Dominican Republic, the Unsung Holocaust Safe Haven

On the eve of World War II, there were almost no countries offering open borders to Jews fleeing the Nazi threat in Europe. Even the United States had a very limited immigration policy mostly due to the prejudices of various State Department bureaucrats. And many average Americans feared that Jewish immigrants would take jobs. Those were the times. Very few saw the annihilation coming. During this period, brutal Dominican Republic dictator Rafael Trujillo became a highly unlikely hero of the Holocaust.

Rafael Trujillo

Rafael Leonidas Trujillo Molina ruled the Dominican Republic with an iron fist from 1930 to the day of his assassination in 1961. In 1937, the brutality of his regime reached its lowest point with Trujillo's sanctioned military massacre of over 15,000 unarmed Haitians living along the Haiti-Dominican Republic border. This tragic event, in particular, earned him the scorn of Franklin Delano Roosevelt's administration.

Trujillo loathed his perceived public image with the United States. He was lumped in with brutal European dictators like Mussolini, Franco, and Hitler. To rebuild a working relationship with the Roosevelt administration, Trujillo decided that he would have to prove to international social critics that he was capable of a great humanitarian act.

Evian Conference

In 1938, Trujillo attended the Evian Conference, a nine-day meeting of delegates from 32 countries at the French resort of Evian on Lake Geneva. The purpose of the Conference was to decide the fate of fleeing German-Jewish refugees as it related to the immigration policies of each attendant nation.

Of the 32 countries, only the Dominican Republic offered to take in up to 100,000 Jewish immigrants, a large amount when compared to the overall population size of the island nation. Unlike Hitler, Caribbean dictator Trujillo saw the Jews as a "superior" race. In his particular racist view, he believed that intermarriage between European Jews and native Dominicans would make the population "whiter."

Sosua

Trujillo offered Jewish refugees their own town on the seacoast, a settlement called Sosua. With funding provided by the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, each settler was given 80 acres, 10 cows, a mule, and a horse. Sosua would be an agrarian fresh start for these mostly non-agrarian immigrants.

The native Dominican population didn't have a history of anti-Semitism like other Latin nations. Farmers helped the settlers create Productos Sosua, their dairy cooperative modeled after Zionist kibbutzes in Palestine. DORSA or the Dominican Republic Settlement Association was Trujillo's governmental authority for the settlement.

Of the 5,000 Dominican Republic visas issued in Europe, about 750 immigrants were able to make it to Sosua. German U-Boats torpedoed boats carrying Jewish refugees.

Sosua Today

Sosua remained an all-Jewish town until 1980 when the Puerto Plata international airport was built. Because of its proximity to the airport and the ocean, Sosua was developed into a resort area. The population increased by 3000 residents, mostly non-Jews. There are only about 30 Jewish families remaining in Sosua.

Productos Sosua, however, remains the Dominican Republic's main producer of meat and dairy products.