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, since 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 four hundred members. Although the sources differ, they controlled about two thousand brothels, through which hundreds and hundreds of young people would come to pass, whom they recruited in villages of their country with promises of work or, acting as false brides and grooms, of marriage.
Its first president, Noah Trauman, arrived in the country in 1890. He was 24 years old and although he was Polish, he had a Russian passport since the whole region was under the Czarist domination. The only known photo of him was taken by the police four years later when he was registered as a "pimp", a term given to those who facilitated the sex trade.

Before the end of that century, Trauman already had his own brothel and knew the Buenos Aires police stations for having been arrested in several street fights. Those were times when the 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 stores, beat each other with fists and sticks at the corner of Corrientes and Talcahuano. Among those involved there were Russians, Poles, Romanians and half a dozen other nationalities, but the common factor, besides the activity, was religion. They were all Jews.

The Mutual had a cemetery in the town of Avellaneda, provided certain health services, offered other benefits and organized some social activities as did many of the community entities established in the country. In addition, it had a large headquarters, at 3280 Córdoba Avenue, of 620 square meters covered on two floors, with heating and all the modern equipment for that time, where a temple was located. This was, mainly, a façade for hundreds of ruffians to congregate and draw their network of exploitation. The girls, those who had arrived deceived 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 dedicated their entire existence to sexually serving the clients who thronged the brothels.
The epicenter was at Lavalle and Junín, in the neighborhood of Once. There the stores multiplied.
In 1862, disorders took place in brothels where Bartolomé Mitre Vedia -son of the president of the nation- and Dominguito, Sarmiento's adopted son, were arrested, among others.
That the history and (bad) reputation of the Zwi Migdal has 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 those involved in white slavery. 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: the Polish Jews who arrived in Buenos Aires at the end of the 19th century prostituted their own compatriots. So did the French, Italians or 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 labeled its criminals as impure. In fact, the fact that they were denounced and rejected set this community apart from the others - which included their fellow citizens - even though 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 all of them.

When they were expelled, the ruffians inaugurated a synagogue and a cemetery, since they had been forbidden to be buried in the Hebrew cemetery. Gerardo Bra maintains in the book La organización negra (1982) that, although the exclusion of the impure ones manifested an act of honesty of the Jewish collective, it would have reinforced them, because they decided to unite and to organize 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 houses of the Migdal. My body would be offered to the highest bidder. Every woman who was starting out in life was sought after. And I was. However, for years the complaints 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 those in charge of watching over the citizens and it seemed necessary to have an incorruptible commissioner and a judge to put the criminals in the dock.

They only encountered opposition among Jewish institutions and entities such as Ezrat Nashim, although their work has been questioned. Débora Aymbinderow maintains that they had a "paternalistic and moralistic attitude towards the immigrants because of the differences of class and country of origin between them and the philanthropists", so that they intervened in their private lives, even when there were no indications 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 struggle of the collective succeeded in making the problem visible, although "paradoxically it was used to reinforce the stigmatization of the Jews". Thus, Pedro Katz, director of Di Presse, declared to 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".

That is why in 1906 he launched a campaign to eliminate them, but he recognizes that he only succeeded in expelling them. "No one 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 ordered 108 members to be remanded in custody for illicit association, but they would soon be released due to lack of evidence, except for three of them. Another 334 fled from justice, for which an international arrest warrant was issued. It was of little use, although the organization 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 closing 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 in the world and the first Jewish cemetery in Buenos Aires, currently administered by the Asociación Comunidad Israelita Latina and sealed to prevent it from being viewed and labeled as living proof of human exploitation.
In 1907, under the presidency of Trauman, the Zwi Migdal bought a new piece of land in front of the municipal cemetery of Avellaneda. This sector is the one that still stands and has given rise to several urban legends. If these men and their wives were characterized in life for flaunting their economic power with an almost obscene exhibition of jewelry, furs and imported perfumes; at the moment of their death, the ruffians decided to alter the millenary tradition of moderation and uniformity of the Jewish sepulchers, with the location of expensive and grandiloquent funeral monuments.
The surface of the place, makes us suppose that it would have lodged no less than 700 graves. The original records, although incomplete, speak to us of owners of houses of prostitution, their wives and the madams of their premises; but also, young children, young students and self-employed. Few exploited women were buried there. Of the thousands of young women who, deceived or expelled by the misery in Europe, ended up in the brothels of Buenos Aires, there were no traces 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 someday can be clarified for the benefit of history and the vindication of the poor emigrants, deceived, abused, discriminated and exploited. Honoring the memory of all women victims of sexual violence is not only a pious commitment, it is an approach that cannot be postponed today, to learn more about our history and put an end to 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.