The First Pioneers

I

The pages of the book you are now holding in your hand have been soaked in blood and tears. Every word you are reading is a Jewish sigh; every letter is a groan, an akh, a sound of moaning from its wounded soul.

The voice is the voice of Jacob! (Genesis 27:22). This echoes the old lamentation: Deliver me I pray thee, from the hand of my brother! (Genesis 32:12). . . . This is the sound of wailing coming from the first pioneers who emigrated from Russia in 1891 and, with the long-time legendary devotion of our martyred-nation, founded a new home in Argentina and fell into the hands of those against whom we are unable to stand (Lamentations 1:14).

In this book the reader can learn about a tiny portion of the difficult problems and anguish that we have suffered over the twenty years of this strange modern exile.

It is not our job to write the entire history of these twenty years of torment. This will be the job of future historians—they will write the history of the Jewish people in Argentina. They will add to this endlessly sad chapter of Jewish history the history of another twenty, or who knows how many dark and bitter years; with our book we just want to expose a small portion of the sufferings and pains of our soul in order to let the outside world know what necessitated and brought us to revolt against our oppressors; what inner pains provoked from us the fight for freedom, the fight against the benefactors of the Jewish Colonization Association (JCA) who provide us with money [donated by] the great Baron Hirsch.

II

The outside world is asking in astonishment: where did the quiet and peaceful colonists get the brazenness to challenge the leadership of JCA and press charges against them in a court of law? And what kind of violent pressure led to it that the colonists had to demand the titles (proofs of purchase) of their land with the help of the court? We will try to describe this with broad strokes for our brothers who are not familiar with the system of colonization.

In August 1891 we arrived in Argentina thanks to the generosity of the great philanthropist Baron Hirsch. A certain Dr. [William] Lowenthal, a baptized Jew, who was employed as [JCA] director by the Baron, received us in Buenos Aires. Already from his first speech we could sense his coldness toward Jewry. Against our will we were put on a train on a Sabbath morning and we were sent to Estación Casares. At the train station we were greeted by another convert, the administrator Gerbil. From this cursed moment on we were subjected to a long list of troubles, many, many humiliations and slaps in the face that we had to endure at the hands of the twenty-one administrators who have oppressed us over the past twenty years, and who still tyrannize us to this day. From that moment on they made us shed sweat and blood, a sea of Jewish blood . . . we have become victims and sacrifices: we have been murdered, slaughtered and stabbed, sacrificed on the altar of Jewish colonization.

On the same evening we set foot on the ground of Casares and began the slavery that we want to contest and fight now.

III

Let the day perish wherein I was born, and the night wherein it was said . . . (Job 3:3). Cursed be the night on which the apostate Gerbil drove us, poor immigrants, exhausted and weak from thirty-four days of sea travel, on foot for twenty verst [thirteen miles], from Casares to the Mauricio Colony. Four Latinos riding on horses drove us along the way, as if we were cattle, with their wild screams and the famous gaucho whistling that shudders the soul of every European. Nature also poured out its wrath on that night and sent terrible thunder and lightning upon us, and a terrible rain soaked us through completely. This is how we, three hundred miserable foreigners who had just stepped foot on this land for the first time, spent our first night wandering through the steppe until the next morning when we were all locked into a closet (pigpen). A black guard whom the administration ordered to stand at the entrance door had tested his sword on the head of the colonist Mr. Moyshe Dovid Grinman within the first twelve hours of our arriving in Mauricio. The land of Mauricio was soaked in Jewish blood. On the third day, colonist Dobshitz received a slap in the face from the administration’s agent—his face was bloodied!—because he asked for a second cookie to sate his hunger. A couple of weeks later Mr. Yisroel Bitilman got two of his teeth knocked out by the hired administration’s commissar. And after that began the killings and murders carried out by the gauchos. May the memory of the victims be blessed!

We endured everything with Jewish patience, knowing that colonization requires sacrifices. After a full year of hell during which we wallowed in tents, we were finally settled in groups of two, three, or four families, some 2–3 verst distance from each other.

IV

Yea, the sparrow has found a house, and the swallow a nest for herself (Psalms 84:3). Since we were exhausted and homeless, living in military tents for twelve months, we were very pleased that we could finally live in groups and have a home with a roof over our heads. We began to cultivate the land, not taking into consideration that by settling down in groups we were signing a death sentence on the education of our children as humans and as Jews. . . . Dispersed onto the territory of fifteen leagues [about 50 miles], far away from one another, completely buried in hard work, hungry and enslaved to the despotism of the administrators, we didn’t notice the tragedy that was creeping up on us. Slowly as the years passed the administration took control over all matters of our lives. They had limitless power over us; they ruled over our bodies as well as our souls. The doctors who came to our colony were supposed to dance to the music played by the administration, too. But since doctors did not yield and refused to be enslaved, there was a quick turnover, and we ended up without a doctor for months, sometimes years. Regrettably, we had to watch how our young women died in childbirth one after the other because there was no doctor.

But what could we do?