The Jewish Trail of Tears The Evian Conference of ... - Haruth.com

humanitarian sentiments of the Evian Conference and dispatched Virgilio Molina to
represent the Republic and to announce that their country was willing and ready to admit
Jewish refugees. Such an offer was described as representing “one of the boldest
masterstrokes of modern press agentry.” 38 Trujillo had earlier been approached during
1937 by the American Jewish Congress for the same purpose. The Congress’
representative, Dr. Howard Blake, described the potential benefits that would accrue to
the Dominican leader: “Trujillo, the Emancipator! Trujillo, the Liberator!...Who would
be the first to buy your tobacco? The Jews! Your coffee? The Jews! Everything that
you can export? The everlastingly grateful Jew!” 39
Additional considerations drove Trujillo to offer refuge to German and Austrian
refugees. The introduction of lighter skinned Central European immigrants and Spanish
Civil War refugees would allow the replacement of Haitian and West Indian workers and
transform the racial demographics of his island nation while introducing outside capital
38 Marion A. Kaplan, “’A Very Modest Experiment—The Jewish Refugee Settlement in Sosua, 1940-
1945,” The Leo Baeck Institute Yearbook 53 no. 1 (2008): 132.
39 Dr. Howard Blake to Trujillo, January 5, 1937, 839.52 Jewish Colonization/1, RG 59, NA cited in
Roorda, Dictator Next Door, 143. Dominican General Gregorio Luperon (1839-1897), cabinet minister and
provisional president (1879-1880) promoted immigration from Cuba and Puerto Rico and during 1882
unsuccessfully sought the resettlement of Russian Jews suffering Czarist pogroms. Letter to the central
committee of the Alliance Israélite Universalle: “I have heard of the persecutions of the Jews in several
European states and I venture to inform you that there is a country, the Dominican Republic, a vast and
fertile country which has every prospect for the future. There your co-religionists will be received with
open arms. It is not merely hospitality which I take the liberty to offer in the name of my government and
people but also a secure citizenship (nationality) and land for farming purposes, land, which immediately
after possession has been taken, will become the property of the settlers…I know…the people in Santo
Domingo…will rejoice in the arrival in their midst of brethren prepared to share their fate with them.”
Mark Wischnitzer “The Historical Background of the Settlement of Jewish Refugees in Santo Domingo,”
Jewish Social Studies 4, no. 1 (January 1942): 48-50. Converted Jews had first come to the island of
Hispaniola during the Spanish Inquisition but the first Sephardic Jews arrived in the Dominican Republic
during the first twenty-five years of the Nineteenth Century and helped to develop a successful merchant
class that benefited the local economy. Overall the Republic had a long tradition of social and religious
tolerance towards its Jewish minority.
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