Zwi Migdal
Zwi Migdal was a Jewish pimp organization whose members lured Eastern European Jews to South America at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century in order to have them work as prostitutes there. The organization was mainly active in Argentina and Brazil .
The organization was officially founded in 1906 under the name Varsovia ( Warsaw ). One method of attracting new prostitutes was that the pimps traveled to the shtetls of Poland or Hungary , where, as wealthy men, they asked for the hand of girls and young women and assured the family a good future for their daughter. In South America the girls then had to work as prostitutes. The Jewish prostitutes were called Polacas (Polish women). At the end of the 1920s, the organization is said to have consisted of 500 members who had 2,000 brothels and 30,000 women among themselves. Because both pimps and prostitutes met with opposition in the Jewish community, the organization had to build its own synagogues and cemeteries .
After an intervention by the Polish ambassador, they had to rename themselves. They chose the name Zwi Migdal, after the founder of the organization. In 1930 the organization was broken up by the authorities.
literature
- Irene Stratenwerth, Esther Sabelus; Simone Eick , Hermann Simon (eds.): The Yellow Note: Girl trafficking 1860 to 1930. German Emigration Center, Bremerhaven 2012, ISBN 978-3-00-038801-9 .
- Myrtha Schalom: La Polaca. Inmigración, rufianes y esclavas a comienzos del siglo XX . Grupo Editorial Norma, Buenos Aires, 2003, ISBN 987-545-113-4 ; Galerna, Buenos Aires, 2013, ISBN 978-950-556-588-7 .
- Nora Glickman : The Jewish White Slave Trade and the Untold Story of Raquel Liberman . Garland Publishing, London / New York 2000, ISBN 0-8153-3300-5 .
- Fiction
- María Inés Krimer : Sangre Kosher. Ruth Epelbaum and the Zwi Migdal . Translation from the Spanish by Peter Kultzen . Zurich: Diaphanes, 2014 ISBN 978-3-03734-492-7
- Luca Di Fulvio: When life found our dreams . Translation from the Italian Katharina Schmidt, Barbara Neeb. Cologne: Bastei Lübbe, 2018 ISBN 978-3-404-17600-7
Web links
- Jewish prostitution in South America: The ordeal of the "white slaves " , article on one day , contemporary history portal by Spiegel Online
- Rona Kupferboim: Argentine Jewry's dark secret on ynetnews.com on May 25, 2007