Jarabacoa: Mountain refuge
Barbara Bandler Steinmetz
Transcript
Barbara: They [the settlers] had dysentery, and they had terrible bad bite-- bites from the-- from the animals, from the-- from the mosquitoes and the flying critters. And-- and they-- and they got malaria and heart disease. And my mother became severely heart diseased. And the doctor told her that if she didn't get out of this climate, that she would not make it. And so my parents, once again, had to do something that was very creative. They made an agreement with the DORSA, the-- the resettlement association-- Dominican Republic Resettlement Association-- to open up an R&R place, a little hotel way up in the mountains. It just so happens that-- that the Dominican Republic has the highest mountain in the West Indies. It's not that high, but it certainly was not at sea level, as was Sosúa.
"My mother became severely heart diseased. And the doctor told her that if she didn't get out of this climate, that she would not make it."
USC Shoah Foundation Visual History Archive, Interview 38619
Disease, fatigue, poor sanitation, the brutal sun, and the emotional distress of dislocation all take their toll among the Jewish settlers. Recognizing the need to provide ailing refugees with a place to recuperate from their exertions, DORSA organizers establish a modest hotel for convalescents in the interior highlands in the rural town of Jarabacoa. At nearly 2000 feet above sea level, Jarabacoa enjoys a milder climate than Sosúa. Alexander’s experience running his hotel, and Margit’s own failing health, persuaded DORSA administrators to ask the couple to manage the mountain refuge in about 1942.
Alexander and Margit labored to provide whatever comforts they could at the inn they ran for DORSA. Barbara and Ann regularly helped their parents care for their guests. Barbara remembers drawing fresh water from wells, loading the barrels on donkeys, making beds, and assisting her mother in the kitchen. At first, the Bandlers lived in the same structure with their guests. DORSA then purchased a second house that allowed the Bandlers more privacy while they catered to those settlers from Sosúa who were sent to regain their strength in the mountains. Margit recovered her health thanks to the cooler highland temperatures of Jarabacoa and was soon able to teach local women how to bake strudel, a comfort food from her Hungarian birthplace. Some Dominicans later used the skills they had learned from Alexander and Margit in hospitality, management, cooking, and baking to find better paying jobs beyond the limited opportunities available in Jarabacoa.
Map of the Dominican Republic, Sosua, La Vega, Jarabacoa, and Ciudad Trujillo indicated.
Holocaust Awareness Institute
Ann and Barbara riding in Jarabacoa, c. 1942.
Barbara Bandler Steinmetz, Historias de las familias que llegaron a Sosua.
The small town lacked even an elementary school. And though it was only about 40 miles from Sosúa, the long, winding journey to the highlands had to be made on horseback. A radio provided the Bandlers with their sole direct connection to the outside world. The bits and pieces they were able to glean from news bulletins about the Allies’ progress did little to reassure them throughout the war years about the fate of the loved ones they had left behind in Hungary. Despite their parents’ constant anxiety over those trapped in Europe, and the long hours of manual labor they performed at the guesthouse in Jarabacoa, Barbara remembers that for her and her sister, their time there “was paradise.” She and Ann had their own horses; Poofy belonged to Barbara and Punchy to Ann.
Transcript
Barbara: We had to help [in the hotel]. And every day, one of my jobs was to go down to the river. And the hotel was up on a hill, and I had to go down to the river with a Dominican boy and two donkeys and with cans of water on both sides of the donkeys, and my job was to go down to the river every day and get water and bring it back up there. Our house also had a cistern, and at the time, it looked like an enormous cistern. And-- so we got some of our water from the cistern.
Our home was exceedingly primitive. It did have a floor, and-- and there were-- there were several rooms. It was a small hotel, and we had several rooms for the guests. And one of the things that we had to do was, you know, as I said, help make beds and sweep the floor, take care of the animals, because the only mode of transportation was horses. We didn't have any other way to get around, so we all had our own horses. And we had to help with the-- with the cows. We had to help with the milking, because that's what provided us with cheese. My mother made the cheese, and I can remember, she had a clothesline hanging, and I can remember the cheese and the-- the milk product in the cloth, and all day long, it dripped down on-- on the mud floor with big drips of milk going all over the place.
We had chickens, which we slaughtered ourselves, because that's-- that's how we got food. And so we had cattle, and we had our chickens, and we purchased some crops, although we had a finca, we had a farm on which the Dominicans worked and raised some crops for us to use in cooking. And eventually, we acquired two other houses that were adjacent to our first house. And they were also for guests, so as time passed by, we had more and more guests coming. And-- and it was a very interesting life for a kid. We spent our days horseback riding, working, and playing with the Dominican children, running around barefoot, and having what, at the time, seemed like-- and it was! It was a wonderful life. It was a life of peace.
"...my job was to go down to the river every day and get water and bring it back up there."
USC Shoah Foundation Visual History Archive, Interview 38619
Card advertising the sale of potatoes, beans and other locally-grown fruits and vegetables by Alexander (Samuel) Bandler in Jarabacoa.
Courtesy of Barbara Bandler Steinmetz
Barbara in Jarabacoa in September 1944.
Courtesy of Barbara Bandler Steinmetz
Barbara Bandler Steinmetz' Timeline
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Rome-Berlin Axis Agreement
Italy, under fascist dictator Benito Mussolini, concludes an alliance with Germany's Hitler. Mussolini later issues anti-Jewish legislation and enforces persecution of Italian Jewish community.
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Barbara Bandler is born in Győr, Hungary
Her parents, Margit and Alexander Bandler, are Hungarian citizens but live in Italy, where Alexander owns a hotel on the Adriatic island of Lussinpiccolo, just off the coast of what is today Croatia. They return to Italy soon after Barbara’s birth
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Publication of the “Race Manifesto” in Italy
Published anonymously but drawn up by a scholar with close ties to the Fascist government, the article outlines in ten clauses a theoretical framework for the concept of race in Fascist Italy, according to which Italians are essentially Aryan and Jews do not belong to the Italian race.
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Italy adopts antisemitic laws
Italy adopts a series of antisemitic “Race Laws.” A September 5, 1938 law prohibits Jews from studying or teaching at Italian public schools and universities. A September 7, 1938 law retroactively annuls Italian citizenship granted to Jewish immigrants to Italy after 1919 and revokes permanent residency in Italy for foreign Jews, requiring them to leave the country within six months. Like the Nuremberg Race Laws and other Nazi legislation, additional laws prohibits marriage between Jews and “Aryans,” define who is Jewish, and require all Italian Jews to register, as well as placing restrictions on professional activities and business ownership.
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Italy and Germany sign the “Pact of Steel”
Expanding on the alliance between the two countries since the Rome-Berlin Axis of October 1936, in the “Pact of Steel” (officially the Pact of Friendship and Alliance) Italy and Germany agree to military cooperation and mutual defense. Despite this agreement, Italy remains neutral during the first year of the war, only entering the war as Germany’s ally in June 1940.
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Rafael Trujillo and the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee sign an agreement
The document formalized the first wave of Jewish immigration to a 26,000 acre agricultural settlement in Sosúa, on the northern coast of Hispaniola. The New York City-based American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee set up a separate arm, the Dominican Republic Settlement Association (DORSA), to establish Sosúa as an agricultural community.
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France formally surrenders to Nazi Germany
Much of France falls to Nazi domination. Parts of southern France are governed by a Nazi collaborator government headed by Marshal Henri Philippe Pétain, called the "Vichy" regime after its capital.
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Vichy France enacts anti-Jewish legislation
The collaborationist Vichy government enacts a series of anti-Jewish laws in accordance with Nazi policy.
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Germany orders closure of US diplomatic missions
After the US State Department orders the closure of German consulates in the United States because German diplomats are suspected of spying, Germany and Italy order all American consulates in Axis-occupied Europe to cease operation, closing the door for refugees fleeing Nazi persecution to apply for immigration to the United States.
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Bandlers set sail for the Dominican Republic
Aboard the Portuguese ship Nyassa, the family sail for the Caribbean, making a stop at Ellis Island on the way.
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DORSA establishes a hotel in Jarabacoa, Dominican Republic for new Jewish settlers
Disease, fatigue, poor sanitation, the brutal sun, and the emotional distress of dislocation all take their toll on the island’s new Jewish residents. DORSA organizers recognize the need to provide ailing refugees with a place to recuperate from their exertions, and ask Alexander and Margit Bandler to manage the refuge.
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The Battle of the Caribbean
In an attempt to disrupt the Allied supply of oil and other material by targeting their points of origin in the Caribbean, German and Italian submarines torpedoed 263 ships in the Caribbean, including two Dominican ships. The S. S. Presidente Trujillo and the San Rafael, both named by the Dominican president after himself, were sunk, and 25 crew members were killed.
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Allies denounce Nazi mass murder of Jews
Reports of the Nazi plan to murder all of the Jewish people in Europe begin to circulate in the second half of 1942 and are widely reported in U.S. newspapers in late November. On December 17 1942, the Allied governments denounce the mass murder of European Jews under Nazi control. Though Nazi crimes are now publicized, Allied forces do not target Nazi killing installations or prioritize the rescue of Jews.
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Ads for Margit Bandler’s cosmetics company appear in American Jewish newspapers
Lori (Elenor) Mayer, one of Margit’s childhood friends who had immigrated to Boston in the mid-1930s, sees the advertisement in 1945, and sends a letter to Margit in Jarabacoa. Lori and her husband, Eugene, later secure work visas for the Bandlers to enter the U.S.
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Nazis install new fascist government in Hungary
Nazis arrest Hungarian leader Miklos Horthy and install a new government under Ferenc Szalasi, leader of the fascist and radically antisemitic Arrow Cross Party.
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Mass executions of Budapest Jews
Between December 1944 and January 1945, approximately 20,000 Jews from Budapest's ghetto are taken to the banks of the Danube, where they are murdered and their bodies thrown into the river.
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Soviet forces liberate Budapest
After nearly two months, Soviet forces succeed in liberating Budapest from Nazi and Hungarian fascist control. Approximately 100,000 Jews survive, mostly thanks to protections offered by foreign diplomats such as Raoul Wallenberg.
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Bandler family leaves the Dominican Republic for the U.S.
With little notice, Barbara boards a bus to Santo Domingo, then a plane to Miami, FL, then another bus to Boston, MA where she and her family begin their new American life.
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Sosúa project dwindles
By the late 1940s, only 275 settlers remain in Sosúa, which had once been home to many hundreds more refugees. DORSA’s experiment under Trujillo never becomes a profitable agricultural settlement, though a successful dairy cooperative founded by Jewish immigrants flourishes there for decades.
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Hungarian People's Republic established
Soviet forces had remained in Hungary after liberating the country from Nazi occupation in 1944. After the war, Hungary had held democratic elections, but under Soviet influence the Communists successively neutralized all other parties until, in 1949, voters were presented with ballots with only one party list. The newly elected Communist legislature adopted a new, Soviet-style constitution and became a Soviet satellite.
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Barbara becomes a U.S. citizen
Just a few months before her 16th birthday, Barbara takes the oath to become a United States citizen.
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Barbara Bandler graduates high school
She and her boyfriend, Howard Steinmetz, make plans to wed, but her father insists she complete her college education before marrying. The two reach an agreement, and Barbara and Howard are married in 1956, after Barbara is accepted to college.
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Hungarian Revolution of 1956
Student demonstrations in Budapest calling for political and social reforms grow into a broad-based, nationwide popular uprising against the Soviet-backed government of the Hungarian People's Republic. Despite the movement's initial success, the revolution is brutally crushed by Soviet military intervention. Some 200,000 people flee the country in the course of the revolution.
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Rafael Trujillo assassinated
Trujillo’s reign grows notoriously bloody throughout the 1950s, though his repression is not felt in Sosúa. Still, political unrest, economic woes, and scandal plague the General’s rule. In May 1961, the embattled dictator is assassinated by a group of conspirators who ambushed his turquoise Chevrolet Bel Air. Trujillo’s death sets off a period of political instability in the Dominican Republic that drives many of the few remaining Jewish residents to emigrate.
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Barbara and Howard move to Boulder, CO
After vacationing in Colorado for decades, the pair finally decide to settle permanently.