During the forty years between 1870 and 1910, over twenty million people, including about two-and-a-half million Jews, left Europe and made the difficult and dangerous trip to America. Historians have called this population shift “the largest movement of people in human history”. When they began their journey to another country halfway around the world, each traveler became the hero of his or her own life story, each story telling of joys and sorrows, of battles won and battles lost, as they fought to survive and to succeed in this new world. They were too busy living their lives, too busy surviving, to find the time or the inclination to leave a record of their experiences and so, when they died–and when those who knew them died–their stories went down into the earth with them. This is the story of one such “hero”, told by his granddaughter, while there is still someone left who remembers.