For those who dreamed of a better life, it was, along with the Statue of Liberty, their first glimpse of the United States. Between 1892 and 1954, 12 million immigrants set foot on Ellis Island, the islet where officials decided who was allowed to enter the United States.
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- TV tonight: our selection of the day
Decades of history, tears and hopes that have shaped the United States, told in the documentary Ellis Island, a story of the American dream, broadcast tonight on Le Figaro TV Île-de-France. The film was followed by the programme "Parlez-moi d'histoire" (22 p.m.) in which Guillaume Perrault welcomed Annick Foucrier, professor emeritus of American history at the Sorbonne, and Catherine Collomp, professor emeritus of history at Paris VII.
The documentary can be viewed like a fresco in CinemaScope: incandescent shots of New York under the winter sun, Martin Scorsese-esque atmosphere. Its director, Michaël Prazan, to whom we owe the remarkable Einsatzgruppen: The Death Commandos and The Brotherhood: An Investigation into the Muslim Brotherhood, gives faces to the legend of Ellis Island. It follows the rise, and sometimes the fall, of personalities who entered Uncle Sam's home via this little piece of promised land, such as film producer Sam Goldwyn and silent film star Pola Negri.
Each illustrates the different waves of immigration: the Irish driven into exile by the Great Famine or the Italians driven out by poverty. The central pivot of this epic is the duel between Salvatore Lucania alias Lucky Luciano, who arrived from Sicily at the age of 10 and became the king of the East Coast mafia, and his slayer William O'Dwyer, an Irishman who rose through the ranks of the police and then the judiciary before becoming mayor of New York.
The Golden Age of the Belle Époque
The destiny of Ellis Island is as much about the genealogy of the United States and the driving forces behind its integration as it is about the vicissitudes of Europe. During the Belle Époque, the immigration centre enjoyed a golden age. You can even enter without a passport! But everything changed at the dawn of the 1920s. Quotas were introduced, which excluded undesirable minorities. Then the crisis of 1929 further reduced the list of the lucky ones. From 5,000 to 10,000 crossings per day, Ellis Island now records only 200. This gateway to the United States is even, eventually, transformed into a prison for illegals and a deportation center. This retreat had dramatic consequences because it prevented the Jews from escaping the advance of the Third Reich.
Finally, with the development of air transport, immigration became less and less dependent on Ellis Island, whose role as a gateway to America was finally abandoned in 1954.