The Last Ships From Hamburg: An Immigration Story

Our second in a series of podcasts about New York City and American immigration history. Between the late 1890s and early 1920s, over 2 million Jews from Eastern Europe fled their homes and made the long journey to America, escaping persecution and violence in their native countries. Many were fleeing state-sanctioned antisemitism in Russia. This mass immigration effort was, in large part, brought about by three entrepreneurial men: Albert Ballin , the director of the Hamburg-America line; Jacob Schiff , the German-born New York-based philanthropist and financier; and the Gilded Age financial titan J.P. Morgan . It is through the research and writing of historian Steven Ujifusa that many details of this story have finally been brought to light in his book The Last Ships from Hamburg: Business, Rivalry, and the Race to Save Russia's Jews on the Eve of World War I. In this special presentation of the Gilded Gentleman podcast, Steve joins Carl to discuss these momentous events. In addition, Steve shares his personal story about how he uncovered little-known material to bring this history to life. Check out last week's show on Ellis Island after you've listened to this one. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

You can listen to The Last Ships From Hamburg: An Immigration Story online on Radio and Podcast. Open the player on this page to stream the available audio.

The Last Ships From Hamburg: An Immigration Story is an episode from The Bowery Boys: New York City History by Tom Meyers.

This episode is 00:57:27 long.

This episode was published on Nov 28, 2025.

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