New Americans Museum Reflection

From Haven to Home was a very interesting exhibit about Jewish people that immigrated to America and how it has affected our country.  In this exhibit I learned lots of interesting things about the Jewish history in America.  The first group of Jews came to America from Europe in 1654, they came to New Amsterdam (New York)  & it was only about 23 people.  During this time Jews were looked down upon, they lived in New York's lower East side and a lot of them worked in factories.  Over time more and  more Jews came from Europe because they felt like they were not treated equally because of their religion.  During the 1820's more synagogues were built & in 1834 Rebbecca Grantz opened the first Jewish Sunday school.  In 1924 congress decided to start having  an immigration limit, this was right before Hitler began the Holocaust and this was not good for the European Jews that wanted to escape to America.  Even though there was an immigration limit 200,000 Jews still came around the Holocaust.  I thought that it was really sad how America started there immigration limit as soon as the Jews needed it the most.  In this exhibit I learned a lot about  the hardships and accomplishments of the Jewish people & how they have impacted America.  

I liked the exhibit Children of Immigrants because I enjoyed seeing the child's story by looking at the photographs.  All of the children in the photographs had a whole new life in front of them, here in America.  The photograph that I found the most interesting was the one with all the little kids that came from different cultures at school in Chicago.  I liked this one because all of the kids were from different backgrounds, due to immigration.  All of the kids were so different, but at the same time they were so similar.  When your a little kid in elementary school, where you came from doesn't matter, everybody just gets along and plays together as if they've know each other their whole life.  The quote I choose was "The greatest thing I hope in my life is to become a successful person & to have family and friends to support me, not to be looked at by the color of my skin but by who I am inside" - Samaria Durakovic, Yugoslavia. I chose this quote because I thought that it really applied to this exhibit and it really liked the way that Samaria said what she hoped for in the future.  I hope that Samaria became a successful person, had her family and friends to support her, and was not looked at by the color of her skin but by who she is inside.