Interactive Map

---

Site of a Jewish refugee settlement administered by the Dominican Republic Settlement Association (DORSA) under the umbrella of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee. At the 1938 Evian Conference, General Rafael Trujillo of the Dominican Republic offered to accept as many as 100,000 Jewish refugees into the small Caribbean island nation. Located on the site of an abandoned banana plantation, Sosúa was established as an agricultural community, but the terrain rocky, the soil is poor, and there is little infrastructure. Around 850 refugees settled in Sosúa during the war; Barbara Bandler and her family were among them. The Bandlers arrived in the Dominican Republic aboard the Portuguese ship Nyassa in the summer of 1941.

---

After their first summer in the United States, Barbara Bandler and her family lived together in a one-room apartment on Saint Botolph Street in Boston’s Back Bay neighborhood. In 1945, the Irish-American working class neighborhood was also home to the Boston headquarters of the Christian Front, a nationwide, antisemitic, Catholic organization.

---

After Barbara Bandler Steinmetz graduated from University of Michigan with a degree in speech pathology, Barbara’s husband Howard took a job with Roadway Express in Saginaw, Michigan. The couple raise their family—three daughters—in Saginaw.

---

The Bandlers landed in Miami on June 1, 1945 after leaving the Dominican Republic. They spent two weeks in Florida before making their way north to Massachusetts, where they had accommodations waiting for them. This was Barbara's first experience in an American city.