The Roll Call at Ellis Island

Between 1892 and 1954, more than twelve million immigrants passed through the Great Hall on Ellis Island. They arrived speaking Yiddish, Italian, Greek, Mandarin, Polish, Swedish — languages that tangled together into a roar beneath those vaulted tile ceilings. They carried bundles wrapped in cloth, photographs of people they might never see again, and the ache of everything they had survived to stand in that room.…