Survivors in Dominican Republic

SOSUA, Dominican Republic, Aug. 11 (JTA) — Luis Hess lives alone in a modest house fronting Avenida Pedro Clisante in the Dominican town of Sosua. At 95, he’s the oldest of a dwindling group of European Jews rescued from Hitler’s Europe by the Dominican dictator Gen. Rafael Trujillo. Now Hess, along with six other survivors, has recorded video testimony about his life in this Central American country for the benefit of visitors to Sosua’s newly inaugurated Museo Judio, or Jewish Museum. Housed in a modern structure next to the original wood-frame synagogue used by the refugees, the Museo Judio opened Feb. 3, 2003, in the presence of numerous dignitaries, including Israel’s ambassador to the Dominican Republic. “I was the first Jew here to marry a Dominican woman,” said the German-born Hess, displaying a picture of his late wife, Ana Julia. “We were married 60 years. She was from Puerto Plata, a good woman and a good mother. “We never had any differences, despite our very different backgrounds. In fact, she felt more Jewish than me.” Located next to the Casa Marina Hotel and down the street from the local Verizon phone company office, the Jewish Museum tells the story of how Trujillo, attending the 1938 Evian conference in France, offered 100,000 Jews safe haven from increasing anti-Semitism in Europe. At its entrance is the text of the 1940 agreement between the Trujillo dictatorship and the Dominican Republic Settlement Association, the New York-based organization that sought to rescue thousands of Jews from impending doom in Austria, Germany, Poland, Hungary and Czechoslovakia and resettle them in Sosua, a town on the country’s north coast. Between 1939 and 1942, the Dominican government issued more than 5,000 visas to Jews, though in the end, only 700 actually came. That was mainly a consequence of difficulties getting exit visas in the midst of World War II. But it also had to do with the fact that many Jews — not realizing the gravity of their situation — were reluctant to give up their sophisticated city lives in exchange for an uncertain future in a desperately poor Caribbean backwater. Each of those who did come, though, was given the opportunity to purchase 80 acres of land — as well as 10 cows, a mule and a horse — with low-interest loans in an uninhabited area. With the help of the settlement association, these Jews built workshops, a sanitation system, a health clinic and the Productos Sosua dairy, which still produces milk and cheese for the whole country. Martin Katz is one of the founders of Productos Sosua. At 86, he still goes to his farm every afternoon, often taking with him his three grandchildren: Jeriel, 6, Rene, 5, and Niki, 3. “We never had any problems here. People are very sweet,” said Katz, who arrived in 1940 and eventually married a Dominican woman named Rosa Reyes. “When cruise ships started coming from Germany, I met tourists my age who had been soldiers in Hitler’s army. This was like a bucket of cold water on my head and after that, I never wanted to go back to Germany.” One wall of the Museo Judio contains faded news clippings such as a May 11, 1940, article from The New York Times titled “Exiles on Last Lap to Dominican Site.” Another wall display showcases sepia prints by La Nacion photographer Kurt Schnitzer and original paintings by artist Ernesto Loher — both children of Jewish refugees who settled in Sosua. There’s also a colorful stained-glass Star of David and a chart, extending from ceiling to floor, listing the names of Jewish settlers, the date each arrived and their country of origin. Artifacts on display include a large wooden menorah crafted by hand in the colony’s carpentry shop; a scale used in the pharmacy of one of the Jewish immigrants, Erich Sygal; an original telephone switch from the Dominican Republic Settlement Association office; a branding iron used to mark cattle and a metal milk container from the Productos Sosua dairy. In 1947, a group of 39 European Jewish immigrants arrived in Sosua from the Chinese city of Shanghai, where they had taken refuge during the war. On exhibit is a trunk belonging to the Strauss-Schick family, which was part of that group. The Jews who settled in Sosua brought their religious traditions with them, and all throughout the museum are photographs of new immigrants celebrating Bar Mitzvahs and weddings in their newly adopted country. Also on display are aging copies of Jewish magazines like La Voz de Sosua and other such publications in German, Spanish and English that informed and entertained the close-knit community. Oisiki Ghitis, religious director of the Centro Israelita de la Republica Dominicana in Santo Domingo, said the country has some 300 Jews today. Thirty or 40 of them live in Sosua and the rest live mainly in Santo Domingo, the capital. Many of the original settlers and their descendants have since left for the United States and elsewhere. One indication of the scarcity of Jews in Sosua is the fact that the Jewish Museum’s director, Cristina Roman, is a Catholic woman who wears a small crucifix around her neck. “There is very little discrimination here,” Ghitis said. “In fact, the high rate of intermarriage is precisely because of that. There’s absolutely no rejection of the Jew in society here.” Added Hess: “We always had good relations with the Dominican people. There was never any anti-Semitism here.” One of his sons, Cecil, became the first Jew to receive the Medalla de Oro award for academic excellence from Catholic University in nearby Santiago. He’s now president of Metrolaser, a California company specializing in holography and laser optics. Hess’s other son, Franklin, is a computer scientist living in Berlin. The standard explanation for Trujillo’s intervention on the Jews’ behalf is that the Trujillo — a despot and a racist — wanted to “whiten” the Dominican people through intermarriage between Jews and the local population. Scholars also point to the fact that one year before the Evian conference, Trujillo’s forces slaughtered tens of thousands of Haitians and that he may have believed that accepting Jewish refugees would improve his tarnished reputation abroad. Such distinctions matter little to people like Katz. “I’m not sure why he helped us,” said the old man, who lost his sister in the Holocaust. “The important thing is that he did. He saved my life.”