Always on the move. It’s the first sentence I read on the boards introducing to the Red Star Line Museum, opened last September in Antwerp and dedicated to all those migrants who set sail from the city port to a new life .
The journey these people had to face began even before setting sail , leaving from Germany , Eastern Europe and Russia to arrive in Antwerp, with the money for the ticket of the crossing in third class .
The exhibition is housed within the historic warehouses of the Red Star Line , the shipping company that owned the ships that took this multitude of people on a journey across the ocean to Canada and the U.S. . The stores , which have remained unused for many years after the war marked the abrupt ending of migration, are an important heritage for the city , a symbol of that bridge to America that Antwerp represented for many years.
Lives on the move, now as then. Migration is a timeless story.