E-1889

A FORTUITOUS MEETING THAT DECIDES A DESTINATION The historical facts sometimes begins in fortuitous causes, an example is the trip of the " Podoliers " that arrived in the Argentina on the SS Weser, thanks to the casual contact in Paris of J.B.Frank -agent of Rafael Hernandez's lands in Europe - with Eliezer Kauffman, the delegate of a group of Podolian families that had made the decision to emigrate. He had traveled to Paris to look for help (and he didn't obtain it) from Baron Rothschild to immigrate to Palestine. Thus was born the idea of traveling to Argentina.

PURCHASING LANDS IN ARGENTINA Kauffman allowed Frank to convince him and he closed a deal for purchasing plots of Rafael Hernandez's lands, in Nueva La Plata, choosing an unexpected destination for the emigrants that should have looked at a map to see where Argentina was. They should have consulted the Great Rabbi of Paris, Zadok-Kahn, on the question if they would not be enslaved or forced to convert when arriving to that stranger country. This was the way that forged our grandparents' Jewish emigration from Russia and Rumania to Argentina.

THE IMMIGRANTS ARRIVE, BUT they don't RECEIVE THE LAND Prof. Haim Avni (*) has written an excellent description of this process, with the story of the Argentinean events and the numerous inconveniences that were encountered by the first immigrants at each step from their arrival to the country, when the Immigration Inspector Carlos Lix Klett, in their inspection of the SS Weser separated the Jewish and didn't allow them to disembark, with the intention that they return to Europe. In the end, two days later, on Saturday eve, they were authorized to go ashore. On the 16^th of August, 1889, they entered Argentina, being formally called "colonists" because they had bought earth parcels. There was no reason to expel them. But they didn't receive the “promised land”. During the time of the trip, the value of the land had risen enormously and it didn't suit Hernandez to give the parcels of 25 hectares that had already been paid for, because their price was maybe twice as much or more. And for this reason he didn't complete the contract.

GETTING OTHER LANDS IN SANTA FE They then turned to another landowner, recommended by the Jewish Community of Bs.As., and fell into the "hands" of Palacios, another landowner without scruples, from whom they purchased lands in Santa Fe. Due to Palacios’ bad behavior the colonists suffered many calamities, among them the death of the 64 or more children for typhus in Palacios railway station. The misfortunes of those 120 families, linked in a series of coincidently facts in this special historical moment of the Jewish people, subjected in Russia to tremendous persecutions and slaughters, inspired the Baron Maurice of Hirsch to undertake his settler program in the New World, aimed at saving hundred of thousands of Jews from such persecutions.

BARON HIRSCH HELPS AND THE JCA is FOUNDED Without those Jewish travelers abandoned in Palacios that were aided by Lowenthal, it is very probable that Baron Hirsch would never have thought of sending more Jews to Argentina, and maybe neither have created the JCA. Thanks to this, in 1891 Baron Hirsch's plan was born, to help the Russian Jews leave its oppression. About 10,000 immigrants arrived in Argentina under this plan, in the first 5 years up through 1896. The number of immigrants that stayed on in the colonies was 6,757 residents (983 families). The rest scattered through out the country or they immigrated to it USA, Uruguay and Chile and some few ones returned to their native country. Baron Hirsch died in 1896 and the program passed on to the hands of administrators that didn't have the passion and the deceased's push. They continued his work bringing colonists to Argentina up until the eve of the Second World War. (The JCA was liquidated in the decade of the 1970s). But the multiplier effect was felt, and dozens of thousands of Jews arrive from Russia and Rumania. After the First World War they also arrived from Poland and later they were the German and Hungarian Jews and others, escaping from the Nazis, that immigrated to Argentina.

The Jewish colonies in Argentina spread though out the world as a viable destination. This was the way these pioneers became known in those distant places of Europe and Asia and then many more Jews decided to immigrate to Argentina. We estimate that around 200,000 to 250,000 Jews from all over the world immigrated to Argentina these 50 years, 1888-1938. A part of them didn't stay there and they emigrated from Argentina, especially in the 1920s, using Argentina like bridge to immigrate to the U.S. A few returned to Europe, some to look for their family and to return again to Argentina. The balance was really extraordinary. Who among the original travelers of the S.S. Weser had dreamt of the success that few years later their descendants would reach in all the activities of the country. "Moises Ville will last as a symbol, as the concrete realization, the fulfillment of the chimera that a group of oppressed, pursued, discriminated against Jews, victims of an authoritarian and overbearing régime and of ancestral prejudices, one day decided not to be ever more citizen of second class and they left with decision in search of a country with a juridical régime that offered them civil equality, freedom and worthy bread. This way sorted." (* *) Today the Argentinean Jews are full citizens in Argentina, because the last two forbidden positions, that of President and Vice, are already possible for Jews to obtain due to the last constitutional reform.

(*) Haim Avni - Argentina and the History of the Jewish Immigration - 1810-1950", Chap. II

(* *) Argentinean and Jews" (Martinez Zago, 1986)

This article written by Paul Armony was published in Toldot 4, AGJA’s magazine, Jul 1997.

THE PLACES OF ORIGIN

PODOLIA

PODOLIA in 1890

According to historian José Mendelson, most towns that the Weser families came from were small populations close to Kamenetz-Podolsk: Smotrich, Zinkowtsy, Iarmelinetz (Yarmolinstsy or Jarmolincy), Chernyy-Ostrow, Proscurow, Husiatin, Horodok ( Greiding), Zarechanka, Keptintsy, Czernowitz on the other side of the Austro-Hungarian frontier, Khotin in Bessarabia, and Khmelnik, quite far away toward the NE of Kamenetz-Podolsk. I have found also that Litin, Kupil and Stara Huta were origin places.

The migratory Argentinean authorities didn't require data to establish the origin place but the country, and the immigrants were quite reluctant, except for exceptions, to remember their life in the “native mother.” Only on the third part of the developed families I have been able to know what town or shtetl each family came from.

Current maps of Ukraine showing area and places where "podoliers" came from.

View Larger Map

Copyright © 2008 Mario N. Jeifetz.