Senior curator Bruce Bustard and exhibit designer Ray Ruskin talk about the ideas and the creation of our exhibit “Attachments,” which uses immigration records from the National Archives to tell the story of people entering America’s gate. 

The video also features Erika Lee and Michael Pupa talking about their experiences finding a piece of their own personal history in the National Archives.

“Attachments” closes September 4!

The boy on the left is Michael Pupa. Of the individuals chosen randomly to be included in our new exhibit, only Michael Pupa is still alive.

His parents were victims of the Nazis when he was only four, and he and his uncle spent two years hiding in the forests of Poland, waiting until the end of World War II. But the ordeal of Michael Pupa was far from over.

He became a “displaced person,” or DP, moving from one DP camp to another until 1951, when Michael, by then 12, and his cousin were flown to the United States and sent to a home for refugee children, then to foster homes in Cleveland.

Michael Pupa’s story does have a happy ending, told in “Attachments: Faces and Stories from America’s Gates,” a new exhibit that opens at the National Archives on Friday, June 15, and in an upcoming issue of Prologue magazine.

Michael Pupa and his family will be at the National Archives on when “Attachments” opens.

“Attachments” is at the National Archives through September 4.

(Images: Michael Pupa, age 12, National Archives; Michael Pupa, present-day with family, image credit Pupa family.)