Biography
Christ Popoff was a Macedonian immigrant and labor activist in Syracuse, New York. He arrived at Ellis Island on July 7, 1915, at age fifteen. He worked in steel mills, construction and mining, then on the railroad until he was laid off in 1930. Speaking several languages, he subsequently worked as an interpreter. He helped Syracuse workers resist a municipal plan to shift laid-off ash collectors' duties onto privately employed workers in January 1932. Police arrested him at home on August 13, 1932, and confiscated his library. A federal jury convicted him of aiding an alien's naturalization, and Judge Grover Moscowitz sentenced him to two years. When his Lewisburg prison term ended on July 10, 1934, immigration officials took him into deportation custody rather than freeing him. He was held at Ellis Island, including in solitary confinement. His wife and three sons remained in Syracuse. His defenders obtained a railroad affidavit exposing false testimony, but he was held under another charge in March 1935. On January 18, 1936, he was notified that he had won the right to remain in Syracuse with his family following a pardon by Governor Herbert Lehman.
Daily Worker, October 31, 1934, page 1: The paper calls him Chris Popoff and reports that he had been on Ellis Island for forty-five days when official Forman placed him and John Ujich in solitary confinement on October 30 for collecting money for fellow detainees’ necessities. The forty-five days describes island confinement to that report, not his complete imprisonment or an exact admission date derived by subtraction.
Daily Worker, February 4, 1935: Pages 2 and 6 individually name him among five labor activists held for deportation whose freedom was to be demanded by a delegation representing more than 225 organizations. The announced meetings with immigration officials and Congressman Dickstein were proposed advocacy, not a release or completed removal. Source: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/dailyworker/1935/v12-n030-Nat-sect-1-feb-04-1935-DW-LOC.pdf
The February 22, 1935 account of an Ellis Island interview with Otto Richter named him among fellow political deportees held there in segregation. The interview day was not printed, so the issue date is not an intake or transfer date. This corroborates the existing immigration episode without supplying a completed duration or overriding later established bail release. Source: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/dailyworker/1935/v12-n046-Nat-feb-22-1935-DW-LOC.pdf#page=5
Popoff’s signed EllisIsland letter recalls about fifteen days of admission questioning after arrival July 7, 1915, and twenty-five lashes inflicted in Macedonia in 1914 after he and other children defied closure of their school. He describes five days of coercive interrogation after his August 13, 1932 home arrest and confiscation of his thousand-book library. His federal term ended July 10, 1934, but an immigration officer took him at the prison door into renewed detention rather than freedom. The stated two-year sentence is not converted into730actual days, and the1915approximate inquiry is not automatically a separate political prosecution. Source: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/new-masses/1935/v14n11-mar-12-1935-NM.pdf#page=22; https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/new-masses/1935/v14n11-mar-12-1935-NM.pdf#page=26
Labor Defender, February 1935, PDF page 5: John Howard Lawson names him among five foreign-born workers physically held on Ellis Island when a delegation visited January 11, 1935. The account alleges segregation, confiscation of reading material, lack of exercise and efforts to prevent bail, with guards’ threat to shoot after paper was lighted to read mail in a dark room. Ujich was taken to hospital an hour before the visit; Lawson interviewed the other four. The continuation on PDF 24 identifies Popoff’s wife and three children in Syracuse and Mannisto’s typographical-union membership in Astoria, Oregon. These are attributed prison conditions and intermediate custody, not a fresh detention or executed deportation. Source: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/labordefender/1935/v11n02-feb-1935-orig-LD.pdf#page=5
The November 3, 1934 Daily Worker reports that Chris Popoff and John Ujick had been taken out of solitary confinement at Ellis Island, as learned by a representative of the Committee for the Protection of the Foreign Born the previous day. It attributes the punishment to their collection for penniless fellow detainees’ necessities. This was the end of solitary confinement within continuing immigration detention, not release into freedom or completed deportation. The article places both among those brought on the previous Monday’s deportation train, October 29; for Popoff this differs from the October 31 report’s statement that he had already been on the island for forty-five days. That conflict is preserved without replacing the separately documented July 10 transfer into immigration custody. The report supplies no exact day on which solitary ended or complete custody total.
