The Zwi Migdal - Rio de Janero, Buenos Aires, and New York City

In the news this week is the book: Bodies And Souls: The Forced Prostitution Of Jewish Women At The Turn Of The Century
de Isabel Vincent


The Awareness Center's page on the Case of Zwi Migdal Society
Dedicated to the memory of the women of who were obducted and forced into prostution, According to reports there were members of the Society who were rabbis

From the 1860s to the beginning of the Second World War, thousands of naive, impoverished Jewish girls from eastern Europe were sold by Jewish mobsters into sexual slavery. This hugely profitable (annual revenues of $50 million in the 1890s) commerce in flesh was operated by the Zwi Migdal, a criminal association It was centred in Buenos Aires, with branch offices in Brazil, South Africa, India, China and Poland.

Forced by poverty and despair to leave their homes, the girls, as young as 13, were shipped off to various locations. This kidnapping, rape and forced prostitution of young Jewish women lasted from the end of the 1860s until the start of the Second World War.

Despite their lost lives, many of the women found strength in each other. Banned from the Jewish community, they formed an "extraordinary religious and charitable organization," the Society of Truth. Denied access to Jewish culture, religion and burial grounds, they pooled their meagre resources to build a synagogue and to provide a ritual Jewish burial and cemetery for their members.