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LIBIVNER JEWS IN ARGENTINA
By Zelik Faigen
At the beginning of the 1880s, during the wave of
raging pogroms in tsarist Russia, Jews, haunted
and tormented by hunger, need, rightlessness,
and other troubles, began the great mass immigration
to America and to a lesser degree to other
countries. Divine providence dictated that much
of European Jewry would save itself and form
many Jewish communities all over the Americas,
where Jews received rights and protection as free
citizens.
At that time, Argentina did not lie in the direct
path of the Jewish migrations. No information
about "hot, faraway" Argentina reached the
Russian Pale of Jewish Settlement. It was only
with the beginning of the 1890s that a small
trickle of Jewish immigrants began to flow toward
Argentina, thanks to the ICA (Jewish Colonization
Association), established by Baron
Maurice de Hersh, who bought great tracts of
land for Jewish colonization. There were Jews in
Argentina before that time, but they were few and
far between.
At the same time, when Jewish colonists arrived
in Argentina to work the land, another segment
of the Jewish community came to Buenos
Aires, where they worked as carpenters, tailors,
weavers, peddlers, and quente [sellers of goods
on credit].
Most Libivner Jews who went to Argentina
arrived in the 1920s. Some had gone earlier but
the majority arrived in the late 1920s and early
1930s.
The East European shtetl was crowded and
the youth were idle. And so they began to dream
of faraway places, where they sought for a way
out of the despondent "desert" in which they
found themselves.
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America did not let them in because of restrictive
quotas. Neither could they reach Palestine
because of the small number of certificates
for entry there. This situation drove them to Argentina.
Not only young people, but also the
middle-aged went there with their entire families,
looking for an escape from their difficult economic
situation.
In the 1920s it was a very easy matter to go to
Argentina. It was enough to register in one's foreign
passport that one was either a farmer or a
wage-worker in order to get a visa for Argentina
immediately. Later, in the 1930s, Jews also had to
have immigration papers to be able to go to Argentina.
The wave of immigration continuously
flowed toward the West until the outbreak of
World War II.
The relationship between the Libivne Jews
in Argentina was loose. There was little contact
between them. Each person was busy with his
own problems. Occasionally, a landsman [fellow
townsperson] would invite a Jew from Libivne to
a celebration. There was no Libivne organization
or society as in other countries. This could be explained
by the fact that few immigrant families
were from Libivne proper. Most people were from
surrounding villages: Opalin, Lubochin, Nodizh,
Rimatch, etc.
At this point, it must be pointed out that there
was an exceptiona man who, though young,
did not think only of himself but helped newly
arrived landsleit both materially and with brotherly
warmth. He was our landsman, Aaron
Prusman (z"1), son of Boruch Hersh and Chaye
the Fisherke. He had arrived in 1927, so it was only
two years since his own arrival, yet he already had