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Zwi Migdal was a criminal organization of Jewish gangsters specialized in prostitution and trafficking of white women from the poor shtetls in Eastern Europe to the world. It operated from the 1860s to 1939. In its heyday, after the First World War, it counted with 400 members in Argentina alone, and made annual profit of 50 million dollars in the turn of the century. Its centre was Buenos Aires, with branch offices in several locations in Argentina and Brazil; New York City, NY; Warsaw, Poland; South Africa; India; and China.
Origin and Meaning of the name
Originally called Warsaw Jewish Mutual Aid Society, the organization changed its name to Zwi Migdal on May 7th, 1906, when the Polish Embassy made an official complaint to the Argentinian authorities regarding the use of the name Warsaw.
Zwi Migdal means "strong power" in yidish, and this name was chosen also to honor Luis Migdal, one of the first founders of the organization.
How Zwi Migdal Operated
The Zwi Migdal Organization reached its peak in the 1920s when some 430 rufianos or pimps controlled 2000 whorehouses with 4000 women in Argentina alone.
The Zwi Migdal was successful because its members were bound by internal rules that were "all based on order, discipline, and honesty." The network was well-organized and members cooperated closely to protect their interests.
The organization lured girls and young women from Europe in several ways. For instance, a well-mannered and elegant man would appear one day in a poor Jewish shtetl (village) in Poland or Russia. He would advertise his search for nice young women to work in the houses of rich Jews in Argentina by posting an ad in the local shul (synagogue). Fearful of more pogroms and often in desperate economic circumstances, parents would give their daughters away to these gentlemen, hoping to give them a new start. Another popular ruse was to find pretty girls and offer to marry them, usually in a "stille chupah" ceremony, a Yiddish expression meaning a quick wedding ceremony performed without a rabbi. Other times the "recruiter" would arrange for a fake wedding with a fake rabbi.
The girls, mostly aged 13 to 16, packed a small bag, bid their families farewell and boarded the ships to Argentina accompanied by a stranger, certain they were off to a better future. Their training period often started on the ship and was always a cruel and brutal affair. The young virgins were broken in - raped, beaten, starved and locked in cages. Some of them were married off to local men so that they could obtain entry visas. Far from their families, without friends or knowledge of the language, they started serving men, their bodies belonging to the Jewish rufianos.
Prostitutes that failed to satisfy their clients were beaten, fined or taken to work in provincial houses. Every business transaction was logged. The rufianos even held a "meat market" where newly arrived girls were paraded naked in front of traders in places such as Hotel Palestina or Cafe Parisienne. These activities went on undisturbed because they were frequented by government officials, judges and reporters. City officials, politicians and police officers were paid off. The pimps had powerful connections everywhere.
The largest bordellos of Buenos Aires housed as many as 60 to 80 sex slaves. There were bordellos all over Argentina, but most were in the big city, in the Jewish quarter on Junin Street.
Rejection by the "respectable Jewish community"
As the pimps prospered, the Argentinian Jewish community rejected them. Articles in the local press condemned them and, in 1885, the community established a Jewish Association for the Protection of Women and Girls. Ads posted on the walls in the Jewish quarter called on the locals not to rent their shops to the rufianos. On their part, the pimps very much wanted to be part of the community. The wealthiest among them used to pick a new girl every night and take her out to the Jewish theater, which was the center of cultural life in the city.
Despite their trade, the members of Zwi Migdal wanted be like the rest of the Jewish community. This is why they made donations, which made the community deliberate whether it wanted their money. On the one hand, the community needed money to build public buildings, but on the other hand, it was 'dirty' money and by taking it they feared they would be legitimizing or tacitly accepting the criminals' exploitation of women. This ended one night when Nahum Sorkin, a well-known Zionist activist, stood outside the theater and physically stopped the rufianos from entering the Jewish theather. Next, they were banned from the synagogues, and to top it all, they were refused burial in the Jewish cemetery.
Splinter groups
The organization later split and the splinter, led by Simon Rubinstein, established its own society named Ashkenazum. Once officially recognized, both associations bought plots of land on the outskirt of Buenos Aires and established their own cemeteries there.
Demise of the Organization
The rufianos' audacity eventually led to their demise. It happened when they refused to forgo their income from the work of one woman, Rachel Lieberman from Lódž, Poland. In desperation, she contacted Superintendent Julio Elsogray. She heard his name mentioned on the street as one who would not take Zwi Migdal's money and was actually looking for ways to destroy the organization. She slipped into his office one day and gave a detailed account of the connections among the various pimps in the organization management. Her testimony was reason enough to launch an extensive investigation. This time, unlike on previous occasions that led to nothing, the findings reached Dr. Rodriguez Ocampo, a judge who would not take Zwi Migdal bribes either.
The lengthy trial ended in September 1930, with 108 detainees. "The very existence of the Zwi Migdal Organization directly threatens our society," the judge wrote in his verdict, handing down long prison terms. Nevertheless, while in prison, the pimps pulled some old strings, appealed their sentences in January 1931, and senior Justice Ministry officials left only three of the convicts in jail, discharging the rest. When the media reported this, the public was very upset and pressured the authorities to reverse the discharge decision. Thereafter, hundred of pimps were deported to Uruguay. Over the years, they slowly returned one by one, but the era of the huge brothels ended.
Literary References
- Zwi Migdal was featured in I.B. Singer's "Scum" and Sholem Aleichem's "The Man from Buenos Aires."
- Zwi Migdal is also treated in a recent novel by Tomas Eloy Martinez: The Tango Singer (El Cantor del Tango), Buenos Aires (2004) Grupo Editorial Planeta S.A.I.C.
- Zwi Migdal's cemetery is the center of Nathan Englander's The Ministry of Special Cases, NY, Knopf ed.
- The life of one of the women under Zwi Migdal is the center of Ilan Sheinfeld's "The Tale of a Ring", only available in the original Hebrew מעשה בטבעת, Jerusalem, Keter publishers.
Sources and References
Vincent, Isabel - Bodies and Souls, Harper Collins ed., New York. ISBN-10: 0060090235 / ISBN-13: 978-0060090234
Kushnir, Beatriz - Baile de Máscaras, Imago Editora, Sao Paulo. ISBN: 8531204852
Glickman, Nora - The Jewish White Slave Trade and the Untold Story of Raquel Liberman ISBN10 : 0-203-90512-1 ISBN13 : 978-0-203-90512-8
External Links
Background Information
The first boatload of young Jewish women arrived in Brazil in 1867; by 1913, there were 431 brothels controlled by the Zwi Migdal in downtown Rio alone.
Three women - largely illiterate, bitterly poor and despised by the mainstream Jewish community - banded together to form their own benevolent society: the Chesed Shel Ermess, or Society of Truth. At the forefront were Sophia Chamys, Rachel Liberman and Rebecca Freedman, who also managed to get to a police station, and provide testimony which helped an honest cop destroy the Zwi Migdal in Argentina in the 1930s.
- Sophia Chamys - was 13 when her father arranged her marriage to a well-dressed stranger from Lodz. She died at the young age of 18. Sophia's "husband" was, in fact, a wheeler-dealer in an international prostitution ring - Zwi Migdal. Chamys ended up, locked in a whorehouse, despised and shunned by the more respectable members of the city's Jewish community, which refused even to give the prostitutes proper burials.
- Rebecca Freedman - became their leader (the women called her their queen) and made it her mission to perform the sacred tahara ceremony of washing the dead. Deeply religious, she died in either 1984 or 1986, at the age of 103.She was last president of the Society of Truth.
- Rachel Liberman - her statements to Lt. Julio Alsogaray, in Buenos Aires, Argentina, helped Argentinian police to dismantle the Zwi Migdal for a few months in that country. She was born in Poland, 1900 and died in Buenos Aires in 1935.
THE POLACAS ("POLISH WOMEN" in Portuguese) first organized in 1906, in Rio de Janeiro, setting up the Jewish Association for Charity, Burial and Religion (ABFRI). Their goals, they wrote in the charter, were: "To set up a synagogue, and there practice all the ceremonies of the Jewish religion. To grant sick members in need of treatment outside the city a third-class train ticket and three pounds sterling. To grant members a third-class funeral." In its heyday, the organization existed in several cities, and several rabbis, all since deceased, were in its employ.
link in french:
See also
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