DOMINICAN REPUBLIC - Haven for Jews Fleeing Nazis
Sitting inside a small wood-frame shul just around the corner from Playa Alicia, where tourists sip rum punch while watching catamarans glide by, Joe Benjamin recounted one of the most uplifting but often forgotten stories of Jewish survival during the Holocaust.
“I was bar mitzvahed right here,” he said, pointing to a podium at the front of the sanctuary in La Sinagoga de Sosua. It was built in the early 1940s to meet the spiritual needs of about 750 German and Austrian Jews.
At the time, the Dominican Republic was the only country in the world that offered asylum to large numbers of Jewish refugees, earning the moniker “tropical Zion.”
At the 1938 Evian Conference in France, attended by representatives of 32 countries to address the problem of German and Austrian Jewish refugees wanting to flee Nazi persecution, the Dominican Republic announced it would accept up to 100,000 Jewish refugees.
“When they came here, the Jews found no antisemitism at all in this country,” said Benjamin. “They were as free as anybody. They had a wonderful life.”
-www.jta.org, 26 April 2023
Arno's Commentary
This article is somewhat unusual, because the subject is rarely ever mentioned in publicly available literature or media.
While the world had closed its doors to Jewish refugees attempting to escape Hitler’s Germany, the article states, “At the time, the Dominican Republic was the only country in the world that offered asylum to large numbers of Jewish refugees.” In plain words, this means the entire world failed to do what the heathen did for shipwrecked Paul and the 276 survivors: “The islanders showed us unusual kindness. They built a fire and welcomed us all because it was raining and cold” (Acts 28:2 NIV).
Arno Froese is the executive director of Midnight Call Ministries and editor-in-chief of the acclaimed prophetic magazines Midnight Call and News From Israel. He has authored a number of well-received books, and has sponsored many prophecy conferences in the U.S., Canada, and Israel. His extensive travels have contributed to his keen insight into Bible prophecy, as he sees it from an international perspective.
