As another free-thinker who was an interpretive historian at Ellis Island for several years - a point of clarity. Ellis Island stopped being a major immigrant processing station after the 1921 and 1924 immigration laws took full effect. After that, it was a holding station for people who had come in on ships (and later, planes) but were denied entry. If your relatives arrived before 1921, they may indeed have passed through Ellis Island.

A theme that often appears on Skip Gates' program Finding Your Roots is that the American branches of Jewish families arrived way before the wars that killed the families extant in Europe during the time of Hitler. Sounds like that was your family.

And ironically, I read an interesting article about Will Rogers home in California (it burned down in the January 2025 fires) - before Pacific Palisades was the high-end community it became, there was acreage to be had, and Will Rogers (who was huge 100 years ago, in movies, radio, print, and more) bought ~200 acres and built a house that over the years he enlarged. The property became a state park after his wife died. Rogers was a Cherokee from Oklahoma and one of his great lines was "my ancestors didn’t come over on the Mayflower, but they met the boat." https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2025-05-04/la-me-ln-palisades-fire-will-rogers-ranch