Which Syrian Jews begging to resettle in Argentina intended to stay there, and which just wanted out of Syria? The answers lie in the welfare organizations’ archives

The mass Jewish emigration from Russia and Poland around the turn of the 20th century was a historic upheaval with far-reaching social, political, and humanitarian consequences. Many organizations were created to resettle the staggering number of emigrants, resulting in archives full of fascinating stories. 

Soprotimis (Sociedad Protectora de Inmigrantes Israelitas) was founded in Argentina in 1922 to absorb the many thousands of Jews arriving from eastern Europe. The organization’s archive includes no fewer than 26,000 files of aid requests and subsequent correspondence. From the mid-1930s, however, most Jews applying to the organization were seeking help finding relatives to vouch for them, enabling them to escape Europe. And once World War II ended, the files swelled with correspondence regarding Holocaust survivors searching for family and acquaintances in Latin America.

A different story altogether, spanning several files, concerns eleven Jewish families from Syria. Forty-nine people in all, they requested Soprotimis’ assistance in fleeing the country in 1958. The families were staying in Qamishli, a town not far from the Turkish border, awaiting permits to leave Syria. The correspondence describes them as farmers. 

The Argentine government was then encouraging farm workers to settle the great wastelands of Patagonia. So the plan was to send the Syrians to the Jewish Colonization Association (JCA) agricultural colony founded by Baron Maurice de Hirsch in the southern Argentinian province of Rio Negro – on the assumption that they were a perfect match for Argentina’s needs, and vice versa.

In fact, the initial appeal to Soprotimis came from the Sephardic community in Buenos Aires, one of whose donors was related to the Syrian families and therefore negotiated on their behalf with the welfare organizations. 

The group’s exodus dragged on from 1959 to 1962 and involved the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (HIAS)as well as Soprotimis. Much of the relevant correspondence between the two organizations is labeled “classified.” Between the lines, it emerges that Jews were actually exploiting Argentina’s immigration policy to get out of Syria and settle in Israel. But who exactly knew that, and who was simply taken advantage of?