We Hope to Find a Way Out from Our Unpleasant Situation: Polish-Jewish Refugees and the Escape from Nazi Europe to Latin America

On September 26, 1940 Zygmunt Turkow, a Yiddish-speaking Polish actor and theater director, arrived in Argentina, escaping the war in Europe. Upon his arrival, Turkow tried his luck at establishing a new life for himself in Buenos Aires, which he knew because his theatre work had brought him there previously. But it was hard for him to focus on the arts. Local Jews worried about the situation in their "old countries," meaning that they barely had the time to think about producing and attending theater performances.² Turkow soon left for Brazil, living there for twelve years. In Recife, Turkow and his wife spent sleepless nights listening to BBC news reports filled with words such as "ghettos," "camps," and "crematoriums." The war in Europe had a tremendous effect on Turkow's psyche: he had nightmares, and his days were filled with pain and "thoughts of German cannibalism."³ The actor feared that Brazil might not be a safe refuge and that the Nazis could reach him from across the ocean. These fears were not unfounded. During the war, German submarines sank numerous Brazilian merchant ships, and thwarted Brazilian ship navigations systems.⁴ When invited to perform in Rio de Janeiro, Turkow had to travel by boat. Although the Brazilian navy provided an escort, the sense of danger remained ever-present.⁵

While Turkow's experiences may have been unusual—following the outbreak of World War II most Jews had no choice but to remain in Poland—they are nonetheless representative of a small group of relatively privileged Jews who had sufficient personal connections and financial means to arrange their escape. This article examines the fate of Jews who sought to enter Latin America during and shortly after World War II. I concentrate on the periods 1939–1941 and 1945–1948, and on Argentina as well as Brazil. The case studies I illuminate inform several broader themes including Argentine and Brazilian nationalism, antisemitism in Latin America, and the postwar refugee crisis. Attitudes towards Jewish refugees reveal that anti-Jewish policies hardly changed, even in the face of genocide in Europe. I focus on the dramatic experiences of those Jews who docked in Latin American ports, but were barred from disembarking. I analyze the experience of those who were smuggled illegally into Argentina.⁶ I examine how they took their fate into their own hands, thereby uncovering Jewish agency and lived experience during desperate time.

Jewish Refugees and Latin American Politics

Polish Jews' attempts to escape to Latin America between 1939 and 1941 followed a long history of Jewish migration to Latin America. Since the 1890s, impoverished and persecuted Eastern European Jews immigrated to Latin America, and for many it seemed to be a reasonable option with the Nazi threat looming on the horizon.⁷ Many Polish Jews had family members in Latin America who had the potential to assist them upon their arrival. Indeed, following the Nazi's rise to power in 1933, thousands of German Jews sought and found refuge in Argentina and Chile.⁸ When the war broke out in 1939, Latin America seemed to be sufficiently far away from Europe to provide safety for those seeking refuge. Argentina maintained its official neutrality for almost the entirety of the war, declaring war against Germany only in March 1945.⁹ Brazil had declared war against Nazi Germany three years earlier, in August 1942.

Yet in the first two years of the war the likelihood of finding refuge in Latin America appeared slim.¹⁰ In Argentina, quotas introduced in 1930, in the wake of a right-wing takeover, severely curtailed Jewish immigration. After 1938, new immigration laws, which were racially based, made it virtually impossible for Jews to enter as immigrants.¹¹ In Brazil, president Getúlio Vargas and minister of foreign affairs Osvaldo Aranha introduced a policy in 1937 that effectively banned Jewish immigration. Circular 1,127 prohibited people of "Semitic origin" from obtaining visas. The result was a seventy-five percent drop in Jewish immigration...