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Displaced Persons

In 1948, Congress passed the Displaced Persons Act. This allowed for 200,000 refugees living in the American, British, and French zones of occupied Germany and Austria to enter the United States in excess of the nationality quotas established by the 1924 Immigration Act. Beginning in April 1949, more than 650 Estonian Displaced Persons would join the labor force and residential community at Seabrook Farms. C.F. Seabrook, the company’s founder and chief executive, was approached by Rudolf Kiviranna, the chairman of the Estonian Relief Committee in New York City and a local Lutheran pastor in Bridgeton, New Jersey, who convinced him to become a sponsor for these refugees. Seabrook would personally travel to Germany to visit the DP camps in 1949, and, in much smaller numbers, also sponsored Poles, East German, and Latvian refugees.

With the Cold War already dominating American foreign policy, the Displaced Persons Act was heralded by U.S. officials for providing refuge to Europeans who, due to Soviet occupation of Eastern Europe, could not return home. In line with existing immigration restrictions, entrants accused of being Communist spies or sympathizers were barred from the United States. The 1948 Act did not, however, include enforcement measures that allowed immigration officials to vet whether or not arriving refugees had been Nazi collaborators. For Seabrook Farms, the Act offered another way to obtain cheap and semi-captive labor. While C.F. Seabrook portrayed himself as a beneficent savior of these refugees, the reality was more complex. The 1948 Displaced Persons Act specifically required that only refugees who “shall not become public charges and will have safe and sanitary housing” were eligible for admission. As a company town that could guarantee immediate employment and housing, Seabrook Farms was uniquely positioned to meet both of these criteria. To reject Seabrook’s living and working conditions meant losing sponsorship, and therefore encountering a fate unknown or possible deportation. Wages began at 52 cents an hour – slightly more than what guestworkers and black migrant laborers were earning in 1944, but less than the union wage.

Estonians arriving at Seabrook noted that their new living and working environment bore a resemblance to the camps in Germany that they had left behind, as did their relative state of confinement, at least during their first years in the country. Some Estonians like Tonu Vanderer preferred the 16’ by 48’ “wooden barracks” of Hoover Village, where they were housed to the camps in Germany. Others like Reet Sikkemae remember fashioning cardboard paper rolls into bed springs and using bathrooms without doors.

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Estonian and Japanese women in front of doll display

A group of Estonian and Japanese women pose in front of a doll display in 1950, dressed in traditional costumes.

Seabrook Educational and Cultural Center, New Jersey Digital Highway

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