American Passage_ The History of Ellis I - Vincent J. Cannato [205]
Now Ellen Knauff ’s fate rested in the hands of Attorney General McGrath. He was well acquainted with the case and had previously showed no inclination to admit Knauff. But in November 1951, McGrath ordered that Ellen Knauff be admitted to the United States. It is unclear why he changed his mind.
McGrath released his decision at 6:00 P.M. on November 2. Fifteen minutes later, the phone at Ellis Island rang with the good news. Ellen quickly gathered her belongings in time to make the 7:30 ferry to Manhattan. The media was waiting for her at the Manhattan pier, snapping photos of a jubilant and beaming Knauff standing on the ferry. First, she wanted to call her husband with the news. Then, she told reporters, “I want to have a lobster dinner.” Kurt and Ellen had spent more time apart than they had together and now had to decide whether they would make their home in New York or if Ellen would join Kurt while he remained in Germany working for the military.
In total, Ellen Knauff spent nearly twenty-seven months imprisoned on Ellis Island while fighting for her right to become an American. During that time, she penned a book about her case, which was published a few months after her release. Although it contained no new information, it helped to solidify the public impression that she had been a victim of a security-obsessed nation.
However, there were serious charges against Knauff. Though she vigorously denied the accusations and no further evidence was produced to corroborate her accusers, it is still unclear why three Czech refugees would deliberately lie about her. Ellen theorized that the refugees testified against her in an effort to receive U.S. citizenship. She also believed that rumors of her alleged espionage were being spread in Germany by one of her husband’s old flames, who in a fit of jealousy reportedly said that she would do her best to ruin Ellen’s arrival in the United States.
Though she ultimately won her battle against the U.S. government, the victory came at the cost of her marriage, which did not survive the 1950s. With Ellen detained at Ellis Island and Kurt working in Germany, the first three and a half years of their marriage could hardly be termed a honeymoon. After her divorce, Ellen remarried. With her new husband, William Hartley, she cowrote a number of children’s books. Ellen Raphael Boxhorn Knauff Hartley lived a quiet life in America until she passed away in Florida in 1980.
Ellen Knauff ’s plight had gained nationwide publicity. But her case also brought attention to the fact that individuals could be detained and deported without benefit of an official hearing and without any knowledge of the evidence against them.
The widespread sympathy that Ellen Knauff ’s case elicited did not mean any slackening of the nation’s anti-Communism. Ellis Island would continue to serve as a detention center for suspected Communists and other political radicals. One of them was a middle-aged Trinidadian writer named Cyril Lionel Robert James. He was arrested and taken to Ellis Island in June 1952 for his political affiliations and because the government alleged that he had entered the country illegally in the 1930s. Immigration authorities had spent a number of years trying to sort out his immigration status and his political proclivities. Now he was at Ellis Island awaiting deportation.
Following in the footsteps of Emma Goldman and Ellen Knauff, who both used their detention at Ellis Island to write about their plights, C. L. R. James also devoted his time as a prisoner to writing. His unlikely topic was Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick. James’s experience at Ellis Island profoundly influenced his reading of Melville’s classic. He would sit at his