E-Comienzos

The Generations of Moises Ville

BEGINNING

IMMIGRATION AND INTEGRATION (*)

By Pablo Smulovitz

On August 14, 1889, the first organized group of Russian Jews who dreamed of settling and building their lives in a free environment in Argentina arrived in the port of Buenos Aires aboard the S.S. Weser. This was the starting point of an event that would culminate two years later in the founding of the Jewish Colonization Association (J.C.A.) by the Baron Maurice de Hirsch (1831-1896). It was an institution that promoted the emigration of thousands of oppressed Jews who were living in the Russian Empire under the Czar. This institution enabled them to establish themselves in the Americas by offering them the possibility of developing agricultural settlements. The founding of the J.C.A. had been preceded by the pogroms of Kiev (1881), Balta (1882), Ekaterinoslav (1883) and the establishment of the Pale of Settlement, in the western part of Russia, where more than four million Jews were legally confined.

In 1887, a group of delegates from affected Jewish communities, mainly Podolia and Bessarabia held a meeting in Katowice (Silesia, Poland). Facing what they perceived to be a life and death situation, they decided that the only viable solution available to them was emigration. The possible alternatives were Palestine, Africa and North America. It was known that the Baron Rothschild supported emigration to Palestine, and Mr. Eliezer Kauffman was appointed as an emissary to Paris to obtain his support for this. The plan failed, however, and no details are known except that Mr. Kauffman was put in touch with the Great Rabbi of Paris, Zadoc-Kahn, who in turn helped him contact the Alliance Israelite Universelle (1860), a Jewish entity charged with caring for all who were persecuted simply because they were Jewish.

In 1876, the government of Argentina approved what was called the Avellaneda law of Immigration and Colonization. And in 1881, President Julio A. Roca designated Mr. José M. Bustos as special emissary to promote Jewish emigration from the Czar’s Empire, which had begun soon after the pogroms. While in Paris, Mr. Kauffman found out by chance that there was an official Argentine Information Office. Although Argentina was not a very well-known country in Russia, and it not even been mentioned as an alternative port of immigration at the Katowice meeting, he got in touch with Mr. Pedro Lamas and Mr. J.B. Frank, the latter a government agent in charge of the Argentine Immigration and Colonization Office. Kauffman was informed that a gentleman by the name of Rafael Hernández was interested in selling lands to European immigrants. Those lands were in a place called Nueva Plata - Buenos Aires province, close to La Plata city and not far from Buenos Aires.

The sale was carried out, enabling approximately one hundred and twenty Jewish families of Russian origin represented by Kauffman to move to Argentina.

THE EXODUS OF “THE PODOLIERS”

The immigrants left from Podolia and Bessarabia in small groups. They were called “the Podoliers” and congregated in Berlin and Hamburg awaiting the delegation that had traveled to Paris to arrange the final details of the trip with the Argentine Consulate. The Great Rabbi of Berlin, Azriel Hildesheimer, warned them of the dangers of the trip and of residing in such a distant and unknown country as Argentina, and they decided to base their final decision on a report by Mr. Sigmund Simmel, a man that the Great Rabbi relied on, who agreed to go to Paris and studying the contracts proposed by the Argentine immigration agent. The conclusion Simmel reached was broadly satisfactory, and upon his return to Bremen, he informed the "Podoliers" that Argentina was a free country in which they could profess their Jewish faith and could work towards a prosperous future. So the "Podoliers" left on their journey.

Scale model of the Weser

On the day they arrived in Buenos Aires, a series of misfortunes overtook the group of immigrants. The Landings Inspector, Mr. Lix-Kett, required them to remain on board for two additional days (according to the newspapers La Nacion and La Prensa of August 17, 1889). When they finally disembarked, they discovered that the lands in Nueva Plata Colony, those that the group had come to settle, were not available. (It was never made fully clear, in spite of the intervention of the Immigration Office, whether the non-fulfillment of the Paris contract was attributable to Mr. Hernández or to Mr. Frank).

So the search for other lands for settlement began. The newly arrived immigrants were desperate, lacked resources, were ignorant of the language and were in a strange country. There were already groups of German, English and French Jews in Buenos Aires (the statistics show the presence of 1,572 Jews in the country in 1888) who became aware of the situation of their co-religionists and tried to help them.

Rabbi Henry Joseph of the little Jewish community introduced them to Dr. Pedro Palacios, its legal adviser, who was also the owner of large tracks of lands in the area of Santa Fe province, where the railroad to Tucumán had been built. Palacios offered them the right to colonize his lands. The proposal was accepted and at the end of August contracts were signed and they traveled to Santa Fe. The first impression they got was devastating; they were housed in boxcars parked on the side of the railroad tracks and in a barn.

The immigrants waited daily to be transferred to their fields, but to no avail. The colonizer didn't provide animals or tools, as he had committed to do in the contracts. It is said that the workers who built the railroad distributed food to the hungry children who begged next to their parents when trains passed. Unfortunately, an epidemic swept the area, and because of the lack of hygiene and medical attention, coupled with poor physical resistance, about sixty children died as a result.

The broken-hearted and oppressed families began to disperse out of desperation: some went south toward Sunchales, others to Santa Fe, Rosario and Buenos Aires. The statistics show ninety families in Moises Ville in 1891; the S.S. Weser had arrived with 138. The strongest swore solemnly before lit candles to stay, and most did.

Word of this miserable situation reached the national authorities. The Foreign Affairs Ministry gave orders to the General Commissary of Immigration to investigate the causes that had produced the difficult situation in which the immigrants found themselves. At this point, the presence of a Dr. Wilhelm Lowenthal in Argentina proved crucial.

Dr. Loewenthal, a Rumanian doctor, was a trained in bacteriology by Berlin University and had been hired in Paris by the Argentine government for a scientific mission. Prior to his trip, the director of the Alliance Israelite Universelle had requested him to take charge of the S.S. Wesser immigrants. Dr. Loewenthal arrived in Buenos Aires and visited most of the Argentine agricultural colonies, and on his return trip he observed the railroad station at Palacios and the way the immigrants were living. In a special report written to the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Dr. Estanislao Zeballos, he dedicated a chapter to the case of the Russian immigrants, describing the misery of those who for six weeks had remained in Palacios station often with nothing more to eat than one cookie per person for 48 hours at a time. After that, Loewenthal met Dr. Palacios, demanding the fulfillment of the contractual obligations.

Upon his return to Paris, Loewenthal espoused the agricultural colonization of Jewish families in Argentina in writing to the Great Rabbi Zadoc-Kahn, explaining its benefits to the Palacios’ colonists. He considered Argentina a favorable country for immigration: great terrain, small population (only three million inhabitants in 1890), temperate climate, fertile land easily cultivated even for the least expert colonists, and a liberal political regime with laws favorable to immigrants interested in agricultural work.

On the other hand, he also declared that the help offered the persecuted Jews should not be in the nature of a gift, but rather offered to them as a possibility for them to become farmers, creating agricultural colonies through a colonizing society, with rules for land allotment, quantity of tools, capitalization, refunds, etc.

Dr. Loewenthal was successful in interesting Baron Maurice de Hirsch, a German Jew of great fortune, in this project, and de Hirsch gave him his total support after studying the proposal.

"I have lost my son, but not my heir. Humanity will receive my inheritance", the Baron Hirsch is said to have remarked in 1887, upon the death of his only son Lucien. The Jewish immigrants who arrived in Argentina on August 14, 1889 and finally settled in Moises Ville were the first beneficiaries of the Jewish Colonization Association, the company created two years after their arrival.

Baron Maurice de Hirsch
(1831 - 1896)

There is an anecdote about the origin of the name “Moises Ville,” that holds that it is a symbol of freedom and integration. It is said that Dr. Palacios, in a visit to the colonists, asked Rabbi Aaron Goldman what they would like to call the colony.

"Kiriat Moshe" the Rabbi answered, explaining that Moses took the Jews out of the hardships of Egypt and brought them to their own country. "We, after having left the Czarist Russia and having arrived in free Argentina, feel like our ancestors, led to a place that will be our homeland. So let us name the colony 'VILLA MOISES.'" This, in translation, became MOISES VILLE.

(*) Note appeared in the Magazine of the Centennial of Moises Ville,1989, reproduced here with the authorization of Mr. Smulovitz children's.

THOSE THAT FORGED THE TRAIL

The founders of Moises Ville who arrived on the S.S. Weser, the first Jewish colonists in Argentina, forged the trail for those who would come later. Their adventures, full of misfortunes and distress, has been related a thousand and one times, although there are not enough words to describe their trials in their native land, in their travel, in their arrival in Argentina, and in their first year in their new country. Many left the group, scattering into the areas surrounding Palacios and more distant places. Many children died in the first months, of illnesses caused by hunger and cold. Less than half of the original group - about 50 families - stayed, and toward the end of the first year began to receive help from Baron de Hirsch, who later would create the Jewish Colonization Association.

THE SITUATION IN RUSSIA

In Russia the situation was awful for the Jews: they were prohibited by law from living in cities, from sending their children to school, from engaging in crafts (with some exceptions), from possessing lands, and from living outside of the “Pale of Settlement”, the western area of Russia. Often they suffered attacks by armed troops (pogroms) that murdered, violated, stole and set their belongings on fire. The czarist government's declared policies toward the Jews were mathematically simple: a third should convert, another third should leave the country, and the remainder should simply disappear.

In 1887 a new, restrictive law was added to those already promulgated: Jews would have to leave a fringe area 50 km wide adjacent to the frontier of the Austro-Hungarian Empire included in the Pale, that is to say, an area in which until then had been open to them.

This disposition especially affected the area of Kamenetz-Podolsk, which at that time was very close to the border, and this was the main reason for the decision to escape. The word “escape” is deliberately chosen: when they left, they didn't know anything about the place they were heading to, and they didn't have money to pay travel expenses.

THE TRIP

The odyssey began badly. Swindled by a travel agent who sold them counterfeit railroad tickets, they were imprisoned for two weeks in Krakov. Among these "criminals" was Rabbi Aarón Goldman, spiritual leader of the group.

Upon their arrival in Berlin, they were sent to Hamburg, but not without suffering the admonitions of the Jewish leaders in Berlin, who tried to discourage them from traveling to Argentina. They were informed that their departure would be from Bremen, but when upon their departure for this last point their baggage was confiscated because they were unable to pay lodging expenses in Hamburg. Both the Hamburg and Bremen Jewish communities helped them, however, and they were able to embark on the S.S. Weser on July 1, 1889, arriving in Buenos Aires on August 14.

THE ARRIVAL IN BUENOS AIRES, STAY IN PALACIOS

The story of the delay in disembarking imposed by an immigration official, and of the swindling suffered by the group out of the lands they had acquired through an Argentine agent in Paris has already been related by engineer Smulovitz. Next was the difficulty of getting their money refunded - all their savings - without a knowledge of the local language.

Smulovitz has also recounted the disaster of the stay in Palacios' station while the group waited to be driven to their farms. He fails, however, to mention their arrival later on in Moises Ville, and the precarious establishment of the group in the savannah, with the refugees living in tents, lacking water and depending on the proprietor of the lands for daily sustenance.

THE NAME "MOISES VILLE"

Smulovitz has repeated the well-known anecdote on the origin of Moises Ville's name, which was related by historian José Mendelson in the book, 50 YEARS OF ARGENTINEAN JEWISH COLONIZATION published in 1939.

The anecdote refers to Rabbí Goldman's enthusiasm at being in a free country, and for his group's liberation from the poverty of czarist Russia. I have always believed - being the anecdote truthful - that in the long run the Rabbi didn't make a mistake. When seeing the beautiful place that his colony ended up being located forty years later, he surely imagined that the grandsons of those colonists would reach intellectual and material levels they had never dreamed of in their native Russia. Perhaps he thought “at last it was true!"

Rabbi Aaron Halevi Goldman

(1850-1932)

Aaron Goldman Museum collection

But at that moment, free Argentina surely wasn't foremost on Rabbi Goldman's mind. There were the fresh memories of the trip: of part of his group - including himself - imprisoned due to traveling with counterfeit documentation, of the doubts that arose in Berlin about their destination country, of the recommendations against Argentina from part of the Bremen community, of the troubles experienced during the trip, of the arrival in Buenos Aires without permission to land, of the frustration over the fact that lands bought in Paris had been re-sold to others and of the problems of recovering at least part of the money spent on them, of the long wait in vain in the railroad station for the contract signed with Pedro Palacios to be executed, of the hunger the group experienced and of the more than sixty children who died during that wait, of the large number of desertions, of the transfer to the place of the future colony and of the troubles they were suffering at that moment. And he surely heard, in the reproaches from his unhappy followers, echoes of the Biblical protestation of the Hebrews when they accused Moses, “Why did you bring us out of Egypt? We were better off as slaves of Pharaoh!”

During those months, Rabbi Goldman surely remembered the hardships of Moses and the Exodus. If it was he who really chose Moises Ville's name, it should have been for that reason that the town was given the name of Moses, not any other.

M.N.J.

Copyright © 2008 Mario N. Jeifetz.