Forgotten Ellis Island

Discover the forgotten story of one of the world’s great public hospitals in this documentary from filmmaker Lorie Conway. In the shadow of The Statue of Liberty, twenty-two state-of-the-art buildings were constructed from rock and dirt excavated during the building of the New York subway. Their purpose: act as America’s first line of defense against immigrant-borne disease. At this site, medical specialists cared for ailing immigrants until they were deemed fit for entry into the United States, or deported for being too feeble. Their stories were alternately inspiring and heartbreaking, and now thanks to intimate interviews with the few remaining survivors and images from the US National Archives, we learn just what hardships these determined immigrants endured on their journey to becoming official US citizens. Produced in conjunction with a companion book of the same name., The story of Ellis Island Hospital, which consisted of 22 brick buildings sprawled across two islands. The site of hundreds of births and many more deaths, its staff treated and cared for immigrants to the U.S. at the turn of the 20th century, acting as the first line of defense in the effort to stop contagious diseases from reaching the general populace. Included: interviews with former patients; archival photographs. Elliott Gould narrates.