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Zwi Migdal was a criminal organization of Jewish gangsters who specialized in worldwide prostitution and trafficking of women from the shtetls in Eastern Europe.

The Zwi Migdal organization operated from the 1860s to 1939. In its heyday, after the First World War, it had four hundred members in Argentina alone. Its annual turnover was fifty million dollars at the turn of the century. Its center was Buenos Aires, with branch offices in other locations in Argentina, Brazil, New York City, Warsaw, South Africa, India, and China.

The Zwi Migdal Organization reached its peak in the 1920s when some 430 rufianes, or pimps, controlled 2,000 brothels with 4,000 women in Argentina alone. The organization's success stemmed from the fact that its members were bound by rules that were "based on order, discipline, and honesty." The network was well-organized and members cooperated closely to protect their interests.

Origin of the name

Originally called the Varsovia (Warsaw) Jewish Mutual Aid Society, the organization changed its name to Zwi Migdal on May 7, 1906, after the Polish ambassador filed an official complaint to the Argentine authorities regarding the use of the name Warsaw. The association's name was chosen to honor Luis Zvi Migdal, one of its founders.

Modus operandi

The organization lured girls and young women from Europe in several ways. For instance, a well-mannered and elegant-looking man would appear in a poor Jewish shtetl (village) in Poland or Russia. He would advertise his search for young women to work in the homes of wealthy Jews in Argentina by posting an ad in the local synagogue. Fearful of pogroms and often in desperate economic circumstances, the trusting parents would send their daughters away with these men, hoping to give them a fresh start.

Another popular ruse was to find pretty girls and offer to marry them, usually in a ceremony known as a "stille chupah" (Yiddish expression meaning a quick wedding ceremony performed without a rabbi). At other times, the recruiter would arrange for a fake wedding with a fake rabbi.

The girls, aged mostly 13 to 16, packed a small bag, bade their families farewell and boarded ships to Argentina, believing that they were on their way toward a better future. However, they soon learned the bitter truth. Their period of training as sex slaves, which often started on the ship, was cruel and brutal. 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, with no friends or knowledge of the language, they went to work, their bodies belonging to the Jewish rufianes.

Prostitutes who failed to satisfy their clients were beaten, fined or sent to work in provincial houses. Every business transaction was logged. The rufianes held a "meat market" in which newly arrived girls were paraded naked in front of traders in places such as the Hotel Palestina or Cafe Parisienne. These activities went on undisturbed because the brothels were frequented by government officials, judges and journalists. City officials, politicians and police officers were bribed. The pimps had powerful connections everywhere. The largest brothelss in Buenos Aires housed as many as 60 to 80 sex slaves. Although there were brothels all over Argentina, most were in Buenos Aires, in the Jewish quarter on Junin Street.

Rejection by Jewish community

As the pimps prospered, the Argentinian Jewish community rejected them. Articles condemning the rufianes appeared in the local press, and in 1885, the community established a Jewish Association for the Protection of Women and Girls. Ads posted on the walls of the Jewish quarter warned locals not to rent to the rufianes. Nevertheless, the pimps aspired to be part of the community. The wealthiest of them would select a new girl every night to take to the Jewish theater, which was the center of Jewish cultural life in Buenos Aires.

Despite their trade, Zwi Migdal members donated funds for the construction of synagogues and other community buildings. Community leaders were divided as to the attitude that they should take toward the donations, some fearing that accepting "dirty" money would legitimize the exploitation of women. One night, Nahum Sorkin, a well-known Zionist, stood outside the theater and physically stopped the rufianes from entering the Jewish theater. Next, they were banned from synagogues, and later refused burial in the Jewish cemetery.

Splinter groups

Zwi Migdal later split and a splinter group, led by Simon Rubinstein (not the chess player) established its own society named Ashkenazum. Once officially recognized, both associations bought plots of land on the outskirts of Buenos Aires and established their own cemeteries there.

Downfall

The rufianes' audacity eventually led to their downfall when they tried to prevent Raquel Liberman (Łódź, Poland 1900-Buenos Aires, Argentina 1935), a former prostitute, from going into business. She had emigrated with her husband to Argentina, but he soon died, leaving her with two infant sons. Her in-laws forced her to work as a prostitute for five years. Afterwards, she used her savings to open an antique shop which was raided by local pimps, who did not want to allow a former prostitute to become an independent businesswoman.

In desperation, Lieberman contacted Superintendent Julio Alsogaray, whom she had heard would not accept bribes from Zwi Migdal and was looking for ways to destroy the organization. Slipping into his office one day, she gave a detailed account of the connections among the various pimps in the organization management. Her testimony was sufficient to launch an extensive investigation. Unlike previous occasions where little or nothing was accomplished, the results of the investigation reached a judge, Dr. Rodriguez Ocampo, who was also immune to Zwi Migdal bribes.

A lengthy trial ended in September 1930 with 108 convictions. "The very existence of the Zwi Migdal Organization directly threatens our society," Judge Ocampo wrote in his verdict, handing down long prison sentences. The pimps appealed their sentences from prison in January 1931, and senior Justice Ministry officials released all but three of them. After this was reported in the media, public outrage convinced the authorities to rescind the releases. Later, hundreds of pimps were deported to Uruguay, but slowly returned over the years, one by one.

Jewish crime syndicates and benevolent associations in Brazil

The first boatload of young Jewish women arrived in Brazil in 1867. In 1872, the imperial Brazilian government extradited some Jewish pimps and prostitutes, but the criminal activities continued. By 1913, there were 431 brothels controlled by the Zwi Migdal in Rio de Janeiro. They were concentrated in a few streets near downtown, in the Mangue neighborhood, a city zone where prostitution was commonplace and legally authorized.

The prostitutes, who were mostly illiterate, destitute and despised by the mainstream Jewish community, banded together to form their own mutual-aid societies. In 1906 in Rio de Janeiro, they formed the Chesed Shel Emes or Society of True Charity, formally registered as Associação Beneficente Funerária e Religiosa Israelita - ABFRI - (Jewish Benevolent Association for Burial and Religion). Despite their troubled lives and social handicaps, they never forgot that they were Jews. Although this organization was created and run by women who were being exploited by Zwi Migdal and other Jewish crime syndicates, they had no other connection to criminal activities.

During the Jewish crime syndicates' heyday, several Brazilian cities had their own Chesed Shel Emes associations and several rabbis were employed by those communities.

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 exploited by 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.
• See also Patricia Suarez's trilogy Las polacas, Colección teatro vivo, Buenos Aires 2002, several versions of which appeared on the Buenos Aires stage.
• Also treated in a 1994 novel by Horacio Vázquez Rial: Frontera Sur (Southern Frointier)

Film references

• The plot of the 1991 film Naked Tango directed by Leonard Schrader is based on the activities of Zwi Migdal. The film's heroine assumes the identity of an Eastern European woman traveling to Buenos Aires to meet a prospective husband and in the process gets herself caught up in the prostitution network. The film, however, is motivated more by sensationalism than by indignation.

• The 2001 Brazilian film Sonhos Tropicais (Tropical Dreams) directed by Andre Sturm and based on a book written by Moacyr Scliar depicts the hardships of an innocent eastern Europe Jewish girl, played by Brazilian actress Carolina Kasting, lured by fake promises of a marriage in Rio de Janeiro who ends up in Zwi Migdal prostitution network against a backdrop of the turbulent political agitation that swept Rio de Janeiro in the early 1900s known as "Revolta da Vacina" (Vaccine Revolt).

See also

• Sexual slavery
• History of the Jews of Argentina

References

1. Case of the Zwi Migdal Society

Bibliography

• Vincent, Isabel - Bodies and Souls, Harper Collins ed., New York. ISBN 0060090235 / ISBN 978-0060090234

• Kushnir, Beatriz - Baile de Máscaras, Imago Editora, São Paulo. ISBN 8531204852

• Glickman, Nora - The Jewish White Slave Trade and the Untold Story of Raquel Liberman ISBN 0-203-90512-1 / ISBN 978-0-203-90512-8

External links

• Argentine Jewry's dark secret

• 1860 establishments
• Prostitution
• Slavery
• Organized crime groups