The Last Ships from Hamburg by Steven Ujifusa recounts the dramatic journey of over two million Russian and Central European Jews who, fleeing violent antisemitism between 1881 and 1914, risked everything to escape through Hamburg and seek freedom and opportunity in the United States.

SYNOPSIS

Synopsis by Lynn David­man
In The Last Ships from Ham­burg, Steven Uji­fusa tells the sto­ry of the sec­ond Exo­dus that, between 1881 and 1914, brought two and a half mil­lion Russ­ian and Cen­tral Euro­pean Jews to the Unit­ed States. This mass migra­tion was pre­cip­i­tat­ed by out­bursts of anti­se­mit­ic vio­lence fol­low­ing the 1881 assas­si­na­tion of Russia’s Czar Alexan­der II. The Jews became the scape­goat, as they had been so many times before. Risk­ing all they’d ever known, they ille­gal­ly escaped from Rus­sia by train, head­ing to Ham­burg, Ger­many, where they board­ed steamships to the shores of the Unit­ed States. Many were drawn to the US by the ​“dis­es­tab­lish­ment” clause of the con­sti­tu­tion that allowed free­dom of reli­gion, as well as eco­nom­ic and edu­ca­tion­al oppor­tu­ni­ties and the pos­si­bil­i­ty of own­ing land.

Their haz­ardous pas­sage was made pos­si­ble by the coor­di­nat­ed efforts of two Jew­ish men: one in Ger­many, Albert Ballin, and the oth­er in the Unit­ed States, Jacob Schiff. Ballin was a vision­ary. As man­ag­ing direc­tor of the Ham­burg-Amer­i­ca ship­ping line, he worked hard to retro­fit exist­ing ships and build new ones — all of which helped tremen­dous num­bers of Jews set sail for Amer­i­ca. Schiff, the phil­an­thropist and man­ag­ing part­ner of the bank­ing firm Kuhn, Loeb and Co., was like­wise devot­ed to res­cu­ing Jews from Rus­sia and East­ern Europe and bring­ing them to the Unit­ed States. As a rail­road and bank­ing mag­nate, he raised large sums of mon­ey to facil­i­tate Jew­ish immi­gra­tion and reset­tle­ment in Amer­i­ca. In addi­tion to donat­ing to mul­ti­ple Jew­ish char­i­ta­ble caus­es and bankrolling the Jew­ish immi­gra­tion net­works, Schiff also attempt­ed to enlist the sup­port of the US gov­ern­ment, whose immi­gra­tion poli­cies were being influ­enced by eugeni­cists such as Hen­ry Cabot Lodge, Har­ry Laugh­lin, and Prescott Farnsworth Hall. How­ev­er, Schiff’s efforts to sway the gov­ern­ment were unsuc­cess­ful. In 1924, Con­gress passed the restric­tive John­son-Reed Immi­gra­tion Act, which estab­lished a quo­ta lim­it­ing immi­gra­tion to two per­cent of each group’s population.

Ujifusa’s metic­u­lous­ly researched and well-writ­ten work illus­trates the vast influ­ence these gen­er­a­tions of immi­grants had on Amer­i­can cul­ture and soci­ety. Sad­ly, this was the last major wave of Jew­ish immi­grants allowed to start new lives in the Unit­ed States.

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WHY WE LOVE THIS BOOK

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Ron Kaufman
Member of the GJB Selection Committee

 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Steven Ujifusa is a historian who chronicles the confluence of American business, social, and maritime history. His third book, The Last Ships from Hamburg: Business, Rivalry, and the Race to Save Russia's Jews on the Eve of World War I, tells the story of Eastern European Jewish immigration to America in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. It was released by HarperCollins on November 21, 2023, and named by Publishers Weekly as one of the best books of the year.   

His second book, Barons of the Sea: And Their Race to Build the World's Fastest Clipper Ship, tells the saga of the great 19th century American clipper ships and the Yankee merchant dynasties they created.  In 2012, The Wall Street Journal named his first book, A Man and His Ship: America's Greatest Naval Architect and His Quest to Build the SS United States (Simon & Schuster), as one of the 10 best nonfiction books of the year.  

Steven is the recipient of the Washington Irving Medal for Literary Excellence from the Saint Nicholas Society of the City of New York, a MacDowell artist residency, and the Athenaeum of Philadelphia's Literary Award for Non-Fiction. He has appeared on National Public Radio, CBS Sunday Morning, and numerous other media outlets.

As a corporate historian and president of Tradewinds History LLC, he is the author of Local for the Long-Term, a history of Airgas, Inc., and Creative Capital, the official history of J.M. Forbes & Company, one of the oldest independent financial services firms in the United States.  Other clients include The Paul Foundation of Essex, CT, Haydon Bolts Inc. of Philadelphia, as well as individuals seeking to preserve the stories of their families, businesses, and homes. 

A native of New York City and raised in Chappaqua, New York, Steven received his undergraduate degree in history from Harvard University and a joint masters in historic preservation and real estate development from the University of Pennsylvania.  An amateur singer, he is a long-time member of the Orpheus Club of Philadelphia.

Steven resides in Philadelphia with his wife Alexandra (an emergency room pediatrician) and two sons. stevenujifusa.com