Chapter 1: The First Jews in Cuba Until Revolutionary Cuba

As an outsider, the idea that Eastern European immigrants fleeing persecution landed in Cuba was foreign to me. I was taught, as are most in the United States, that Americans were the big saviors of those seeking a better life. I had no idea Cuba had any role as a refuge for Jews. I guess I presumed that when people were leaving Eastern Europe due to pogroms and then the Holocaust, it was to come to the welcoming shores of the United States. It turns out that there is much about immigration policy in the United States in the 1920s through 1940s that I knew truly little about. As I expressed in the Introduction, I knew little about Cuba when I grew up in rural Michigan, so my images and ideas were all about a Caribbean island that was run by a brutal communist dictator. I did not have a sense of the history of Cuba, the population and why they were there, and how that related to US geopolitical, economic, and social issues. This was largely due to persecution during the 1900s, in particular the periods of the World Wars, although there was a small Jewish population on the island before those times. This chapter reviews what drove migration from Eastern Europe to Cuba, the experiences of Jews and their reception in Cuba, and significant policy decisions that shaped Jews’ successes in their new home.