Winter
1995
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For hundreds of
Austrian and German Jews, the Dominican resort town of
Sosua
represents more than a sun-splashed paradise.
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Golden Cage
By Laura Randall
Like the mahogany
hope chests that are now sold on its busy streets, the
town of Sosua was carved out of dense jungle 54 years ago.
But even the
most intricate of wooden carvings can't compete with the
remarkable history
of this thriving beach resort on the Dominican Republic’s
northern coast.
In 1940, a patch
of oceanfront wilderness on the island that Christopher
Columbus dubbed Hispaniola represented much more than a
sun-bleached
paradise for hundreds of Austrian and German Jews fleeing
Nazi persecution.
It was the only place in the world that opened its doors to
them.
Amid the bustling
markets and street-corner chaos are a few subtle signs
that reveal just how different Sosua is from the country's
other decidedly
Latin American towns: streets with names like Calle David
Stern and Calle
Joseph Rosen; the sight of fair, blue-eyed residents
speaking Spanish as
rapidly and emotionally as any native Dominican; and, smack
in the center
of town, a small wooden house with a bright blue Star of
David above the
door.
The establishment
of Sosua as a safe haven for Jewish refugees during
World War II is one of the few positive deeds anyone can
associate with
General Rafael Leonidas Trujillo, the brutal dictator who
ruled the Dominican
Republic for 31 years before being assassinated in 1961.
While other
countries were reluctant to receive them, Trujillo offered
to shelter up to
100,000 Jews, in an effort to improve the country's
relationship with the
United States and, some say, with the hope of
"whitening" the nation.
Only about 700 refugees ended up making the
rough ocean journey and
settling in Sosua. But that was enough to create a community
out of the
wild, one that went on to develop its own school, sanitation
system,
hospital, synagogue, and library-as well as a successful
dairy business
that would become the chief supplier of dairy and meat
products for the
entire country.
Five decades
later, the lecheria remains and prospers, as do a sprinkling
of the original settlers and their families. Instead of the
few cows and dirt
paths that greeted them when they arrived, though, they now
share their
streets with buzzing motor scooters and traveling
backpackers. Their former
barracks have been replaced by art galleries, banks, and
discos.
Today, Sosua’s
personalities rival those of any major US city at least a
hundred times its size. A visitor is as likely to find a
menu that lists
coq au vin and weinerschnitzelas as he is to happen upon the
rowdy Latin
American pastime of watching a cockfight. On the west end of
town, called
Los Charamicos, the Latin community lives and plays in a
tropical
hodgepodge of markets, meringue music, and laughter. On the
other side of
the beach, packaged-comfort resorts, attractive guesthouses,
and waterfront
cafes lure hordes of European and Canadian vacationers each
year. It was in this
part of Sosua - known as El Batey - that the first Jewish
settlers began their new life.
"We slept in
tents while the barracks were being built.
Little by little, we made a
community," says Felix Koch, who arrived in Sosua by
boat in 1941
after spending time in a Bayonne, France, concentration camp. A former
radio technician from Vienna, Koch now operates an oceanfront inn with his
Dominican wife, Gloria. Sitting in his comfortable living
room, the balding blue-eyed
man recalls the beginning days of Sosua with little remorse
or emotion. "They chose
young people and married people with children to go to Sosua. I
was selected
because I was
22," he says. He discovered later that the other people in the Bayonne
camp were sent to Auschwitz six months after he left.
Like Koch, most of
the settlers were European city dwellers who found
themselves farming for the first time. Those who weren't yet
settled on their
homesteads had to endure long rides on horseback or mule
over rocky
terrain. The women stayed home and prepared food while the
men set to work
cultivating common land for agriculture. "We planted
tomatoes and potatoes
and carrots, but the Dominicans didn't eat them," he
explains.
"Then a man from Israel came to help and he advised us
to start a dairy business.
So we learned about cheese and butter and built a small
factory.
This became our success."
Koch still provides
the local dairy with milk from 30 cows on his farm on
the outskirts of town. But his own success is also measured
in the
half-acre of waterfront land where he now lives. Twenty-five
years ago,
before La Union International Airport would open and bring
thousands of
sun-seeking vacationers to the area, Koch hung a Room for
Rent sign over
his garage and created the town's first semblance of a
hotel. "I had 500
chickens in a shed. I threw them out and made a
bungalow," he says, the
memory cajoling a smile from his melancholic face. That
single chicken
coop evolved into eight attractive bungalows that are
perched along a bluff
overlooking Sosua’s spectacular curve of a beach - arguably
the best
stretch of sand in the country.
A walk down the
hill from Koch's guesthouse is necessary, however, to
experience Sosua’s beach in all its garishness and glory. As
soon as the
sand begins, so does the uneven cluster of shops, eateries,
and euphoric
mayhem. Vendors beckon and nod to passersby, in an effort to
stand out from
the rest of the stands with their similar brightly painted
canvases, wood
carvings, and T-shirts ("Because it's a slow day,
senorita, I'll make you
the best deal ever," says one fast-talking teenage
salesman when he sees me
eyeing a painting of a doe-eyed Dominican child.) At the
tiny alfresco
bars, bronze beachgoers shoot pool in their bikinis or sip
pina coladas and
agonize over whether to spend the afternoon windsurfing at
Cabarete Beach or
go for a glass-bottom boat ride. Along the edges of
everything, musicians gather
with a single banjo and a few homemade drums for impromptu
jam sessions that
would make many professional entertainers green with envy.
Just a few feet
away but divided by a string of palm trees and a stubby
stone wall sits the
mile-long beach, where loungers and water frolickers seem
oblivious to the nearby chaos.
Also a world
apart from the beach activity is Judith Kibel, another
longtime resident who lives in a nearby condominium complex.
Like Felix
Koch, Kibel and her husband were among the first groups of
Jews to arrive
in Sosua, well before it became a prime vacation
destination. Their
50-passenger boat docked in the capital city of Santo
Domingo, 150 miles
to the south. "As we were riding into Sosua, I saw
little houses where the
floor was earth and the beds were hammocks," says
Kibel, who was 27 at
the time. "I said to my husband, 'Here, I will not
live.'"
Five decades and
two grown children later, Judith Kibel is
still very much a part of Sosua. Her tidy first-floor
apartment is adorned with
local art, hand-painted butterflies (a symbol of good luck
in the Dominican Republic),
and photographs of herself and her son and daughter, who now
live in the United States.
Her Spanish is flawless, although she says, "German is
my language-it's still
what I think in." Every afternoon, Kibel can be seen
strolling down Calle Pedro Clisante
on her way to lunch at Morua Mai, a thatched-roof restaurant
in the heart of Sosua.
A former piano teacher and violinist from
Vienna, Kibel says that one of
the hardest things about crossing the ocean so many years
ago was leaving
the sweet music of her native city. Her eyes light up as she
produces a
carefully preserved program from an orchestra performance
she attended last
year in Santo Domingo. "They performed the music of
Mozart, Bach,
and Rachmaninoff," she says. "It was fantastic,
fantastic."
In this country
that is known as the birthplace of sexy, saucy meringue,
such shining enthusiasm over classical music seems wistfully
out of place.
But by this time I am used to the anomalies that appear
around every corner
of Sosua - menus made up of an entertaining jumble of
Spanish, English,
and German; sleek Cherokee Jeeps parked next to motor
scooters
in desperate need of mufflers; and the coincidental fact
that this haven
from Nazi oppression is now a prime vacation spot for
non-Jewish Germans.
Perhaps it's
this oddly eclectic mixture that has attracted an
international expatriate crowd to settle on Sosua’s shores
over the last
decade. Among the town's 8,000 residents is a healthy
sampling of
Americans, Canadians, and Europeans, who have opened
specialty shops
and bed-and-breakfast inns, or retired amid palm trees,
turquoise bays, and
subtropical temperatures.
At Viva Galeria de
Arte, Vancouver native Ann McLellan makes international
visitors immediately comfortable with her laid-back
friendliness and shopping
advice ("Coffee, vanilla, and cocoa are the best buys
on the
island, but you can get them at Playero supermarket for much
less than the
gift shops," she offers.) McLellan and her husband,
Robert, opened their
well-stocked Dominican and Haitian art gallery five years
ago in a small
shopping plaza that used to be the sleeping barracks for
Jewish male settlers.
Around the corner
at Patrick's Silversmith, owner Patrick Fagg, who
crossed the Atlantic from Uganda 21 years ago, is one of the
town's most
knowledgeable sources on amber. The nearby Cibao Valley is
the world's
second largest producer of the fossilized tree sap, which
Fagg fashions
into jewelry and sells in his small shop. And the Panaderia
Alemana Moser,
a deli/bakery owned by a recently arrived German couple,
sells thick German
bread and pastries.
After a day or
so of such contrasts, it comes as little surprise to enter one of
only two synagogues in this overwhelmingly Catholic country.
What is unexpected
is the beauty and serenity of the pine-paneled room, which
is not much bigger
than an average living room in the States. Renovated in 1990
for the town's 50th
birthday celebration, it is one of the few remaining
original buildings constructed
by the settlers. Shabbat services are still performed every
Friday, although
attendance ranges from a handful of locals to a full house
of curious vacationers.
Last year, a couple from Boston who had read about the Sosua
settlement flew
down to be married in the synagogue. "They invited the
whole community,"
says Ivonne Milz, the daughter of settlers who has amiably
agreed to show me
the synagogue and the Jewish Museum next door.
Milz and her
friend, Gisela Engstrom, lead the way to the sun-streaked
museum, which was dedicated in 1990 in honor of Sosua's 50th
anniversary.
Sitting in all its rusted glory in one corner is the town's
first
switchboard, the refugees' only connection to what was
happening abroad.
Lining the walls are enlarged black and white photos of the
first settlers
milking cows, holding babies, and otherwise going about
their new lives.
Engstrom, one of Felix Koch's three daughters, points to a
photograph of
her father working on his five-acre farm, which he received
upon his
arrival (each settler was expected to eventually pay for his
homestead). A
sign near the door reads, "This community was a living
demonstration of
working spirit of faith in fife and of the conviction that
progress is
always possible." As if in testimony to this statement,
recent color
snapshots of local children at community celebrations of
Hannukah and
Purim are displayed in the middle of the room. Included
among the smiling
faces are the sons and daughters of Milz and Engstrom.
These two young
women and their children represent Sosua's future - the
ones with the power to keep the "working spirit"
alive or let it fade like
the brilliant Dominican sun into the bahia. Both women,
whose bobbed
hairstyles and white jeans would fit comfortably in any U.S.
or European
city, live nearby with their families and have no plans to
leave the area.
Milz is married to a dairy executive who is also the child
of one of
Sosua's founders. Engstrom is married to a Swedish man who
works in the
match factory in nearby Puerto Plata and is raising her two
daughters
Jewish. They used to think their community would disappear,
due to
intermarriage and restlessness. But that's not the case
anymore, says Milz.
"Some of the children will leave, but some will stay
and make homes like we
did. It is in our conscience."
Other descendants
of settlers, like Sylvie Papernick, find themselves
being drawn back to their primitive roots, after years of
living and working
abroad. Papernick's parents, Otto and Irene, had long since
moved the
family to the States when she accompanied her father back
here for the
town's 40th anniversary celebration in 1980. Papernick
returned several
years later (by then her father had passed away) to build an
inn on a
property across the street from the former home of her
childhood best
friend. Comfortable, cheap, and amazingly peaceful, her
Tropix Hotel is one
of those out-of-the-way finds that energizes travelers. On
weeknights, the
lighted swimming pool is the centerpiece for delicious
homecooked dinners
served by candlelight for the rock-bottom price of five
dollars. After a
meal of dumplings and Chinese meat balls, Papernick - who
seems at least
a decade younger than her 52 years - chats about her past,
present, and
future. Growing up in Sosua, she says, was nothing less than
idyllic. "It
was a wonderland for kids," she says. "There were
no cars. I had my own
goat." But the family left when Papernick was 11 or 12
for the broader
opportunities of New York. Despite years of living in the
United States and
traveling abroad, she says she has never lost her affinity
for the town
that brought her parents together. Otto and Irene Papernick
met on the
two-and-a-half-month trip to Sosua and married soon after
their arrival.
"You feel a kinship," their daughter says.
That sense of
attachment carries over to Sosua's visitors - although I
found the reasons for it more difficult to pin down. Does it
come from the
peacefulness that envelops me as I dine high on a cliff
overlooking the
beach at the elegant Marco Polo Club? Is it from being led
eagerly by the
hand by a little boy to his father's tiny souvenir shop,
which doubles as
the family's living room? Or does it come in the form of 81
year-old Judith
Kibel, who bids me goodbye with the traditional European
kiss on each
cheek and a heartfelt "I wish you a good life"?
Maybe I should
confine my modern-day sentiments to the words of former
Dominican president Juan Bosch, who visited the settlement
in 1962 and
remarked, "I wish we had more Sosuas."
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Reprinted with
the permission of the author, Laura Randall, and
American Eagle. This article appeared in the Winter 1995
issue of
LATITUDES SOUTH the American Eagle "in flight"
magazine
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