Study Project to Transfer Reich Jewish Farmers to So. America

Possibilities for transferring Germany’s Jewish agriculturalists to South and Central American countries where they can continue to work on the land are now the object of intensive study by central Jewish organizations.

Despite the figures given by the census of June, 1933 – after the Nazis came to power – showing only 4,167 Jewish families directly engaged in farming, the survey has already revealed that in the State of Baden alone, the number of Jews on the land is over 9,000 while there are 12,000 more working on the land in Hessen-Nassau. There are also hundreds of Jewish farming families in the Rhine section and in Upper Silesia.

The condition of these Jewish farmers, whose average land holdings are four to eighteen acres is most serious because of their isolation and the vigorous boycott in the provinces. They are denied membership in the cooperatives which refuse to market their produce, to lease them the threshing machines and other farm machinery used jointly by the farmers of the various districts, or to sell them supplies.

Large numbers of them have been forced to sell the land held by their families for generations and to move to the towns where, unable to find new employment, they are living on the money realised from the sale of their farms.

Special interest in the fate of these victims is being taken by the Jewish Colonization Association which recently sent a special investigator here to study the situation and report on what can be done to re-settle them on the land in countries having possibilities for agricultural elements, particularly those countries in South America where the Jewish Colonization Association has been colonizing Jews on the land for many years.

The investigator, Dr. Aronstein, a noted colonization expert, visited over 77 villages in the state of Hessen-Nassau alone and in personal talks with hundreds of Jewish farmers there learned that most of them are extremely anxious to emigrate and are willing to undertake the pioneer work that might be necessary to establish themselves in the Argentine, Chile, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay.

A large number of Jews from this section of the Reich who have already settled in these countries have adjusted themselves easily to the new conditions and have written optimistically to their relations and friends in Germany.

The first group of German Jewish farmers and their families has already left the Reich for South America under the Jewish Colonization Association project. The organization requires that families to be re-settled in South America include between three and five male members able to work on the land and trained for this work. Over a thousand families in Hessen-Nassau alone meet these qualifications. The organization is also training qualified Jewish youths for farm work.

The Hilfsverein der Juden in Deutschland, which is assisting the emigration of German Jews to overseas lands other than Palestine, is helping the Jewish Colonization Association in this project and is now registering groups of Jewish farmers ready to emigrate.