Through the Golden Door: Chinese and Jewish Refugees and Immigrants in New York
“Through the Golden Door” will digitize at-risk collections that illuminate formerly understudied aspects of immigrant and refugee experience. The Center for Jewish History will digitize materials from its in-house partner American Jewish Historical Society (AJHS) and project partner the Museum of Chinese in America (MOCA). The AJHS selections are from the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (HIAS) Records, Cecilia Razovsky Papers, and United Service for New Americans Records. From MOCA the Center will digitize the Fly to Freedom Collection of paper sculptures and two Chinese-American newspapers that demonstrate a shifting cultural landscape against the backdrop of the Cold War. The collections are significant to studies of the impact of US legislation on individuals and communities here and abroad; American responses to the persecution of European Jews; artistic expressions of conflicting identities; and print culture and community formation. They will provide a historical dimension to fierce debates on US policies of exclusion.