Bodies and Souls: The Tragic Plight of Three Jewish Women Forced into Prostitution in the Americas.

Janet Arnett is the former campus manager of adult education at Ontario’s Georgian College. She is the author of Antiques and Collectibles: Starting Small, The Grange at Knock, and 673 Ways to Save Money.

Vincent has unearthed one of the forgotten horrors of history. Between 1860 and 1939 thousands of poor Jewish girls and young women were lured from Eastern Europe into the white slave trade, forced to work as prostitutes in brothels in South America.

Wide-spread anti-Semitism in Europe led to urban ghettos and rural shtetls, places where Jewish families endured pogroms, poverty, and famine. These squalid conditions made it easy for pimps and slave traffickers to entice their victims with promises of marriage or employment. By shipping them to South America, the “Jewish mafia” effectively separated these women from their families. Further isolated by their inability to speak the local language, they were shunned by local Jewish society, which considered them an embarrassment. Vincent has gone to incredible lengths to research the story of these women, especially three from Poland who were enslaved in Buenos Aires and Rio de Janeiro.

Part of the work is the story of the pimps, a network of mobsters called the Warsaw Jewish Mutual Aid Society, later renamed Zwi Migdal. This association had over 400 members in Argentina and controlled thousands of women. Vincent also recognizes the efforts of feminists and humanitarians who tried to stop the trafficking, but the bulk of her work is devoted to the story of the women caught in this “factory of exploitation.” She identifies three individuals to carry the narrative: Sophie, age 14, who arrived in South America in 1896; Rebecca who arrived in 1916; and Rachel, enslaved in 1920, whose testimony led to the breakup of the Zwi Migdal. Woven into the history, their stories are brought to life by giving bodies and souls to archival facts. Twenty photos give further realism to the nightmare-like events.

Shunned by everyone including other Jews, the prostitutes (“polacas”) formed the Society of Truth, with its own synagogue and cemetery. Rebecca was the last president of the Society and for years provided burial for the polacas in accordance with Jewish traditions.

The work is a masterpiece of investigative journalism and a very readable addition to the study of both history and women’s studies.