Tropical Refuge
Museums
By Ilan Stavans
As early as 1935, Rafael Leónidas Trujillo Molina, the dictator who led the Dominican Republic from 1930 through 1961, suggested that his country would welcome as many as 100,000 refugees from Europe. It might seem ironic that Trujillo, known for his repressive regime, would invite Jews to the island, promising them religious freedom, but in this instance, it’s just one irony among many.
The fascinating story of the few hundred Jewish refugees who took Trujillo up on his offer and settled in the town of Sosúa, on the Dominican Republic’s northeastern shore, will be on view at Manhattan’s Museum of Jewish Heritage-A Living Memorial to the Holocaust through July 25. It’s a little-known episode in the still-to-be-written history of how the Holocaust played out in Latin America.
Sosúa was a rural habitat. For shtetl Jews, the landscape might have been a modified version of what they were used to in the Pale of Settlement: more arid, tropical and humid, but no less provincial. But it wasn’t shtetl Jews who found themselves in Sosúa; it was their urban, middle-class counterparts. How did they respond? The black-and-white photographs at the Museum of Jewish Heritage, along with other memorabilia collected by the curators, teem with disappointment. The place was remote, rudimentary, challenging in every way. “No maps were in existence,” a settler, Félix Bauer, wrote in his memoirs. Another, Barbara Steinmetz, described Sosúa as “just a piece of land with a few buildings on it… and very sparsely populated.” And a third refugee, David Kahane, stated: “There were two barracks and a few shacks. No electric lights, and the mosquitoes were humming.”
Shock gave way to some degree of comfort and, ultimately, gratitude. From the start, Sosúa’s locals were friendly. They interacted with the newcomers, doing business with them and striking up friendships. The relationship was fruitful. Over time, it resulted in a strong collaboration and, in some cases, even marriage. Yet despite Trujillo’s good will, the total number of refugees to Sosúa never reached beyond 500, with another 200 passing through. The small number speaks to the missed opportunity this episode in Holocaust history allowed. How many thousands could have been saved in the Dominican Republic had the American government been more accommodating?
Marion A. Kaplan, a professor of modern Jewish history at New York University and the author of “Dominican Haven: The Jewish Refugee Settlement in Sosúa, 1940-1945” (Museum of Jewish Heritage), the exhibition’s companion volume, puts thes tory in context. “In comparison,” Kaplan writes, “about 100,000 Jews reached Latin America and the Caribbean between 1933 and 1942, and about 160,000 came to the U.S. between 1933 and 1942.” Kaplan adds: “But numbers do not convey the full story. The United States, for example, only once fulfilled its yearly quota of German-Austrian immigrants between 1933 and 1944, and that was in 1939, after the shock and empathy that emerged in response to the open violence against Jews in Germany on November 9, 1938, known as the November Pogrom, or Crystal Night.”
The exhibition photographs are rich and evocative. Jews and Dominicans, their religious and ethnic selves evident, appear near cattle in a dairy farm. There are calves, horses and roosters nearby. A settler drives a tractor. Four male swimmers lying on the beach smile at the camera. Children work the land. A long shot of the dorms shows a couple of inhabitants at the door. A 13-year-old celebrates his bar mitzvah.
The photos are touching in their immediacy. In spirit, they might appear similar to those of Yiddish-speaking immigrants to Moisés Ville and other settlements in the Argentine Pampas, where Jews coexisted with gauchos. Yet the tenor is dramatically different: Again, the Sosúa refugees came from a relatively high rung on the social scale. Their escape from the old country took place at a time of extreme desperation.
Today only a handful of Sosúa’s Jewish settlers remain. The majority left a long time ago, mostly for the United States, where, like other Jews from Latin America, they intermingled with the American Jewish community. The Dominican Republic remains one of the poorest nations in the Western Hemisphere. Sosúa is currently a tourist attraction because of, among other things, its sex trade. The synagogue still stands, and there is a museum that remembers the Jewish presence more than half a century ago. The companion book indicates the gratitude of those who lived in Sosúa, summarized by a settler, Paul Cohnen, who is quoted thus: “We owe the Dominican Republic so much. After I became more comfortable I donated land for people who had worked for me for 27 years. I’m proud to do it. I’ve donated land and money for the school.” Others described their Caribbean interval as “a second life.”
Ilan Stavans is the Lewis-Sebring professor in Latin American and Latino culture at Amherst College. His next book, “Resurrecting Hebrew” (Schocken/Nextbook), will be out in September.
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As important as Trujillo's action was, let us not forget a couple of important things: 1. He made the gesture following a massive massacre of Haitans and dark-skinned Dominicans as part of his campaign to "europeanize" the DR. He invited the exiled Jews to the DR as part of his campaign to lighten the skin of the Dominicans AND to put a freindly face to his dictatorship; and 2. He expropriated (stole) the land offered to the exiles. He then charged them (almost double its calue) for the land with the proceeds going to his own pockets. That said, the Jewish settlement in the DR is one of those stories that are often not known in the larger story. And should be told. (Just as the story of the Jews escaping the Nazis through Shanghai is often underreported.) Let's just keep in mind the nature of the local players as well as the global issue.
FDR faced opposition to increased immigration not only from Congress, who controlled immigration quotas, but also from Zionists, who wanted Jews in Palestine not the USA. As I remember the Dominican Republic plan was shot down by the Zionists not the US government. Both the AJ Committee and AJ Congress, along with the National Council of Jewish Women, openly opposed the 1938 Celler_Dickstein proposal for unrestricted immigration for victims of religious and political persecution, and actively lobbied congress against it. Ben Gurion opposed the 1938 Kindertransport of 10,000 Jewish children out of Germany to England stating, "If I had the choice to lose half the children but save the other half by sending them to Palestine I would gladly choose the latter, for we must look to the future." That one could believe looking to the future entailed throwing away the lives of 5,000 children is instructive.
It is an interesting quirk of history that Trujillo, a dictator so brutal that to this day Dominicans are afraid to speak openly against him, did what was, for us, a wonderful thing -- for nefarious reasons. During my travels in the Dominican Republic a few years ago I had the great privilege of meeting and speaking with a few of the surviving Jewish community leaders in Sosua. Prostitution aside, Sosua has become a charming attraction: a sleepy beach town with plenty of amenities for tourists, a beautiful beach, and a recently-renovated synagogue with a museum attached. Sadly, services there are few and far between: I went for Rosh Hashana and to my chagrin found the synagogue closed. The dairy companies founded in Sosua by Jewish refugees still survive, and to this day are the principle suppliers of dairy goods to the Dominican public. After waiting in vain at the doors of the synagogue, I began asking around town for anyone who could direct me to the houses of the Jews. I eventually found a few who, demonstrating the warm and welcoming spirit characteristic of Dominicans, invited me into their homes and talked at length about their experiences in the Shoah and traveling to the DR. Their stories were at once horrific and fascinating; I wish I had been able to record them, as they are an important and little-known chapter in the history of our people. I plan to return to the Dominican Republic this Winter with a video camera. With any luck, I'll be able to find some of the survivors left in the community and record their stories for posterity. What I would like to know is: has anyone else done this? The exhibit in New York sounds fascinating, but has anyone filmed actual interviews with the Sosua Jews? I would be very interested in any existing resources, or to know if anyone else is interested in putting together an interview project. Please respond below with any information and perhaps we can get in contact.
A few years ago, while on a trip to the DR I was talking at length with a native, middle class, non-Jewish local. We spoke about many things. He indicated that without this small Jewish population, what little industry and commerce that exists in the DR would disappear. I always maintain that countries that treat their Jewish citizens with decency, as they would their own, will always prosper. Look at history, those countries that treat the Jews wrongly, soon become basket cases themselves.
This is a wonderful story. I was unaware that there were Jews there. I learned alot from this article. There should be many more of Jews in remote places and how they were received by locals.
BY SHEER COINCIDENCE, THE SMALL SUMMER JEWISH CONGREGATION IN FLEISCHMANNS, NY, WHERE I HAVE OFFICIATED SINCE 1992, HAS A FEW ALUMNI OF SOSSUA.