Reply To: What is your most unpopular/controversial opinion or hot take?

Smerel,
Do you have your grandfather’s documents with his name when he got on the boat & the new name when he exited Ellis Island? Surely you &/or the “people you know” would have the records. That’s generally not something you throw out.
More strangely this concept doesn’t appear until around the 1970’s (amazing with all the literature from 1910-1970 authors never mentioned this concept or used it as a plotline).
Interestingly enough the best guess how this myth went viral is a scene from “The G-dfather” where an Italian immigrant was taken into a room, given a list of American names by immigration officers & told to pick one (which of course is total fiction) but with a surge in ethnic pride during this period people including Jews latched onto this myth without bothering or more likely not interested in finding out if it was true.