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Administration required the presentation of a detailed operations plan by May 1937 and
the commitment of $8,000 and the settlement of a minimum of one hundred families.
Analysis by resettlement experts confirmed the viability of such a plan and estimated that
$360-465 per family would be required. However, Jewish relief organizations such as
HICEM argued that the settlement sites were too remote and of inferior quality with a
climate that was inhospitable for Central Europeans. HICEM also warned that the
potential for resettlement within Ecuador was “practically nil” due to a low level of
national economical development and salaries, limited opportunities for craftsmen and
other artisans and professionals and a general state of political volatility. The
International Committee of Immigration in Ecuador responded to the criticisms of
HICEM by noting that the objections raised reflected conditions throughout all of the
South American Republics. Consequently, this project was abandoned. 19
The American Joint Distribution Committee and HICEM engaged in other
agricultural resettlement projects within Ecuador and sixty Jewish families were
19 Daily Herald, July 18, 1935 cited in Schneiderman, ed., American Jewish Year Book Review of the
Year 5696, 241-242; Werner Loval, We Were Europeans: A Personal History of a Turbulent Century
(Jerusalem, Israel: Gefen Publishing House, Ltd., 2010), 225; Michael Palomino, “Jews in Ecuador:
Jewish Immigration in the National Socialist Period,” 2008 available from
http://www.geschichteinchronologie.ch/am-S/ecuador/EncJud_juden-in-Ecuador-ENGL.html; Internet;
accessed September 4, 2010; “Ecuador,” Jewish Virtual Library available from
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/judaica/ejud_0002_0006_0_05541.html; Internet; accessed
September 4, 2010. HICEM was founded in 1927 and resulting from the merger of HIAS (United States
Hebrew Sheltering & Immigrant Aid Society, ICA (Jewish Colonization Association based in Paris and
functioning as a British charity), and EMIG-Direct (a refugee relocation program located in Berlin). The
primary function of HICEM was to aid and facilitate the migration of Jews from Europe. Following the
Nazi takeover in 1933 EMIG-Direct was closed. During the Second World War the British Government
restricted the use of ICA funds outside of the country resulting in HIAS assuming the primary role. In
1945 HICEM was ended and its programs were assumed by HIAS. “Aid and Rescue,” 2006, available from
http://www.edwardvictor.com/Holocaust/2006/Aid_and_rescue.htm ; Internet; accessed August 23, 2010.
The President, Dr. José María Velasco Ibarra proposed a plan in July 1935 to admit fifty thousand families
of Jewish technicians and scientists forced out of Germany but the offer was revoked due to the reticence of
Jews to leave the Reich at that time as well as problems with organization and documentation. Loval, We
Were Europeans, 225.
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