Friday, July 24, 2009

The Irony of Jews in the Dominican

In 1937, Dominican dictator, Rafael Trujillo ordered the massacre of Haitians and black Dominicans as part of his Dominicanization process, which involved "whitening" the country. The next year, Trujillo was the only world leader to willingly accepted Jewish refugees, who were fleeing Nazi persecution, in hopes of continuing his process of Dominicanization. It's ironic that the Jews were wanted in the Dominican because they were considered white, while they were forced to flee their homelands precisely because they weren't considered white.

Attempting to "whiten" his country was not the only reason why Trujillo opted to open his borders to the refugees. Trujillo hoped that his act of humanitarianism would appease the United States in a bid to get back into the power's good graces following the Haitian Massacre.

Though Trujillo called for the immigration of 100,000 Jewish refugees, the island was at most home to about 1,000 Jews at any one time. As part of the Jewish immigration to the Dominican Republic, an agricultural colony was formed in Sosúa, which held no more than a few hundred at any particular moment. However, the Dominican saw much turnover in terms of the Jewish population, so the number of Jews who passed through the Dominican during World War II was considerably greater.

The Sosúa colony always enjoyed the support of the dictator until the day he died. Once Trujillo was assassinated, the Jewish settlers feared that their previous overt ties to Trujillo might cause them trouble. Ironically, the man who subsequently protected the colony was Antonio Imbert, one of only two members of the Trujillo assassination conspiracy to survive the wrath of the dictator's son in the weeks that followed the killing.

The colony itself continued to survive until tourism overrode agriculture as Sosúa's main source of income around 1980. Throughout its existence, a slow trickle of Jews continuously left the colony, also contributing to its descent.

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