In the Land of Vitzliputzli: German-Speaking Jews in Latin America

Abstract

What is the German-Jewish legacy in Latin America? It is not easy to define: Is it a matter of money, of heirs, of intellectual, linguistic, religious, or cultural heritage? And how are we to deal with the hyphen?1 Can we separate the history of German-speaking Jews from the other, East European and Sephardic, Jews who established communities on the continent in Latin America? Or from the history of the “locals” („Hiesigen”) who to some extent welcomed the immigrants and in turn undertook joint projects with them? Should we examine the history of German-speaking Jewish immigrants separately from that of Jewish “political” exiles—although both groups sometimes worked, wrote, and suffered together? What about those who were only “partly” Jewish, from the halachic point of view, or those who for a long time paid no heed to their Jewishness and began to deal with the issue only after the intensification of anti-Semitic policies in Europe? And what about those who, despite their origins, saw themselves more as communists or socialists than as Jews? To all this complexity we should bear in mind that we are talking about Latin America, a continent of more than twenty countries—with very different histories, social structures, and political conditions.