Living My Life - Emma Goldman [225]
The condition of the emigrants on Ellis Island was nothing short of frightful. Their quarters were congested, the food was abominable, and they were treated like felons. These unfortunates had cut their moorings in the homeland and had pilgrimed to the United States as the land of promise, liberty, and opportunity. Instead they found themselves locked up, ill-treated, and kept in uncertainty for months. I marvelled that things had changed so little since my Castle Garden days of 1886. The emigrants were not permitted to mingle with us, but we managed to get from them notes that strained all our linguistic acquirements, almost every European language being represented. It was little enough we were in a position to do for them. We interested our American friends and did the best we could to show the forsaken strangers that not all of the United States was represented by official barbarians. We were loaded with work, and neither Sasha nor I could complain of ennui. [...]
Harry Weinberger was meeting with unexpected difficulties in Washington, due to bureaucratic pettiness and red tape. The Clerk of the Court refused to accept his papers because they were not in printed form. Harry successfully appealed to Chief Justice White. On December 11 he was permitted to argue his motion, but the Court denied us the writ of error. A stay of deportation for Sasha was also refused. The documents in my case were ordered printed and returned within one week.
I decided that if Sasha was to be driven out of the country, I would go with him. He had come into my life with my spiritual awakening, he had grown into my very being, and his long Golgotha would for ever remain our common bond. He had been my comrade, friend, and co-worker through a period of thirty years; it was unthinkable that he should join the Revolution and I remain behind.
“You are staying to make the fight, aren’t you?” Sasha asked me at recreation that day. I could do much for the deportees, he added, as well as for Russia, if I should establish my right to remain in the United States. The same old Sasha, I thought; always considering propaganda values first. I could hardly restrain the pang I felt over his detachment even at such a moment. Yet I knew the real Sasha; I knew that although he would not admit it even to himself, there was a great deal of the all-too-human underneath his rigid revolutionary exterior. “It’s no use, old scout,” I said; “you can’t get rid of me so easily. I have made my decision, and I am going with you.” He gripped hard my hand, but he said not a word. [...]
Saturday, December 20, was a hectic day, with vague indications that it might be our last. We had been assured by the Ellis Island authorities that we were not likely to be sent away before Christmas, certainly not for several days to come. Meanwhile we were photographed, finger-printed, and tabulated like convicted criminals. The day was filled with visits from numerous friends who came individually and in groups. Self-evidently, reporters also did not fail to honour us. Did we know when we were going, and where? And what were my plans about Russia? “I will organize a Society of Russian Friends of American Freedom,” I told them. “The American Friends of Russia have done much to help liberate that country. It is now the turn of free Russia to come to the aid of America.”
Harry Weinberger was still very hopeful and full of fight. He would soon get me back to America, he insisted, and I should keep myself ready for it. Bob Minor1 smiled incredulously. He was greatly moved by our approaching departure; we had fought together in many battles and he was fond of me. Sasha he literally idolized and he felt his deportation as a severe personal loss. The pain of separation from Fitzi was somewhat mitigated by her decision to join us in Soviet Russia at the first opportunity. Our visitors were about