The incredible story of the Jewish survivors of the Dominican Republic
Audio 48:30
The small Jewish museum of Sosua mainly concentrates photos which tell the beginnings of the Jewish colony of El Batey, in the north of the island.
© Sandra Cohen-Rose & Colin Rose
By: Céline Develay Mazurelle Follow
52 mins
Travel to the Caribbean, where a fascinating, ambiguous and little-known page in human history has been written.
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1938: as Europe prepares to fall into Nazi horror and Austria, annexed by Hitler's forces, has just "given in to force", the Jews of Germany and Europe have took the roads of exile but the world is already closing its doors to refugees… except the small Dominican Republic located on the island of Hispaniola.
At that time, during the Evian conference, Rafael Trujillo, dictator president of the Dominican Republic, offered to welcome 100,000 Jewish refugees on his island.
Finally, less than a thousand will be able to reach these lands bathed by the Atlantic and the Caribbean Sea, very far from old Europe, soon to be on fire and blood ...
Today, on this island that has become a popular seaside destination, descendants of this unique Jewish community perpetuate the memory of their ancestors who helped build the small town of Sosua in the north.
And a French writer Catherine Bardon, great lover of the Dominican Republic, author of a great romantic saga around this story, also helps to share it.
It is she who will guide us from Santo Domingo to Sosua in the footsteps of this incredible story.
A report by François-Xavier Freland.
To extend the trip:
- The saga
"The uprooted", by Catherine Bardon
was published by Les Escales Editions and reissued in France by Pocket
- The website of
the Dominican Republic Tourist Office
- The site of the
"Sosua Virtual Museum"
gathers online many resources on the small Dominican Jewish community
- The page of this tourist site is full of historical information and photographs on
the El Batey colony of Sosua
- The Sosua photo archives of the JDC or
"American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee"
which, from 1914, came to the aid of the Jews of Europe and took part in the installation of the Jews of Sosua.
- More information on this organization which was the JDC, otherwise called the “Joint”, in
the multimedia encyclopedia of the Shoah
, of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.
Moments of celebration in Sosua, ten years after the establishment of the Jewish colony of El Batey.
© René Kischamaer
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Dominican Republic
Judaism
History
Refugees
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