San Antonio College Library

While the massive flow of immigrants to the Northeast was taking place, a number of Jews were finding their way to America through the port of Galveston, Texas. The descendants of these immigrants, now scattered throughout the United States, are hardly aware that their ancestors participated in a unique attempt to organize and channel Jewish immigration. From their recruitment in Eastern Europe to their settlement in the American West, these immigrants...

"In the early twentieth century, the population of New York City's Lower East Side swelled with the arrival of vast numbers of eastern European Jewish immigrants. Established American Jews - arrivals from the German states only a generation before - feared that their security might be threatened by the newcomers. They established the Industrial Removal Office (IRO) to assist in relocating the immigrants to the towns and cities of the nation's interior....