Customer Reviews

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

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"Bodies and Souls" by author Isabel Vincent is a horrifying and compelling book on the young shtetl women from Eastern Europe and Poland abducted into prostitution. Isabel Vincent tells about 3 young women Sophia Chamys, Rachel Liberman, and Rebecca Freedman and the reader follows their story from the villages in Eastern Europe from where they were abducted, to the brothels of South America. The brothels were located in Rio, Buenos Aires, and Argentina. It was a terrible life that these young, innocent girls were brought into by the pimps that posed as "Gentlemen". These "gentlemen" bought or "married" the girls to entice them to South America where they were sold into White Slavery. The Commissioner of Argentina, Alsogaray, along with Rachel Liberman, brought down the empire of the Zwi Migdal who ruled the underworld of white slavery in South America.

As stated in the title for this review, I found this book a shocking part of history that should not be ignored. It is required reading for history and Judaica readers. I cannot urge readers enough to go out and buy this book - it may be upsetting to read, but one should know what happened at this time in history.

Vincent does an admirable job of telling the story of Eastern European Jewish girls from the shtetl being conned into sham marriages and forced prostitution by an underworld Jewish organizaton. In this book, the events take place mainly in South America, although the practice was (sadly) widespread. It's a relatively unknown story, and I'm glad that Vincent made the effort to relate it.

Unfortunately, nearly everyone connected with the actual events is now long gone. The lack of anything but relatively meager links with the book's personalities is palpable, but Vincent manages to eke out just enough detail to make this book both riveting and personal. I'd love to know exactly how she managed to locate some of the book's photos and some of the more esoteric aspects of the lives of those described, given the unwillingness of nearly anyone to discuss them and (of course) the fact that many of these people led lives which made them difficult to trace.

One imagines that had Vincent been able to conduct her research fifteen or twenty years earlier, a much more in-depth history would have been the result - a pity that no one thought to do it sooner. But one can't fault Vincent for her admirable efforts, and her skill as a writer. The work is partially framed around a couple of encounters with a man who tends to the graves of these now-departed Jewish prostitutes, and it's a nice technique. It's impossible to know what could have been going through the minds of these young and naive village girls as they entered a new world and a special kind of hell - Vincent is wise enough not to speculate too deeply - but the ultimate strength and unity of this community is apparent. One can't help but admire the strength of these poor women; in this sense Vincent performs a real mitzvah, by lovingly memorializing women whose own community turned against them unrepentently.

This book was undoubtedly necessary, both as a reivindication of so many wretched lives and as a chronicle of a very dark chapter in Jewish history. I believe the author when she says that the story of the Zwi Migdal criminal association and its victims has been deliberately suppressed - when I asked one of my Jewish friends, a smart and cultured man, educated at the best Jewish institution in my town, about it, he said he had never heard of it. It is perhaps a proof of the reluctance of Jews to look at such a shameful chapter of their history that, when I said to this friend what a good play the story would make, he -who once directed a play about the Holocaust- replied: "I don't think so. Why give attention to such an ugly and painful matter?"

That said, I had several problems with Vincent's book. The reader must be aware that this book uses no first-hand sources, apart from interviews with people who knew the prostitutes but do not seem to have been directly involved in their lives as such - for instance, the accountant of the welfare society they founded. Vincent makes it clear that most of the first-hand information was destroyed in the terrorist attack on the AMIA, an Argentinean-Jewish institution, in 1994. That leads to what was for me the major flaw of the book - the three main female subjects, Sophia, Rachel and Rebecca, did not really come alive for me, as would perhaps have happened if primary sources had been used.

There are so many gaps and question marks in these women's stories, so many things that we just cannot know. (After all, much of the information comes from succint newspaper articles, or police files, where officers would have consigned only the "objective" facts, but hardly the prostitutes' feelings, even if the latter had chosen to tell about them). These gaps in information would be OK but for the fact that Vincent has an annoying habit of filling in the blanks with rhetorical questions and musings of her own, which became a major bother after a while. Hardly a page is turned without finding one of these questions or guessings that try to explain the characters' behavior, such as the following: "Perhaps Sophia still felt she was different from the other prostitutes, clinging to the illusion that the elegant businessman Isaac Boorosky was her legitimate husband" (p. 88). "Did he know he would never see his daughter again? Did he know his granddaughter had already died?" (p. 97). "Perhaps he burst into her airless little room when she was with a client... Was this lust or rage or a mixture of both that he felt? What crossed his mind as he grabbed Sophia by the hair?" (p. 98). "The police officer must have looked up at her with some surprise, but then again, maybe he was used to such complaints" (p. 105). "Did her uncle sit too close to her on the train? Did he stare at her too longingly?" (p. 158). The whole book is full of these silly questions and reflections, which, far from enlivening the text, made me want to ask Ms Vincent to just relay the facts and refrain from commenting.

Also, the book fails to analyze the obvious differences between the three women portrayed in it. The Zwi Migdal's target victims are uniformly described as "shtetl girls". However, it seems obvious that, while Sophia Chamys was completely illiterate and from a very poor background, Rachel Liberman, described as "a seamstress", belonged to a different social context altogether. She is described as being in correspondence with her husband in Argentina, and later with her sons, all of which implies a certain level of literacy. It would have been interesting to understand why the better educated Rachel, who even managed to open a small antiques shop for a while, would end up in the same sordid line of business as the hopelessly ignorant Sophia. And the third prostitute, Rebecca Freedman, is described as illiterate, but having a remarkable skill for accounting and finance nonetheless. This strange dychotomy is not explained either.

All in all, this is an important, passionately written book on a compelling subject, but the use of accounts that are not first-hand and the author's annoying tendency to insert romantic or rhetorical questions as to the characters' motivations prevent it from being truly gripping history.

There are many responses that one can have when reading this book. I think that shock is more about our own notions, how innocent we had configured European Jews to be. In the imagination and largely written in history the most common conception is that Jews were victims, brutalized by 'the other', by Goyim, by non-Jews. Surprise! Jews could be just as nasty, cruel and heartless as any bestial person not of the tribe.

I learned several key insights from this book. One was that (through ignorance and prejudice) legions of Jews both in Europe and in the America's have a share in the blame, if blame can be assessed, for the fates met by the completely unwitting and unwilling prostitutes. That share is entirely due to the complete rejection and total exclusion of the lives of these prostitutes. If a small number of them had taken the time to investigate by asking questions instead of giving into the knee jerk reaction of judging them all as evil, then not a few would have heard of the rapes, the enforcement by extreme brutality of very poor, innocent and naive Jewish girls into a life of servitude that was worse than a life sentence in jail. And what jails they did live in! It is an even greater tragedy that these women were all judged as wanton harlots whose only joys were the carnal lusts of the flesh. These judgements could not have been any more wrong and damaging.

Another thing that is apparent is that Rabbi's on both sides of the ocean were aware of the suffering and did next to nothing to examine the circumstances or were motivated even in a minimal way to put an end to the practices. The riots in Poland in some of the larger cities against the houses of prostitution were an infrequent event and only resulted in the same innocent women being attacked. They simply were not given an opportunity to express their point of view. The people who did start to clamour, who began to organize an attempt to forewarn the young ladies against the white slave trade were too small in number and were marginalized and underfunded.

A very heart-rending fact that Vincent continually highlights is the inexhaustible longing of the prostitutes to participate in religious and spiritual rites. Even though they knew that their own people did not know their stories and would not listen, though they had suffered unbelievable dehumanization and degradation, not even the vile hatred of their bretheren could take away their desires to see themselves as part of the larger spiritual body. In this as well, very unjustly, they were judged against. When I read this, it made my blood boil.

Frankly, Jews in the America's need to read this and face the disgraceful truth. Our own people destroyed the lives of so many vulnerable poor, uneducated and naive women. Our people turned a blind eye to the vile pimps and then even worse decided that we all knew so well why these prostitutes carried on. We were wrong, dead wrong and our people should ask these destroyed souls for forgiveness for our judgments against them. It is about time the story was told, even if from very fragmentary documentation. The evil machinations of the pimps and their efficient heartless enterprises tell us that when impoverished Jews were in need, too many of their own tribe turned a blind eye and a deaf ear to their cries. The results were truly shattering. The dark shadow is that it has all been excluded and denied from Jewish discourse. This book puts an end to that silence and kudos to Vincent for that courage.

A most fascinating book about young Jewish women from the shtetls of Eastern Europe lured away from their homes with the
promise of a better life in "America," America being South America. Here they are sold or forced into prostitution, shunned
by the local Jewish communities and forced to make a life for
themsevles, among themselves.
A wonderful read and would be great for a bookclub..

This is an interesting, history read. It is not well written as literature but the information is facinating and worthwhile to read. The information is substantiated in Nathan Englander's Ministry of Special Cases

I think the author did an excellent job with telling the story of those who can no longer (if they were ever able to) speak for themselves. There are also some good examples of "perhapsing," a technique used in journalism and creative nonfiction that fills the gap between what the facts state in black and white and what may have or may not have happened. With that being said, I do believe that the author does too much perhapsing and it makes it seem as if the author is doing it just to add drama. It would be challenging, however, to write a nonfiction book without the luxary of the main subjects' thoughts and maybe that is why the author decided to use so many sentences like "perhaps she felt this way," or "maybe she was thinking this at the time." Above all, worth the time.

an eye and mind opener,
moved me to tears-
it's a must for each reader

The subject matter of this book was very enticing but I found it a bit hard to get into. I thought perhaps there would be more of a "story" to this book rather than a documentary. Still a worth read.