I was just reading about a play performed by teenagers from Washington Heights/Inwood—“Sosúa: Dare to Dance Together”—about the ties formed between German-Jewish refugees and residents of Sosúa in the Dominican Republic (see post above) and I decided to post a short description of the book that inspired the script.
Dominican Haven: The Jewish Refugee Settlement in Sosúa 1940-1945I (2008), written by Marion A. Kaplan, offers the history of the settlement in Sosúa, in the Dominican Republic, which was founded in 1938 as a refuge for German-speaking Jewish emigrants from Europe. Sosúa was a small agricultural settlement on the northeastern shore of the island where several hundred refugees stayed during World War II, when Dominican authorities granted them asylum. The book studies the migration and adaptation processes of a people escaping the dangers of Nazi Germany and the new life they led among their Caribbean hosts. According to Judith Laikin Elkin, author of the Jews in Latin America, Dominican Haven “expands our understanding of the challenges, opportunities, and barriers to refugee settlements anywhere in the world.”
Marion Kaplan is Skirball Professor of Modern Jewish History at New York University. She is a prolific writer. Two of her many books—Between Dignity and Despair: Jewish Life in Nazi Germany (1998) and The Making of the Jewish Middle Class: Women, Family and Identity in Imperial Germany (1991)—have both won the National Jewish Book Award.
For a full review, see http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=24255
For purchasing information, see http://www.amazon.com/Dominican-Haven-Refugee-Settlement-1940-1945/dp/0971685932
