Andrea Cammarato-Van Benschoten’s wish to learn about her great-grandmother — who immigrated to Newark in 1902 — brought her to the National Archives where she found a file with an ominous-sounding name — Alien of Enemy Nationality.
“I was expecting naturalization records or an application to become a citizen — something along those lines,” said Van Benschoten, the author of Italians of Newark. “I never expected to find this.”
Although it sounds like the premise of a good spy movie, the truth about her great-grandmother’s “enemy alien” status had more to do with the indignity that Italian immigrants suffered during World War II than living a secret life.
The Alien Enemies Act of 1798, which has been used during various wartimes, gave the federal government the sweeping authority to impose restrictions on those who came from enemy territory. During World War II, that meant Japan, Germany, and Italy.
“Everyone is taught about what happened to the Japanese,” Van Benschoten said. “But I never heard of anything happening to the Italians and Germans — it turns out, it just wasn’t as well-documented.”
Not only were Italian immigrants forced to register as enemy aliens, but nearly 3,000 Italian-American were interned in detention camps. U.S. officials also seized property of some people — including, famously, the fishing boat of baseball legend Joe DiMaggio’s father.
“It wasn’t really that well known and it was never discussed,” Van Benschoten said. “I never heard of any of this until I went down the rabbit hole for this book.”
Part of her inspiration for writing Italians of Newark was the realization that not much literature has been written about Newark’s Italian-American community. Historian Michael Immerso’s Little Italy book was the first real attempt to put these stories in writing. But even Immerso has said that before his book was published, there was “basically nothing” written about Newark’s Italian-American enclave.
“This is a neighborhood that was erased by urban renewal, and nobody has bothered to document it,” said Immerso, who is quoted in Van Benschoten’s book.
Last November, Van Benschoten published her book Italians of Newark — after two years of research and writing — that shed some more light on this chapter. The timing of this book was appropriate because many local Newarkers of Italian descent felt their history was being further erased after hearing about a plan to remove a statue of an important figure — Mother Cabrini — from a park near Penn Station without being consulted.
Churchgoers from Our Lady of Mount Carmel, comprised of the descendants of Cabrini’s pupils, protested and managed to get the statue moved to their congregation in the Ironbound.
This wasn’t the first time the community felt their history was being “wiped off the map” as Van Benschoten puts it.
In the summer of 2020, Mayor Ras Baraka hired a crane operator to lift the statue of Christopher Columbus off of its marble pediment. Those who supported the measure to remove Columbus, who is credited with a 15th-century genocide in present-day Dominican Republic, have made themselves known. But that summer, hatred was also directed towards the immigrants who raised the statue, who did not even know about Columbus’s alleged atrocities at the time the statue was made.
“Our families put their nickels and dimes together to have that statue made,” the author said. “It was to show their love for this country.”
What Baraka may not have known was that many Italian-Americans were amenable to the change: they simply wanted to be involved in the decision-making, which the city denied them and preservationists.
“I actually wrote to Mayor Baraka, saying would you consider statues of these other people,” Van Benschoten said. “I never hear back.”
The tearing down of the monument without being given any say in the matter, awakened a lot of raw emotions for Newark’s Italian-Americans.
Urban renewal is often told through stories of Black communities. But in Newark, the bulldozers came to the Italian neighborhoods first — beginning with the neighborhood surrounding what is today Penn Station, causing immigrants to flee farther into the Ironbound near Our Lady of Mount Carmel.
It happened again in the old First Ward, where the Columbus Homes were built in 1955. The Columbus Homes only housed 3,760 apartments but 12,000 homes were destroyed to build them.
Italian-Americans are often mischaracterized as having fled the city during White Flight. The truth is that First Ward residents fought to stay. In How Newark Became Newark, author Brad Tuttle describes an old woman who swung a lead pipe at a policeman while being forced to vacate her bakery.
“It wasn’t so much flight as it was an eviction,” Van Benschoten writes.
Last year, the statue of Christopher Columbus was returned to St. Lucy’s Church, where it now lies supine in the basement. It appears as though the statue is asleep, which is fitting, because this chapter in the city’s history has been put to rest.
