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

Years later, Luis Hess, a German refugee who settled in Sosua and became the
first Jew to marry a native Dominican and whose sister perished during the years of the
Holocaust, did not comprehend the reasons for Trujillo’s offer of refuge. Jews were
caught, he believed between the regime of Hitler, “the German racist [who]
persecuted…and wanted to murder us” and Trujillo, “the Dominican racist” who offered
salvation. The Jews of Sosua were placed in the “awkward position of having to be
thankful to a dictator.” 47
Such principled reasoning for Hess in the end did not matter
and he was grateful for his deliverance. In the end “if a murderer saves your life you still
have to be grateful to the murderer.” 48
The project was studied by the Refugee Economic Corporation of New York
with the assistance of the Presidential Advisory Committee on Political Refugees. Johns
Hopkins University President Isaiah Bowman selected agricultural experts to make an
on-site survey and a positive report was published during early 1939. Financing was
provided by the Agro- Joint (composed of the American Jewish Joint Agricultural
Corporation and the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee; agreement signed on
September 29, 1939). 49
FDR issued his official endorsement describing the project as a
46 Welles to Roosevelt, January 12, 1939, OF 3186, FDRL. Ibid., 144.
47 Spiegel interview with Luis Hess on his 98th birthday, Spiegel Online, Panorama, 26 December 2006.
http://www.spiegel.de/panorama/zeitgeschichte/0,1518,456564,00.html cited in Kaplan , “’A Very Modest
Experiment,’” 133. Hess acted as interpreter for DORSA during its negotiations with the Dominican
Government and later directed a small school within Sosua.
48 Interview by Marion Kaplan with Luis Hess, May 25, 2006, Sosúa. Ibid., 133.
49 Welles to Roosevelt, February 27, 1939, OF 3186, FDRL cited in Roorda, Dictator Next Door, 144.
The American Joint Distribution Committee (JDC) provided funding for the support of overseas Jews.
James Rosenberg headed the Agro-Joint which had earlier resettled 250,000 Russian Jews in the Crimea
and southern portions of the Ukraine. He established DORSA with an Agro-Joint colleague, Dr. Joseph
Rosen. See also Wischnitzer, “The Historical Background,” 46.
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