These ailments, diseases and disorders, were part and parcel of life in the tropics, a life that brought out “man’s most lascivious and debased urges.” Yet, contrary thought posited that “the white race was inherently aggressive and migratory [and] Caucasians could survive in the tropics, but only as a master race.”Those colonists who embraced hard, physical labor, tailored their diet to the new, debilitating tropical climate, and “took special sanitary precautions…had a reasonable chance of adaptation to the climatic conditions.” Josef Rosen was a firm believer that physical activity was a key to adaptation for the Jewish refugees who were, in the main, an urbanized lot. Indeed, in his optimistic opinion, “the key to success was for settlers to remain active.”Sosúa had attracted malcontents despite the fairly rigorous pre-screening of settlers. Recall that both Rosenberg and Rosen had warned DORSA recruiters such as Trone, to be aware of “problem cases” that were likely to be among the potential recruits. In spite of the efforts to keep the colony free from unproductive or ‘lazy’ charity cases, some had fallen through the cracks. Known to DORSA as “non-settlers,” they never “had any intention of becoming farmers,” which created a “combustible combination that had a pernicious effect on morale.”Division among the members, and inherent differences of opinion, were an inevitable consequence of life at the colony. The life of the Jewish refugee at Sosúa was by no means an idyll. The hard work of the farmer began in earnest after a short period of adjustment that allowed the newly arrived to acclimate to the tropical climate. Indeed, the settlers were given “all of three days to get accustomed to their new surroundings.” Well noted that “For the great majority,stacking flower pot tower enervating manual labor was the norm during the first year.” This included “clearing land with tractors, building and repairing roads and constructing houses.” Building houses right away meant that the settlers could leave the group barracks and move “onto homesteads as soon as possible.”
The newly arrived rookies were given a brief tour of the settlement and then provided with basic supplies such as quinine pills for malaria, some work clothing, mosquito netting and bedding. According to Rosen all arrivals had to abruptly alter their habits, “particularly eating and drinking.” Yet it was the tropical climate that most concerned Rosen. The refugees were coming from the temperate climates of European countries and would inevitably suffer from the debilitating climate which was ‘fiercely hot’ during the day. The ability of Jewish people from the cool, seasonal climate of Europe to adapt to the tropical climate of the Dominican Republic was put to the test at Sosúa and, for the most part, the settlers did adapt despite some initial difficulties. A radical alteration to the European diet was also an inevitable hurdle that would have to be overcome. Gone, at least for a while, was the bread and meat diet of the European, substituted by the ubiquitous Latin American staples: rice and beans.Recall that the settlement’s water supply, from both the Sosúa River and wells on the property, were already polluted to the extreme.The first settlers to come to Sosúa, a small group of about ten ‘Pioneers’ were already in the capital city, Ciudad Trujillo, and were relocated to the opposite end of the island on March 16, 1940. DORSA had found them in the city “living among other new refugees eking out a living,” and transported them across the island to Sosúa.The families of Jakob Weinberg, accountant, and Max Sichel, civil servant, began life as the first European Sosuaners. They were joined in April by Marec Morsél, merchant, all of whom “would serve as an unofficial welcoming committee for the first group from Europe.”It is significant that all were professionals, as both DORSA and Trujillo wanted people with some degree of agricultural experience. Later that year on the 8th of May, some 37 “hapless” refugees arrived at Sosúa to begin life anew as tropical farmers. They were at first housed in barracks and divided into groups that were given names such as the ‘Swiss Group’ or the ‘Drucker Group’ that identified either their leader or their original locale. Symanski and Burley note that the land allotment was proportional to the size of the group and the “average amount was approximately 30 hectares for each family or unmarried male within a group.”
The groups were part of “communal units who were expected to grow crops sharing the work and profits equally.”Individual families were given an additional two hectares that were for the exclusive use of the family. These plots which, invariably, grew crops that were familiar to the European diet such as spinach, eggplant and beets. In addition each family was given barn animals, livestock farming implements, some cash and a line of credit at the colony store. Symanski and Burley note that “a horse and mule, a number of dairy cattle, other small livestock,” were given to each family.Farm implements and tools given to the settlers included the basic hoe and shovel, yet as time went by and the colony matured, machines such as the farm tractor were introduced. It should be recalled that the use of farm machinery- superior U.S. technology, was part of Rosen’s three part plan to ensure success of the colony as an agricultural concern. However, many of the novice farmers shied away from the labor necessary to get Sosúa up and running and “seem to have an inborn fear and mistrust of tools, and certainly lack all too often a pride in owning and using them.”Thus the beginning of the settlement at Sosúa was indeed, a slow, steady, trial-and-error process, and a baptism by fire for those fortunate few who now called it home. DORSA sought solutions to the problems that arose, experimenting with “crops and agricultural innovations and also encouraged a mixture of projects such as animal husbandry, banana cultivation, intensive truck and garden farming, tomato crops and cash crops.” Yet all efforts to establish a profitable crop-based economy failed almost from the beginning,” with construction of houses for the homesteaders, barns, schools, irrigation systems, road building and repair, continuing as the colony grew in size and importance.In less than two-year’s time the colony was a functioning entity that could “boast some notable accomplishments: 60 houses, 9 dormitories, 12 shops and warehouses, a small clinic, and a schoolhouse had been constructed.” Plots of land were ready for planting and pasturage.
Expansion of the colony necessitated additional infrastructure that Sosúa lacked, although one should recall the reasons that Rosen chose Sosúa over other, more suitable tracts, was because it had some infrastructure already in place such as electricity and running water. The only obstacles to building new and modern infrastructure were sufficient capital and a workforce. Rosenberg in New York would press wealthy donors who were also ‘shrewd business leaders,’ for additional funding. These efforts were, for the most part, successful, considering that the donors had other equally worthy causes to support.The able and willing workforce was in the main staffed by local Dominicans. Indeed, many refugees disdained physical labor. Dominicans worked all jobs at Sosúa, particularly as domestics and farmhands, but also as builders of roads and structures. This ran counter to an agreement that each prospective settler signed before leaving Europe. The “Rules for the Establishment of the Settlement” strictly limited the employ of native workers to “cases of emergency or when the additional labor is needed during harvest time.” DORSA however, caved in to the demands of the settlers, so that whenever one needed labor he could hire local Dominicans without any repercussions from DORSA. According to Wells the local workforce was an ‘elastic and inexpensive’ source which was immediately available for hire. Certainly, there were upwards of several hundred Dominicans who worked at Sosúa at any given moment.Relations between the natives and the refugees were at first congenial, but this friendly posture changed into a strained tolerance as time progressed. Wells noted that the divide between the two groups was sufficient to warrant one settler to write to Rosenberg complaining that “Our settlers do not behave very civilly to the working population. They consider themselves a higher race. They consider the natives peons.” In fact, “some colonists were arrogant, and believed los muchachos, as they referred to them, inferior.”Symanski and Burley further stated that “The Jewish view of the Dominican was that he was lazy,ebb and flow had little sense of investment or hard work, and multiplied much too quickly.”The insularity of the colony, compounded with the language barrier, ‘perpetuated misunderstanding’ between the two. Most settlers spoke German, a few Hebrew, Yiddish and English and all had yet to learn Spanish. Aside from everything else that DORSA provided the settlers: food, lodging, and tools, was instruction in the Spanish language.Entertainment at the colony took the form of the occasional movie shown in a barracks ‘theater’ at the ‘urban center’ known as El Batey. El Batey was the hub of social life at the settlement and was also home to the general store known as El Colmado. One would travel by horseback, burro or buggy to El Batey “to go to a dance, sponsor an occasional Dominican concert, or dine with friends.” Residents would catch up on the news, both international and national, through the colony’s bi-lingual newspaper, The Voice of Sosúa which, over time, was printed under several other banners. The Voice was a source for poetry in German and also a source for free Spanish language lessons. Settlers could check out a book at the small library which was subsidized by DORSA.Communal Sunday beach outings were where the settlers could frolic and enjoy sunbathing, diving, swimming and other ocean sports.
Despite its rural and isolated location, Sosúa offered plenty of diversion for those who knew how to take advantage of what was immediately at hand. The education of children took place at Sosúa’s elementary school, at first located in a barrack and later moved to its own two room building in El Batey. The aptly named Christopher Columbus School included a kindergarten and a primary school that served both the settler and Dominican children, who “benefited from the extraordinary qualifications of their teachers.” Many of the settlers were professionals, some of whom served as faculty. The children were taught math and science by a former surgeon, Dr. Bruck, and liberal arts instruction was done under a former professor of languages at the Sorbonne, Mr. Ferran. Religious instruction consisted of lessons in Jewish History and the Hebrew language. The polyglot settler and instructor of language for DORSA, Luis Hess, also taught language and served as the principal for 33 years. Instruction in the fine arts and music was provided by the Viennese trained Felix Bauer, who was later to become a professor in the U.S. These notable talents were among the “six full and part-time teachers employed by the school, five settlers and one Dominican.”In 1943 there were 30 children at the school, and by 1945 there were 60, with 40 of them in kindergarten. Again, Bruman has given some figures culled from the 1950 Report of Mr. Rosenzweig that pegged the attendance of the elementary school at 50: 33 children of settlers and 17 Dominicans. The Rosenzweig Report pointed out that a “Deficiency is felt in the lack of educational films, as well as in material and equipment for experiments in physics and chemistry.”Health care in the colony was of high standards and quality given its rural location and distance from any sizeable city. Sosúa had its own hospital which treated both Dominicans and settlers. DORSA paid the salaries of most medical personnel that included Dominican doctors acting as consultants. The Dominican physicians were experts in tropical diseases, many of which the settlers had never heard of. In what Kaplan termed DORSA’s ‘small social welfare state,’ medical treatment was free to both settlers and local residents.The hospital clinic treated major tropical diseases such as malaria and yellow fever, but also “established a VD clinic, prenatal services, and a baby clinic.”However, those who needed “x-rays or other special treatment were sent to Ciudad Trujillo or Santiago.”Religious life at Sosúa revolved around the colony’s small synagogue which held semi-regular Friday evening services.