Museum traces migrants' journeys

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ANTWERP, Belgium In today's world of cruise ship travel, it is easy to forget how life-changing boarding a steamer once was.


“It made it possible for me to be alive – very simple answer. Otherwise we would have been killed,” the Jewish feminist leader said, recalling her family's flight from the Nazis.


Pressman Fuentes was back at the original docks of this huge North Sea port for Friday's ceremonial opening of the Red Star Line migration museum, which shows how millions of Europeans steamed across the ocean toward the United States and other parts of the Americas over the past two centuries.


Over 2 million passengers sailed from Europe to America between 1873 and 1934 on the Red Star Line. Antwerp was popular because it was a large port and had a well-established Jewish community.

In 1893, 5-year-old Israel Isidore Baline was among the émigrés, part of a family fleeing increasing anti-Semitic violence in Russia. Baline became Irving Berlin after the family entered the United States and settled in New York's Lower East Side. His classics like “God Bless America” and “White Christmas” made him famous in his new country and around the world.

Now, one of Berlin's pianos stands in the museum, on extended loan from the family. His daughter and two granddaughters were on hand for the opening.


Nobel Prize winner Einstein was another famous passenger. When he was on the Belgenland II in 1933, he learned that the Nazis had confiscated his possessions so he decided not to return to Berlin. Instead, he declared his resignation from the Prussian Academy for the Sciences.


“We tend to forget how hard it is to emigrate,” said Caroline Emmet-Bourgois, Berlin's granddaughter. “You are leaving behind your identity. You are going into the unknown. You are trying to give a future to your children and you are willing to lose what you already have to start anew.”

The museum opens to the public on Saturday.

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