Sosúa
Coordinates: 19 ° 45 ′ N , 70 ° 31 ′ W
Sosúa is a city with around 70,000 inhabitants on the north coast of the Dominican Republic .
geography
The city is located in the province of Puerto Plata , about 10 kilometers east of the Puerto Plata airport . Sosúa has a large and beautiful beach ( Playa de Sosúa ) and has been a magnet for tourists from North America and Europe since the 1990s.
Sosúa consists of three districts: El Batey (tourist center), Sosúa Abajo and Los Charamicos . In Sosúa there are numerous hotel facilities and some diving centers. There are also closed housing estates of European residents, for example La Mulata or Perla Marina .
colonization
After the dictator Rafael Trujillo had around 25,000-27,000 black Haitians murdered in the "Parsley Massacre" ( Masacre del Perejil ) in October 1937 , he fell out of favor with his allies. As a gesture at the Évian Conference in 1938, he offered to take in 100,000 persecuted European Jews, also in order to achieve a racial illumination of the population. One of his requirements was that single men in particular should be admitted. The Dominican Republic Settlement Association (DORSA) was founded in preparation for the settlement . Using international donations, she bought Trujillo 26,000 acres of land for $ 100,000 (which paid only half for the remote land).
Of the two ships that were supposed to bring the refugees to the north coast, one ran into a mine and sank. Ultimately, only around 600–700 Jews settled in Sosúa, as one of the conditions was that the land had to be colonized and cultivated. Most of the refugees were doctors, lawyers, engineers and artists who were mostly inexperienced in agriculture. Some of the immigrants brought with them knowledge of milk and meat processing and thus laid a foundation for the Productos de Sosúa, a food industry that is still unique in the Caribbean today . The immigrants lived together like in a kibbutz , but this also isolated themselves. Only a few married Dominican women. At the end of the war a large part went to the USA. Some of the streets in Sosúa today bear the names of German Jews (for example Calle Dr. Rosen ).
Castillo Mundo King
The German dropout Rolf Schulz built from 1990 until his death in January 2018 on his castle Castillo Mundo King , which is located above the city. There you will find fantastic architecture, sculptures of different sizes and made of different materials. This museum, through which the creator himself liked to lead, is an attraction for beach vacationers from Germany and all over the world.
literature
- Hans-Ulrich Dillmann , Susanne Heim: Vanishing Point Caribbean. Jewish emigrants in the Dominican Republic . Ch. Links Verlag, Berlin 2009, ISBN 978-3-86153-551-5 .
- Invitation for racial reasons , in: Dominican Republic , Verlag Karl Baedeker, Ostfildern 2001, p. 202
Web links
- Information about Sosúa (English)
- Information about Sosúa (German)
- Portal for Expatleben in Sosua (English)
- Sosúa Virtual Museum , a website about Sosúa as a refuge for people persecuted as Jews