“Protecting the Jewish Daughters”: Transnational Responses to the Interwar Migration of Polish Jewish Women to Argentina

• In Event: Rethinking Polish Jewish Immigration to Latin America

Abstract

“Polaca” in Spanish simply means “a Polish woman,” but in the early twentieth century it had a very different connotation – a Jewish prostitute. The popular association between Jews and the sex industry in Argentina raised suspicions about the moral conduct and sexual behavior of Polish Jewish women arriving in interwar Buenos Aires. The Argentine state and the Argentine Jewish community treated virtually all Jewish female migrants from Poland with prejudice, and attempted to limit their admission to Argentine society. The interwar Polish state and Polish Jewish organizations established to “protect women” and aid migrants took similar steps, and sought to extend their control over highly mobile Jewish women.

This paper departs from the standard narrow focus on female Polish Jewish immigrants in Argentina from the perspective of the sex industry. Instead, drawing on the Argentine Yiddish press, the correspondence of Polish government ministries, and the records of Argentine and Polish Jewish organizations such as Ezras Noshim and Sopromitis, this paper situates the experiences of Polish Jewish women within the broader contexts of migration flows, labor markets, and family networks. It argues that the paternalistic and prejudiced discourses espoused by Jewish organizations and the Argentine and Polish states alike negatively impacted Polish Jewish female immigrants, who already found themselves in unfavorable situations upon their arrival in Argentina. Ironically, these organizations and states’ self-appointed mission to “protect women” exposed Polish Jewish immigrant women to the exploitation of strangers and even close relatives. By exploring these forms of exploitation, this paper shows how ostensibly protective measures of states and Jewish communal organizations not only limited women’s freedom and opportunities but had the opposite results than intended –making Jewish women more vulnerable to prostitution. As such, this paper offers a new interpretation on Jewish participation in prostitution and presents a more critical perspective of the Jewish fight against sex trafficking than is usually found in the scholarly literature on the subject.

Author

• Aleksandra Jakubczak, Columbia University