Jews of the Caribbean

Of the many ways Jews tried to get out of Nazi Germany and Europe prior to WW2, a few stand out in my mind.

1) Rafael Trujillo was willing to take in 100,000 Jews from Germany at the Evian Conference. He wanted right-wing agrarian minded Jews in particular (kind of ironic given how most Jews in Germany were urban professional SDP supporters) and it was part of his desire to "whiten" the population of the DR. Let's say here Trujillo just decides more immigration is better in general and is less picky about what sorts of folks come in - maybe he opts to increase the number of refugees over time to 150,000 or 200,000 people. Trujillo donated 220 square kilometers around the city of Sosua to the effort.

2) Dutch possessions in the Caribbeans (Aruba, Bonaire, Curacao, Sint Maarten, and Surinam) did not actually require formal visas to relocate to - just approval from Governors in the area upon landing. Some 2200 Jews fled from Lithuania to the Dutch Caribbean in 1940 with the support of the Dutch Consul in Lithuania via this method. The Dutch issue visas en masse in the Baltics.

3) Interior Secretary Harold Ickes was the person who pushed historically for relocating Jewish refugees to Alaska. Interestingly, immigration to territories and commonwealths was handled by the Interior Secretary rather than the the State Department (which was in charge of immigration at the time). Ickes, who oversaw the Virgin Islands, wanted to bring 10,000 Jews to the US Virgin Islands but was blocked by Breckinridge Long in the State Department. Let's say he's able to do this.

4) The tragedy of the MS St Louis, where some 900+ Jewish refugees tried to get off in Havana (and Cordell Hull tried to convince the Cubans to let them in) but Cuba denied them entry - then the US denied them entry as well. This trip would infamously go on to be known as the voyage of the damned.

5) In 1939, following the failure of the Evian Conference, Britain offered Guyana as a place for Jewish settlement. The area they were offering was considered for Assyrian resettlement (20,000 people) in 1935, so I imagine that at least that many people would be relocated.

6) Costa Rica at Evian was the only country other than the Dominican Republic to be open to letting in a large number of Jews from Central Europe. The Refugee Economic Corporation purchased a good amount of land in Guanacaste for the resettlement of Jewish refugees.

So, what if a great number of Jews from Germany, Austria, Czechia, and the Baltics were able to get out of Europe by relocation to the Caribbean?

What would be the knock-on effects for the places the Jews relocate to?
 
Though the following would have entailed a pre-1900 POD or few.

1) What if Rafael Trujillo's Dominican Republic was composed of all of Hispaniola rather than half?

2) What if the Dutch possessions in the Caribbean included all of the Guianas?

And how would either effect the number of refugees the ATL Dominican Republic and "Whole" Dutch Guianas was willing to accept at the time?
 

Deleted member 67076

Trujillo wasn't actually all that picky of the ideology of who came, the difficulty lies in that just not many people wanted to come over due to most of the jobs being urban and the Dominican Republic was at the time still in the process of urbanization.

That said, a shift in immigration policy and increased subsidies for public housing to house immigrants coming in alongside sending boats to Europe, possibly even a deal with the German government to quietly accept Jewish settlement (as an easy way for the Nazi's to confiscate Jewish property) would increase immigration. The result is a massive capital influx into the Dominican Republic- more industrialization, better urban planning, expansion of heavy industry and shipping, better postwar connections with the German government, etc. Its basically replicating the same economic effects the capital injection of Israel on a smaller scale.

Should Israel not form for whatever reason, then the Jewish community of Santo Domingo would be a popular place to retire to on account of the climate, cheap cost of living, and virtually unheard of antisemitism.

1) What if Rafael Trujillo's Dominican Republic was composed of all of Hispaniola rather than half?
You need a POD before the Treaty of Ryswick for that to happen. Trujillo was not interested in conquering all of Hispaniola.
 

Deleted member 9338

The influx of human capitol would of been significant. In many cases Germany was trying to kill their best and brightest. I can see the greater Caribbean region being a more developed part of the world. I can also see Judaism becoming more secular.
 
I do believe it would have lead to a greater development for the dr.
Perhaps Other refugee, bulwarks could lessen the holocaust.
 
A few things probably should be noted:

1. Emigration from Nazi Germany was not exactly a cut and dried thing. Even if one of the abovementioned scenarios worked out a sizeable number of Jews aren't going to move due to ideology, family, and a host of other reasons. Though certainly Jewish Germans were inhibited from emigrating due to a lack of space, a surprisingly high proportion did especially in the younger cohort (where roughly 80% of the community's youth managed to escape the Holocaust).

2. Scholarly works on Sosua note that one of the biggest barriers to Jewish immigration to the DR was the US State Department who was worried about the DR becoming a jumping off ground for mass Jewish emigration to the United States and about the Jews being German spies (I know this sounds incredibly dumb and unrealistic, but it's one of those cases where truth is indeed stranger than fiction!) It took a while to start everything up and so by the time refugees started arriving in Sosua the window for mass immigration had pretty much closed.

Now, in OTL around 1947/1948 Trujillo began making noises that he would accept any number and type of Jewish refugees provided that the JDC was willing to support them for a period of time IIRC. Had he done this a decade earlier, the JDC would likely have leapt on the opportunity as a way to save as many as possible from Nazi Germany, but as it was by the time Trujillo makes the offer the Territorialist project had pretty much died out and all efforts focused on the state of Israel. Some have speculated that Trujillo's change of heart was due to his increased personal control over the economy of the Dominican Republic. IMO the best way to get this to work is to speed up Trujillo's accumulation of control over the economy and the country as a whole so that he feels like he did in 1947 in the 1930s. The history of the DR isn't my forte, but I don't think this is beyond the scope of possibility.

If Trujillo's attitude could be coupled with international support I think this project could work. First off, a deal would need to be made with the US to basically make Jewish immigration from the DR to the United States impossible. Then, deals could be made with the UK, France to help them deal with their own Jewish refugee problems. The near prohibition of Jewish immigration from the DR to the United States is probably a non-starter for most Jews in Nazi Germany but Kristallnacht might be enough to encourage some to move. Unfortunately given that most of the Holocaust's victims were from Poland and the Soviet Union, I don't think an uptick in pre-1939 emigration is going to reduce the death toll substantially. What likely happens is that the DR becomes the landing spot for Jewish refugees to emigrated in OTL but ended up in other places.

3. Having looked at the documents in the British Archives regarding the Guyana plan, I can tell you that the region accepting 20k settlers with a POD in the 1930s is completely unrealistic. Most of the population of Guyana lives along the coast in OTL and the region they were proposing to settle the (Armenian, Assyrian, Jewish) refugees in was in the south of the country close to the Brazillian border. That area has just over 20,000 people living in it today and only supported around 5k in the 1920s and 30s. An earlier POD is needed to expand infrastructure into Southern Guyana at a "Goldilocks point" just early enough to have things ready for the refugees but late enough that the region isn't flooded with another group of people.
 
Should Israel not form for whatever reason, then the Jewish community of Santo Domingo would be a popular place to retire to on account of the climate, cheap cost of living, and virtually unheard of antisemitism

I'm skeptical that would necessarily be true. The influx of refugees might provoke racism, not prevent it.


I'm also skeptical of the "third world country is improved by European settlers" angle to this scheme.
 

Deleted member 67076

I'm skeptical that would necessarily be true. The influx of refugees might provoke racism, not prevent it.
The Dominican Republic has never had any difficulty in integrating its Jewish populations. Even amongst the worst and most authoritarian and reactionary leaders such Pedro Santana, Buenaventura Baez, Trujillo- all had Jews in their higher echelon. Rothschild's bank opened an office in 1837 in Santo Domingo precisely because they noticed how amicable the local population was.

An influx of refugees wouldn't do that because those refugees were white and educated, both highly valued things. This is also not the first time the Dominicans have had to deal with a sudden influx of people.

I'm also skeptical of the "third world country is improved by European settlers" angle to this scheme.
When literacy is low and most of the immigrants coming in have education, the economy improves as they find new niches to integrate themselves in. The Dominican Republic's economy was built and transformed by countless waves of skilled migration- from French bankers entering el Cibao to Italians building La Romana to Cubans building the Sugar Economy to Syrians starting cottage industries. A hundred thousand Jews from Germany would merely be continuing this path with little difficulty.
 
The DR gets better until Trijillo gets older and shits an egg and inevitably tries to imprison anyone who starts speaking out against him, which leads to him either causing an exile of Jews to a state of Israel or somewhere else, or has Trijillo get shoved out a window or something and then it really depends on who takes power next.
 
You need a POD before the Treaty of Ryswick for that to happen. Trujillo was not interested in conquering all of Hispaniola.

Obviously the POD would be way before Trujillo.

The main idea would be that an ATL Dominican Republic composed of all of Hispaniola would allow Trujillo to offer refuge to a larger number of refugees compared to OTL.
 

Deleted member 67076

Obviously the POD would be way before Trujillo.

The main idea would be that an ATL Dominican Republic composed of all of Hispaniola would allow Trujillo to offer refuge to a larger number of refugees compared to OTL.
Having the entirely of Hispaniola under Spanish rules would butterfly away naziism as we know it given you deprive the French of a major source of income that would drastically alter their Revolution and subsequently the development of nationalism.
 
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