By Freya Sutter

LREI- On January 11th, a fourth grade class looked at Victoria Confino’s primary sources. Victoria Confino was a Turkish immigrant.

The fourth grade class looked at Victoria’s ship manifest, naturalization certificate, her second grade report card, and a postcard from her village in Turkey. When the class looked at the manifest they noticed that where it said that the country that Victoria came from, Greece, was crossed out and Turkey was written in. We guessed that Greece and Turkey were fighting over land at that time so that is why it was like this. 

Next we looked at a naturalization certificate. The certificate was made in 1921, eight years after the Confinos came to America. On the manifest, Victoria´s youngest brother, Isaac was 11 months old. When we looked at the naturalization certificate we noticed Isaac wasn’t on the certificate. Instead, there was a nine year old boy named Jacob. We speculated that Isaac and Jacob are the same person and that Isaac changed his name.

After, we looked at Victoria’s second grade report card. Victoria was 10 when she was in second grade. Usually people in second grade are seven, but since Victoria had never been to school before and she couldn’t speak english the school put her in a lower grade. At school,  Victoria did well for someone who didn’t speak english.

The next day Dan and Tara’s class went to the tenement museum where they saw the Meet Victoria program. They got to ask an actress playing Victoria questions about life in America.