ZWI MIGDAL, the trafficking network of the early 1900s

The pimps, who used to call themselves the Club de los 40 y, early 20th century, founded in Avellaneda the Sociedad Israelita de Socorros Mutuos Varsovia, a front for their illicit activities, as it was only granted legal personality in that city in the metropolitan region of Buenos Aires.

With the connivance of the authorities and the police, whom they bribed, the Polish ruffians became strong. Forced to change the name of their association because of the bad reputation it gave their country, they renamed it Zwi Migdal, which after the First World War had more than 400 members. Although sources differ, they controlled some 2,000 brothels, through which hundreds and hundreds of young women were recruited in villages in their country with promises of work or, as false brides and grooms, marriage.
Its first president, Noah Trauman, arrived in the country in 1890. He was 24 years old and although he was Polish, he carried a Russian passport because the whole region was under Tsarist rule. The only known photo of him was taken by the police four years later when he was recorded as a "pimp", a name given to those who facilitated the sex trade.

Before the turn of the century, Trauman already had his own brothel and knew the Buenos Aires police stations for having been arrested in several street brawls. Those were times when differences between antagonistic groups were still settled with blows. One of these brawls was recorded by the Buenos Aires press in 1897. About 50 people, including ruffians, their wives and the madams of the shops, came to blows with fists and sticks on the corner of Corrientes and Talcahuano. Among those involved were Russians, Poles, Romanians and half a dozen other nationalities, but the common factor, apart from the activity, was religion. They were all Jews.

The Mutual had a cemetery in the locality of Avellaneda, provided certain health services, offered other benefits and organised some social activities as did many of the community entities established in the country. In addition, it had a large headquarters at Avenida Córdoba 3280, of 620 square metres covered on two floors, with heating and all the modern equipment for the time, where a temple functioned. This was mainly a façade for hundreds of ruffians to congregate and set up their network of exploitation. The girls, those who had been tricked and those who knew what they were coming for, could not imagine what they would go through.

Living conditions were deplorable. They were sex slaves. Exploited, uncared for, they devoted their entire existence to sexually serving the clients who thronged the brothels.
The epicentre was at Lavalle and Junín, in the neighbourhood of Once. There the locals multiplied.
In 1862, disorder broke out in brothels where, among others, Bartolomé Mitre Vedia - son of the president of the nation - and Dominguito, Sarmiento's adopted son, were arrested.
That the history and (bad) reputation of the Zwi Migdal have survived the test of time has not only to do with the extent of its activities. Despite being a huge and established criminal association, the Zwi Migdal was neither the only nor the most powerful of the trafficking syndicates. The media impact of its downfall, the legends that were woven over time and the ever-present dose of anti-Semitism in society did the rest.

The stigma permeated the popular imagination: Polish Jews who arrived in Buenos Aires from the late 19th century onwards prostituted their own compatriots. So did the French, Italians and Spaniards, although anti-Semitism amplified the despicable practices of the Jewish mafia.
Nor was it helped by the subsequent silence of the collective itself, which labelled its criminals as impure. In fact, the fact that they were denounced and shunned set this community apart from the others - which included their fellow citizens - even if this dark past later became a taboo due to the fear that the shadow of the criminal activities of a few undesirables would be cast over them all.

When they were expelled, the ruffians opened a synagogue and a cemetery, as they had been forbidden to be buried in the Hebrew cemetery. Gerardo Bra argues in his book La organización negra (1982) that, although the exclusion of the impure was an act of honesty on the part of the Jewish collective, it would have strengthened them, as they decided to unite and organise themselves, a thesis refuted by other historians.

A woman wrote a letter to the association against trafficking and sexual exploitation Ezrat Nashim: "I was in one of the Migdal houses. My body would be offered to the highest bidder. Every woman starting out in life was sought after. And I was. For years, however, the allegations fell on deaf ears due to police corruption. The tentacles of the Poles, a mafia that emerged as a mutual aid society to protect each other, reached out to the people's watchdogs and there was a need for an incorruptible commissioner and a judge to put the criminals in the dock.

They were opposed only by Jewish institutions and entities such as Ezrat Nashim, although their work has been questioned. Débora Aymbinderow argues that they had a 'paternalistic and moralistic attitude towards immigrants because of the differences in class and country of origin between them and the philanthropists', so that they intervened in their private lives, even when there was no indication that the woman was at risk of being exploited. Prevention, they understood, meant that they should marry a Jew and find an "honest job".
On the other hand, the collective's struggle succeeded in making the problem visible, although "paradoxically it was used to reinforce the stigmatisation of Jews". Thus, Pedro Katz, director of Di Presse, told the newspaper Crítica that the Argentine Jewish community had been fighting for four decades to "destroy and annihilate the repugnant components of the tenebrous Migdal society", whom he described as a "gang of traffickers".

Hence, in 1906, he launched a campaign to eliminate them, but he admits that he only succeeded in expelling them. "Nobody repudiates them as much or fights them more than the Israeli community", concluded Katz, making it clear that all communities had their trafficking networks, but the Jewish community was the only one that renounced its pimps.
Be that as it may, the pimp scheme - known as cafishos - would come up against a woman who would stand up to them. Raquel Liberman denounced Zwi Migdal for forcing her into prostitution, which triggered an investigation by commissioner Julio Alsogaray. We have already talked about Raquel and her story on this page.

As a result of his investigations, Judge Manuel Rodríguez Ocampo remanded 108 members in custody for illicit association, but they were soon to be released for lack of evidence, except for three of them. A further 334 fled from justice, for which an international arrest warrant was issued. It was of little use, although the organisation was eventually disbanded.
Nora Glickman, in the book The Jewish White Slave Trade and the Untold Story of Raquel Liberman (2000), relates that the raid on the headquarters of the Polish mafia and the closure of dozens of brothels took place in 1930 after the coup d'état of Lieutenant General José Félix Uriburu. The operation made the front pages of the newspapers and, as a result of their "courageous action", they published detailed lists of the names of the traffickers and madams.

The cemetery of the impure in Avellaneda is a rarity rarely seen anywhere else in the world and the first Jewish cemetery in Buenos Aires, now administered by the Asociación Comunidad Israelita Latina and sealed to prevent it from being viewed and labelled as living proof of human exploitation.
In 1907, under the presidency of Trauman, the Zwi Migdal bought a new piece of land opposite the municipal cemetery of Avellaneda. This area is still standing and has given rise to several urban legends. If these men and their wives were characterised in life for flaunting their economic power with an almost obscene display of jewellery, furs and imported perfumes; at the time of their death, the ruffians decided to alter the millenary tradition of moderation and uniformity of Jewish burials, with the placement of expensive and grandiloquent funerary monuments.
The surface area of the site suggests that it would have housed no less than 700 graves. The original records, although incomplete, speak of the owners of prostitution houses, their wives and the madams of their premises, but also of young children, young students and self-employed workers. Only a few of the exploited women were buried there. Of the thousands of young women who, tricked or expelled by misery in Europe, ended up in the brothels of Buenos Aires, there is no trace left. They disappeared forever after being trafficked, used and discarded.

As in any story, legends, hypotheses, ghosts, macabre memories on the one hand and romantic ones on the other are raised. Supposed conspiracy theories that do not leave aside the subjugation of the poor newly arrived women, the attempt to hide those same memories that hopefully one day can be clarified for the benefit of history and the vindication of the poor migrants, deceived, abused, discriminated against and exploited. Honouring the memory of all women victims of sexual violence is not only a pious commitment, it is an approach that cannot be postponed today, in order to learn more about our history and to put an end to the trafficking networks that, to this day, continue to operate with the same practices.

Compilation of texts from: El arcón de la historia; Nora Glickman, "The Jewish White Slave Trade and the Untold Story of Raquel Liberman (2000)"; José Luis Scarsi, "Tmeiim: los judíos impuros"; Todo es historia.