Every year millions of Americans visit Ellis Island, where their ancestors may have arrived from “the old country.” But Europe has many excellent “Ellis Islands in reverse” — museums at the places where millions said goodbye to the land of their birth.

Few things are more poignant than a person willing to sacrifice everything in pursuit of a better life. That’s the story of many hard-scrabble Europeans heading off to dreamed-of opportunities in far-off America. Others, who faced persecution or even starvation, really had no choice — it was leave or die. Museums in Ireland, Belgium, Germany, and Sweden tell some of these compelling stories.

My favorite among them might be Dublin’s, called Epic: The Irish Emigration Museum. With so much anxiety surrounding immigration in the U.S. today, I

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