt and Uncle, because I remember them rushing in and shaking me. They kept shaking me, “what happened, what happened?” I was silent. I didn’t speak for weeks. My uncle insisted that I live with them, and I trusted them more than I trusted anyone else.

    So here I am, twelve years later, celebrating my seventeenth birthday. I graduated high school a few weeks ago, and a local market offered me a job. I’m to sell baked goods on the streets for five cents an hour. My aunt has heard of this place, called America, where everyone has a job, and every night they get to eat. The people of that country get to believe whatever they want. She wants me to go there, so I can be free and get away from the dangers of Germany. I think any place like that sounds like heaven. For twelve dollars I could live in heaven, I could be free.



    September 30th, 1921

    I’m sitting on a wooden floor, with barely any light to even see the paper that I’m writing on. I left Germany five days ago to come to America, and I’m on a ship called Mount Day. All I brought with me was this journal, a picture of Mama and Tata, and a locket I was given when I was born. I can’t exactly count the numbers of people on this ship, we’re in steerage and I can barely breathe. I decided to keep to myself, until a little boy approached me. His name was Henry and he was a waise, without a family or a home, pushed on to the boat at the last minute. I felt that if I didn’t help this boy then no one would, so I told him to stay with me. Over the next few days I learned his name, about his family, and how they were dead and he had been living on the streets for years. I don’t know how he got twelve dollars to get on here, but it wasn’t my business to ask. He said he knew some people in Pennsylvania that we could stay with; maybe even get a job on the farm. They were close relatives and he had a sense of where we could find them. We weren’t fed often, and when we were it was hardly enough to keep us going. Henry and I shared our food, our bed, everything. We became a familie.

    October 20th, 1921

    The trains in America are cleaner then the trains back home. Getting here wasn’t exactly easy though. As soon as we pulled into the harbor I could hear Henry yelling, “There she is! The statue of liberty!” My heart fluttered with the thought of finally being here, being safe. No one was going to kill the ones I loved here, there was no war, no blood, no pain. Only hope and freedom flowed through the veins of this country, my new haus, a home.
    Ellis island was more chaotic than any storm I’ve ever experienced. Men lined us up by appearance, those who looked acceptable and healthy were in front, and those pushed in the back were zombies, leblos. They counted us off and yelled at us like we were dogs. Whenever someone spoke they got angry and violent, they couldn’t understand us and we couldn’t understand them. We just improvised and went in the direction we were being shoved into. I felt like we were just a family of cattle being herded off of one field into another. We were herded up a wide staircase. Those who were noticeably ill were marked on their back with chalk. H meant faint of heart, L meant lameness, etc. We were taken into a room and medically examined, as if we were disease born rats intending to infect the whole country. The sick were sent back, and the rest of us moved on to a registry room, and were forced to answer every question imaginable. They asked me where I intended on to live and what I’d do when I got there. Henry and I practiced on the boat, I was his older sister, and we were moving to Pennsylvania to try and find work on a farm. We were cleared and walked into America. I used the extra money I saved for the trip and now Henry and I are on a train heading towards our new home.

    November 30th, 1921

    Its kind of difficult to write with Henry distracting me, we’re at the farm. It took a long time to find this place, its verborgen, hidden. I was nervous, just showing up, a couple of dirty German strangers asking for a home and work. Luckily the owners were German too. They welcomed us with open arms, I work for my housing and food, as well as Henry’s while he goes off to school. Every Saturday we have English lessons, I’m starting to get quite good actually. Any extra money I make is sent back home to my Aunt and Uncle. They are considering coming out here to America as well. They say things aren’t very safe in Germany, but America is one of the safest places in the world. I’m far from discrimination that other immigrants face, I make just as much as an American and live like one. I am befeien sie, free.