Seven hundred and fifty Jewish refugees fled Nazi Germany and
founded the agricultural settlement of Sosua in the Dominican
Republic, then ruled by one of Latin America's most repressive
dictators, General Rafael Trujillo. In "Tropical Zion," Allen
Wells, a distinguished historian and the son of a Sosua settler,
tells the compelling story of General Trujillo, Franklin Delano
Roosevelt, and those fortunate pioneers who founded a successful
employee-owned dairy cooperative on the north shore of the island.
Why did a dictator admit these desperate refugees when so few
nations would accept those fleeing fascism? Eager to mollify
international critics after his army had massacred 15,000 unarmed
Haitians, Trujillo sent representatives to evian, France, in July,
1938 for a conference on refugees from Nazism. Proposed by FDR to
deflect criticism from his administration's restrictive immigration
policies, the evian Conference proved an abject failure. The
Dominican Republic was the only nation that agreed to open its
doors. Obsessed with stemming the tide of Haitian migration across
his nation's border, the opportunistic Trujillo sought to "whiten"
the Dominican populace, welcoming Jewish refugees who were
themselves subject to racist scorn in Europe.
The Roosevelt administration sanctioned the Sosua colony. Since
the United States did not accept Jewish refugees in significant
numbers, it encouraged Latin America to do so. That prodding,
paired with FDR's overriding preoccupation with fighting fascism,
strengthened U.S. relations with Latin American dictatorships for
decades to come. Meanwhile, as Jewish organizations worked to get
Jews out of Europe, discussions about the fate of worldwide Jewry
exposed fault lines between Zionists and Non-Zionists. Throughout
his discussion of these broad dynamics, Wells weaves vivid
narratives about the founding of Sosua, the original settlers and
their families, and the life of the unconventional beach-front
colony.
General
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