III- In Argentina- Jewish Colonies
IIIa Moisesville
Moises Ville Journal;Sun Has Set on Jewish Gauchos, but Legacy Lives
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From the New York Times
By CALVIN SIMS
Published: May 1, 1996
There are four synagogues in this remote farming town of 2,000 residents. The bakery sells Sabbath bread and cookies. Many buildings have Hebrew lettering and the Star of David on their facades. And children playing in the street use Yiddish words like "shlep" and "shlock."
But there are only about 300 Jewish residents left in Moises Ville, an agricultural community founded by European Jews who came to Argentina a century ago, fleeing pogroms and other persecution in their homeland.
While Jews once accounted for 90 percent of the population of Moises Ville, they now represent 15 percent and are rapidly declining. Most left the pampas decades ago seeking education and fortune in Argentina's big cities.
"This is one of the few places in the world where Jewish culture has remained dominant despite the fact that we are a small minority of the residents," said Ava Rosenthal, director of the town's museum. "No matter where you go in Moises Ville, it is very evident who was here first."
Moises Ville, in fertile Santa Fe Province, was the birthplace of a new breed of Argentine cowboy, the Jewish gauchos, who introduced new crops and started the country's first agrarian cooperatives.
Jewish immigrants learned to ride, herd cattle, shoot and shelter themselves against the elements. They also maintained their own customs, building synagogues, libraries and cultural centers, including a Yiddish theater where groups from Europe and the United States performed.
Today, few if any Jewish gauchos ride the range, and most of the land surrounding Moises Ville and other Argentine Jewish communities has been sold to non-Jews, and gentiles do the farming on land still owned by Jews.
But nowhere is the legacy of the Jewish gaucho so deeply entrenched as it is in Moises Ville, which still shuts down for Jewish holidays even though few residents celebrate them. The library is filled with volumes in Yiddish and Hebrew, and some elderly non-Jewish residents still remember prayers and blessings they learned as youths.
"Years after the last Jewish resident dies, the people of Moises Ville will still be eating gefilte fish and taking Yom Kippur as a holiday," said Pablo Trumper, 76, a retired schoolteacher whose grandfather was one of the original Jewish settlers.
Omar del Beno, Moises Ville's first non-Jewish Mayor, said that although most residents are Roman Catholic, like a majority of Argentines, the town observes many Jewish cultural traditions because "they are what we grew up with and have become accustomed to."
"We are such a close-knit community that people here don't even think about what's Jewish and what isn't," Mr. del Beno said. "We just live."
While Argentina is well known for having opened its doors to Nazis after World War II, at the turn of the century it welcomed large numbers of Jews, who formed colonies like Moises Ville in the interior of Argentina.
Moises Ville was founded in 1889 by Russian Jews who were fleeing the pogroms. With the help of a French philanthropist, the Jewish colonists bought land in Santa Fe Province and named their new settlement "town of Moses."
Ana Weinstein, director of the Mark Turkow Center for Information and Documentation of Argentine Judaism, based in Buenos Aires, said that while gauchos taught the Jewish colonists how to survive in the wild and how to work the land, the settlers in turn introduced new crops like rice and sunflowers and Argentina's first farming cooperatives.
"Jews who founded Moises Ville and other agrarian colonies came from Russia and brought with them progressive socialist ideas that led them to establish agrarian cooperatives," Mrs. Weinstein said. "These were different from the Israeli kibbutz because here people didn't share the earnings of production in equal parts."
Instead, the colonists pooled their resources to buy seed and tools or to sell grain or cattle. But individuals earned according to their production, Mrs. Weinstein said.
Moises Ville's cooperative caught the attention of neighboring communities. In the Moises Ville museum, there are letters from nearby towns seeking information about the cooperative.
Today, Argentina has some 300,000 Jews, the largest population in Latin America. In recent years, after the bombing of Israeli Embassy and a Jewish cultural center in Buenos Aires, many Argentine Jews have started making annual pilgrimages here to celebrate their roots.
"Coming here is like going to Israel except it's a lot less expensive and much closer to home," said Pablo Barenboim, a pharmaceutical salesman who drove seven hours from Buenos Aires to visit the town's museum and historic buildings. "I feel renewed and will definitely come back."
Martha Levisman de Clusellas, a renowned architect whose grandparents were among the founders of Moises Ville, said the town has always provided her with a sense of relief and comfort from Argentina's big cities, where she said there is anti-Semitism.
"For me Moises Ville is a place where I go to heal myself," she said. "It's like a treasure chest that once opened is unending because there is a part of us all in there."
But as Moises Ville's Jewish population dwindles, many worry that the traditions will not be maintained. Dr. Juan Kazneietz, director of the hospital, said that most Jewish residents are over 50 and that there is about one Jewish birth in Moises Ville only every three or four months.
"Demographics are not on our side," Dr. Kazneietz said.
Indeed, only one of the town's four synagogues is open, and it has not had a full-time rabbi for years. Weekly services are often postponed because there is no quorum. The cemetery, which cannot be entered without the head covered in the Jewish tradition, has 5,000 graves.
Students at the Jewish seminary say that while they feel pride being from Argentina's first Jewish settlement, they can't wait to graduate so they can go to college in bigger cities.
"We've been taught all our lives that education is important and that we have to become professionals, but what opportunities are there here for us?" asked Diego Kanzepolsk, 17.
Fanny Trumper, 92, who was born in Moises Ville, said she remembers a town "100 percent free" of the anti-Semitism that she said exists in major cities of Argentina.
"It was a beautiful experience growing up in a community where everyone was Jewish, the doctor, lawyer, the mayor, and no one looked down on us because we were different," Mrs. Trumper said. "This is the most important place for Jews in Argentina, and we need to preserve it because it is the only one made entirely with Jewish hands."
The New Jerusalem
Uprooted grass-roots
On the way to his field, Arminio Seiferheld points at the nearby fields and sighs: "Look, this was Leibovitz's field. And next to it, Berkovich's field. And next to that, Segal's field. And over there was the other Leibovitz's field." And so on, across the whole broad expanse all around. In his boyhood, 50 years ago, there were dozens of Jewish farmers in Moisesville and in neighboring Palacios, two agricultural villages located about 560 kilometers north of Buenos Aires. In fact, nearly all the fields in the area belonged to Jewish farmers. Today Sieferheld is one of the last of them.
His parents came from Germany in the late 1930s - his father fled the Nazi regime in 1939, his mother a year later. His father came on his own; he thus did not receive any lands of his own and had to work as a hired hand in other people's fields. His mother, however, who came with her entire family, inherited land. Seiferheld says that in his mother's family, they had no trouble getting accustomed to agricultural work.
"Back in Germany they had a small dairy farm, and they sold milk. And anyway, before they came here, they underwent a period of agricultural training. Father was less used to it, but as far as they were concerned, the main thing was that the escape to Argentina had saved their lives, so that all the difficulties were less important."
Arminio was born in 1942 (in Palacios and not in Moisesville, where he now lives). From the time he was 11, he worked in the cow barn. The family home stood in the center of a family estate, which was separated by a great distance from the homes of the other landholders. To get to school, he had to walk between 11 and 15 kilometers every morning, and the same distance back. Even the synagogue where the family worshiped was built in the middle of the field where they worked. There Arminio also held his bar-mitzvah ceremony. To this day, the structure stands in the middle of the field, though there is nothing in it; only a small niche in the wall indicates where the holy ark stood.
The family lived there until 1973, when the house was inundated in a flood and the family moved to Moisesville. Seiferheld began to raise cattle, and the rest of the family continued to take care of the dairy. About nine years ago he sold the dairy barn, and today he has about 700 head of beef cattle. To an outsider, this number is perhaps impressive; in local terms, according to Seiferheld, "it's a pretty small herd."
He had four children, and their stories are representative of the migration history of the natives of Moisesville: One daughter studied in the nearby provincial capital Rosario and stayed on to live there. Another daughter immigrated to Israel, married a fellow from France, and they now live in the Caribbean islands. A third son lived in Israel for a while, returned to Argentina and is now back in Israel again, living in Jerusalem and working as a tour guide. And the youngest son, Gilli, 23, studied translation from Spanish to English in Rosario, and three years ago, returned to Moisesville and accepted an offer to run the local school for training Jewish teachers, which plays an integral role in the Jewish high school's curriculum.
Education in the field
On young Seiferheld's shoulders rest, to a large extent, the burden of Jewish education in Moisesville (40 students in the elementary school, and approximately another 10 in the high school; in both places, lessons are held in the afternoon, after public school hours). This is what his daily timetable looks like: In the morning he dashes around among 14 "field schools" - schools located in the middle of fields for the farmers' children in the general population - where he teaches English, and in the afternoon, he serves as principal of the seminary and teaches in the Jewish school. In between, he also gives private lessons.
"The job suited me, because it allows me to work in the profession I studied. I didn't find work in Rosario, and when they offered me this job, I was also flattered to return to the place I had studied as a teacher and principal," Gilli Seiferheld says.
He speaks fluent Hebrew; he also likes Israeli music and folk dances. At the moment, he says, he is working intensively and the lack of a social life in the small township does not worry him very much, at least not during the week. On weekends, he goes out with his friends in one of the nearby provincial towns.
About 2,500 people now live in Moisesville, of whom less than 300 are Jewish. Nevertheless, a trip through the place is a fascinating, even surrealistic experience in Jewish terms. This is a godforsaken place reminiscent of cinematic descriptions of small towns somewhere in the American desert. In each of the towns there are about 20 small streets, and one can drive around all of it in 10 minutes. In the hot midday hours [in the southern hemisphere, the end of December is the middle of the summer - Y.S.], there is no one in the streets: Everyone is having a siesta. In the local restaurant, a single ceiling fan tries, unsuccessfully, to alleviate the heat a bit.
This remote town is the origin of the Jewish agricultural colony. Though only about one-eighth of its inhabitants are Jewish now, its Jewish background is still evident. Some of its more important streets are named for Theodor Herzl, Baron de Hirsh (who helped the colony through its economic difficulties in its early years). There is even a State of Israel Street.
The local bank is called Banco de la Israelita ("The Jews' Bank")and it has a Star of David on top. The local performance hall was originally the auditorium of the Yiddish theater troupe that performed there. To this day, the building bears the name of the troupe, "Verein Kadima," and it too has a Star of David on top. Last Monday, a group of young people was rehearsing Israeli folk dances to the strains of "Mashiach Mashiach" and "Yahad" by the Shva group for the troupe's annual performance in mid-January.
A Jewish town in every way
The dancers are students and graduates of the local Jewish high school. One of them, Dana Liebenbok, 18, was one of 10 graduates of the local Jewish high school this year, and like her friends, she also completed a Hebrew teachers' training course. The studies at the school, she says, are taken for granted by young people from Jewish families: "And even though sometimes we complain about the extra burden this places on us in addition to our studies in the morning at the public school, in the end we know that it is important and we appreciate the teachers' efforts."
Liebenbok plans to study English in one of the larger cities in the country, and at the same time, to support herself - as most Moisesville graduates do and have done - by teaching Hebrew and Judaism at Jewish schools. However, she does not see teaching Judaism as her main professional career. Her teacher, Esther Gabriel, however, has followed the opposite route: She came to Moisesville especially to undergo additional training at the teachers' seminary, and since then, she has made her home there. Even her parents left some time ago and immigrated to Israel.
In the central square of the town, a large fir tree is put up at the end of December and decorated with lights, as is the custom in Christian countries, but in Moisesville, a Star of David glitters from the top of the tree. Many of the Jews in the town speak fluent Hebrew. There are also three synagogues, in one of which the Jews of the town gather every week to greet the Sabbath. Moreover, the local museum, which documents the history of the town - it is maintained by the local council, not by the Jewish community - is full of Jewish objects and, in effect, tells the story of the town as a Jewish town in every way.
Eva Rosental, the director of the museum, and Gilli Seiferheld, who used to be her student, slowly reveal the story of the town. Rosental's mother's family came to Moisesville from Bobrinsk in Russia (Berl Katznelson's hometown) and her father's family came from Lithuania - both at the beginning of the 20th century. The town itself was founded, she says, in 1889 by a group of several hundred ultra-Orthodox Jews from the region of Kamenitz-Podulsk in Russia. The group arrived in Argentina after the pogroms during that period in the areas of the Pale of Settlement, to which the Jews of Eastern Europe were confined at the time. In effect, the story of this group runs strikingly parallel to that of the people of the First Aliyah [first major wave of Jewish immigration to Palestine] - the same Jews, during the very same period, who came for similar reasons to the land of Israel and created the beginnings of agricultural settlement there.
`Another' First Aliyah
This particular group came to Argentina because during those years (and in fact up until World War II), the country encouraged mass immigration, especially from Europe, in an attempt to expand and improve the manpower in the huge country. "At that time, it was much easier for Jews from Europe to get to Argentina than to the land of Israel," says Rosental.
Apparently, the interest in agriculture did not stem from ideological reasons - and thus, the members of this group differed from their compatriots who went to the land of Israel - but due to the fact that the Argentinean authorities made this a condition for immigration permits (as the aim was to develop the country). In any case, anyone who had already entered the country could easily infiltrate into the cities, which is what many other Jews did during that same period - mainly Jews from Morocco and Syria. However, according to Rosental, the settlers in Argentina, like the people from the First Aliyah and early Zionism as a whole, had an ideology of "productivization": that is, a return by the Jews to productive trades, as opposed to the commercial areas in which they customarily dealt.
Even before they came, the members of the group purchased farmland near Buenos Aires. However, when they got to Argentina, the sellers prevented its delivery to them by using various excuses. Moreover, in the light of critical articles that appeared in the Argentine press at the time - which complained that the government was encouraging the import of Jews who were undesirable even in the places they came from - for several days the Jews were even prevented from getting off the boat. These articles aroused the support of the small local Jewish community already living in Buenos Aires, which put pressure on the authorities to let the Jews get off the ship and to purchase alternative land in the north of the country.
The members of the group, 824 people, made their way north along the Parana River until they came to the provincial capital of Rosario. From there, they went by train to their area of settlement. There it turned out that they had again been cheated: The houses and cattle that had been promised them in the deed of sale did not exist. With little money, they stayed on there for several weeks, living in the railway carriages they had arrived in. These living conditions exacted a heavy price: An epidemic broke out among the members of the community, and more than 60 children died.
According to Rosental, "The children were buried in kerosene containers and screw cartons, because there was no organized cemetery and the group believed that it would soon come to its permanent settlement, and there they would bury the children. Many began to split off from the group and try their luck at farms in the area."
Parallel stories
Were it not for the appearance there of Dr. Guillermo Levental, a Jewish physician from Austria who had been sent by the government of Argentina to organized a settlement plan in the region, there is no knowing what might have happened to them. The distress of his Jewish brethren touched Levental's heart, and when he returned to Buenos Aires, he pressured the person who had sold the land to keep his promises. Thus the way to settlement was finally opened.
The group's rabbi, Rabbi Aharon Halevi Goldman, chose the name for the place. When they came to the site of the settlement, Goldman declared that the trials of their journey were reminiscent of the Jews' Exodus from Egypt, and therefore it was fitting that the place be called "Kiryat Moshe" ("Moses Town"). The interpreter, who was in contact with the authorities in the matter of the name, was not Spanish in origin but rather a Frenchman, and he translated the name to "Moisesville," although in some old documents, the Hebrew name given by Goldman also appears.
In the meantime, Dr. Levental had gone to Paris and had begun to interest the rabbi of the city, Rabbi Tzadok Hacohen, and Baron Maurice de Hirsch, in the story of the settlement in Argentina. He spoke of it in terms of a comprehensive solution to the plight of the Jews in Eastern Europe. The two were enthusiastic, and Baron Hirsch established the Jewish Colonization Association (JCA), which systematically set up Jewish agricultural colonies in Argentina, administered by Levental.
The people of Moisesville, however, stress that "contrary to the image, our colony was not established by the baron, but rather independently, and only two years later, did the baron take it under his wing. In this way it is different from the colony at Mauricio (near Buenos Aires), which also claims primacy, but was in fact only the first colony among those established by the baron."
This completed the parallel to the story of the First Aliyah: The settlers in the colonies in Argentina were under the patronage of Baron de Hirsch, just as the colonies in the land of Israel were under the patronage of Baron Edmond de Rothschild, and both groups had to live with the conflicts between needing the barons' money and the lack of a desire to follow their subordinates' orders. Incidentally, when the barons of the Rothschild family became fed up with funding the colonies in the Land of Israel, they also came under the patronage of Baron de Hirsh, who set up the Palestine Jewish Colonization Association (PICA) for them.
During the 50 years between 1889 and the outbreak of World War II, the colonies in Argentina, and chief among them Moisesville, flourished - because of the continuing distress among the Jews of Eastern Europe and the concurrent encouragement of immigration to Argentina. Toward the end of this period came the second, large wave of immigration (after the founding groups) from Germany, fleeing the Nazi regime. At that time, the Jewish colonies reached their peak: about 40 colonies numbering about 20,000 souls, that spread over about 6,000 square kilometers of agricultural land.
The `Jerusalem of Argentina'
From back in the days of Rabbi Goldman in Moisesville, they have believed in Jewish education. In order to encourage people to be teachers, in 1943 a seminary was established there. Rosental relates that students came from all the colonies and the peripheral cities of Argentina. A dormitory was also set up where the students could live. At its peak, about 200 teacher trainees lived there, and teachers of Hebrew and Judaism set out from there to all parts of Argentina.
Little Moisesville therefore became a brand-name in the field of Jewish education, earning it the nickname, of which its inhabitants are proud to this day, of "the Jerusalem of Argentina." In recent years, the dormitory has been closed and only the local high school students are studying at the seminary.
The waning of Jewish Moisesville had already begun in the 1940s. The children of the farmers did not want to follow in their parents' footsteps, and were more attracted to the free professions in the cities. In many cases, the parents left to follow their children. The establishment of the State of Israel led to a further exodus; the natives of Moisesville, with their Zionist education and their knowledge of Hebrew, had both the motivation and the relatively convenient possibility of going to Israel.
Zionist "training" was established there in preparation for setting out for Israel, and a branch of the Zionist Youth movement is active there to this day. A group from Moisesville went to Kibbutz Bahan in Emek Hefer. Another group went to Kibbutz Meflasim.
Ariel Seiferheld, Gilli's (Israeli) brother, estimates that there are several hundred people from Moisesville in Israel, a considerable number considering the size of the town. They are proud of their origins, and they still hold an annual reunion about the time of Independence Day in the Ben Shemen Forest. According to Seiferheld, about 100 people show up for these reunions.
Today, the majority of the inhabitants of Moisesville are not Jewish. Says Gilli Seiferheld: "Relations with them are excellent. They recognize the Jewish holidays, and for Rosh Hashanah, they always wish us a happy new year." Because of the size of the place, there have inevitably been intermarriages, as the few Jews there find it difficult to meet suitable Jewish partners. In most such cases, the children of such couples attend the Jewish school.
Borris Tromper, the son of a Jewish father from Russia and a non-Jewish mother from Uruguay, is one of them. He attended the Jewish school and celebrated the Jewish holidays, "and in general," he says, "my culture was Jewish." Today he is a local cattle rancher and in the past, he even tried to settle in Israel, but returned to his homeland.
Among the group of girls preparing for the upcoming folk-dance performance in Moisesville is one named Lumilla, both of whose parents are not Jewish. She went to kindergarten with Jewish friends and through her ties with them, she went on to attend the Jewish school and the teachers' seminary. Like them, she speaks Hebrew and her friends call her "Liat."
But the small number of Jews today, and the constant emigration, do not leave much chance for the Jewish future of Moisesville. Although according to Rosental: "In recent years, because of the economic situation, some young people who studied in the big cities have come back home, something that did not happen 40 years ago."
These young people, among them Gilli Seiferheld, came home in order to find work where they were better known. But when they want to build their professional future in the longer term, and if they insist on marrying a Jewish spouse, they too will have to leave Moisesville.
| Argentina's last Jewish cowboys | ||||||||||||||||||||
| The story of Moises Ville in the Argentine pampas
The gaucho is to Argentina what the cowboy is to the United States. But how did Jewish gauchos appear in an overwhelmingly Roman Catholic country?
You could put Arminio Seiferheld on the front cover of a calendar depicting the Argentine countryside. Piercing blue eyes look out of a brown weather-beaten sixty-something year old face. He wears bombachas - the baggy, hard-wearing trousers used by gauchos - the Argentine cowboys. And he sips the bitter mate tea drunk in these parts through a bombilla or metal straw out of a wooden gourd clasped in his hand. Arminio is one of the last of a disappearing breed: the Jewish gaucho.
As we drive down a dirt road near his farm in the northern province of Santa Fe he stops to talk to an elderly farm-worker in a combination of Spanish and Yiddish; an unusual mixture so far from the Jewish communities of Buenos Aires and Rosario. "He's not Jewish," explains Arminio, as the farm-worker and his ragged, wirey dogs continue on their way. "But he worked for my father at a time when most of the farmers around here were Jewish and spoke Yiddish." Polish pioneers
We pull up outside Arminio's house in The State of Israel Street in the heart of Moises Ville, a town of about 2,000 inhabitants. It is a short walk from the town's central plaza. At first glance, it is exactly like most in rural Argentina, with the statue in the middle of Jose de San Martin, the liberator from Spanish colonial rule.
But this plaza is different. On one side is the Kadima theatre, the sign written amidst the ornate stonework in Spanish and Hebrew. Painted over but still clearly visible on the façade of the bank are the words "Banco Comercial Israelita: the Commercial Bank of Israel" and the well-tended flowerbeds form a Star of David. When tens of thousands of Jews fled the pogroms in eastern Europe at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries they mostly sought refuge in the cities of New York, London, Paris and Buenos Aires. But one small group of Polish Jews arrived in Argentina with the ambition of recreating a biblical dream and working the land. They were sold, at greatly inflated prices, large tracts of barely fertile land in the inhospitable north. That was their first problem. Their second major disadvantage was that they had been urban dwellers and knew little about the ways of the countryside. Very soon, after the community had been ravaged by disease and poor harvests, the remaining pioneers were reduced to living in disused railway carriages, surviving from scraps thrown from passing trains. Cradle for Jewish immigration
The wealthy Jewish philanthropist, Baron Maurice Hirsh, heard of their plight and decided to fund the establishment of several Jewish communities in Argentina. The first was Moises Ville, founded in 1890. The early days were tough. Few spoke the language and not all were welcome in this predominantly Roman Catholic country. Records tell of one Jewish woman burnt to death in her house, another resident chopped up and burnt for two-hundred pesos and some bags of flour.
But they overcame their difficulties to build a thriving community boasting four synagogues, Argentina's first Jewish cemetery, the Kadima theatre, a Hebrew school and a thriving public library. Sings of integration Arminio's father arrived with the second wave of Jewish immigrants to Argentina, those escaping Nazi Germany. He swapped three bicycles for three cows and began his life as a cattle farmer: an Argentine Jewish gaucho. Arminio has continued the tradition but his four children like so many young rural Argentines - both Jewish and non-Jewish - have moved to the cities. One son lives in Israel and all speak fluent Hebrew. His daughter, Patricia, who was visiting from the city of Rosario, where she teaches Hebrew, said: "When I first went to Jerusalem, I felt at home. They could not believe that I came from a small town called Moises Ville that was a cradle for Jewish immigration here in Argentina." Now only about 10 percent of the population of Moises Ville is Jewish. However, the signs of integration after those difficult early days are apparent with non-Jewish girls attending Israeli folk dancing classes and the town's only bakery making and selling apple strudel, kamish and cholla breads alongside the more traditional Argentine breads and pastries. Uncertain future Argentina, which has the biggest Jewish community in Latin America, has suffered anti-Semitism which is again on the rise. But it was also a country of immigrants with Italians, Spaniards, Russians and Germans - Catholics, Protestants, Moslems and Jews - battling together to overcome harsh terrain to help build a nation.
At the end of a long day on the farm, Arminio rushes home to shower and change to officiate at the only synagogue that still functions in Moises Ville. The Jewish congregation, like most in the other rural Jewish towns in Argentina, is small and elderly and does not warrant its own rabbi. The future is uncertain. But for now at least the Hebrew prayers and traditions brought from Eastern Europe over 100 years ago still mix with the sound of crickets on a starlit night on the Argentine pampas. From Our Own Correspondent was broadcast on Saturday, 10 February, 2007 at 1130 GMT on BBC Radio 4. Please check the programme schedules for World Service transmission times. | | Personal reflections by BBC correspondents around the world Top of Form SEARCH FROM OUR OWN CORRESPONDENT: Bottom of Form Three Ways to Listen From Our Own Correspondent
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Peregrination to Moisesville
Moisesville, a small town in the Province of Santa Fe in Argentina was the birthplace of my father, Moises Sigal. There he was raised. His stories about his childhood in his hometown, exerted a special fascination on me and Moisesville, since then, had a special place in my mind and in my feelings. Visiting Moisesville was always one of my dreams.
We lived in the city of Cordoba. We always spoke about traveling to Moisesville by car. A trip was being planned, when my father died, in 1938 when he was 42 and I, the oldest of the three sons was eleven. This caused the postponement, almost for ever, of the visit. The remoteness of the place and the lack of information on facilities for travelers contributed.
Now at age 75, in May 2002, I decided to go ahead with the visit, perhaps the last opportunity. With my wife Sara Gaguine we have been residing in the USA for almost half a century. Modern technology, in particular the internet, help me to prepare the trip. Through searchs we were able to contact Mrs Eva Guelbert Rosenthal, director of the Moisesville Museum. She assisted us in the planning, made the transportation arrangements from the airport to the village and during our brief stay, se took us around the village and show us the landmarks of interest.
The trip to Argentina was one of the biennial trips that we make to visit our families
Visita a Moisesville
Este escrito fue publicado en “Mundo Israelita” de Junio 21 de 2002
Moisesville, desde temprana edad ocupó en mi mente un lugar especial. Allí nació y pasó los formativos años de su infancia mi padre, Moisés Sigal, Sus relatos despertaban en mi imágenes de la vida en Moisesville y visitarla fue un deseo que tuve toda mi vida.
Nosotros vivíamos en Córdoba. Siempre hablábamos de hacer un viaje en auto para reconocer el predio familiar. El viaje estaba siendo planeado, cuando Moisés falleció en l938, ( a los 42 años, cuando yo, el primogénito tenia 11).
Esto interrumpió, casi para siempre, la visita. La ubicación remota y la falta de información respecto a acceso, contribuyeron. Pero ya a la edad de 75 años, en mayo de 2002 decidí emprenderlo con mi esposa Sara Gaguine, quizás la última oportunidad. Nosotros residimos en Estados Unidos desde hace casi medio siglo. Gracias al internet nos fue posible comunicarnos con la Sra. Eva Guelbert de Rosenthal, directora del Museo de Moisés Ville. Ella nos ayudó con información, hizo los arreglos para conseguir transporte y durante nuestra breve estadía, nos mostró el pueblo y los diversos lugares de especial interés para nosotros.
El viaje a la Argentina fue uno de los que hacemos regularmente cada dos años para visitar nuestras familias, dispersas en distintos lugares del pais. Esta vez decidimos dedicar un día a la visita a Moisésville.
Volamos a la mañana temprano (7.55) desde Buenos Aires hasta Santa Fe. En el aeropuerto nos estaba esperando el Sr. Ricardo Nussbaum quien nos transportó los 150 Km hasta Moisesville.
Fuimos primero a la casa de la familia Rosenthal, donde conocimos a Eva. Desde allí, la Sra Margot Nusssbaum tomó el auto para transportarnos, con Eva, a los distintos lugares. Fuimos a ver el campo que había pertenecido a mi abuelo, Berl Sigal. Berl murió en l922, pero el campo continuó en posesión de la familia hasta alrededor de 1950, cuando fue vendido a Ganaderos Unidos. Vimos la plaza San Martín, y pasamos por los bosques de eucaliptos y de coniferas, el edificio municipal, la policía, la biblioteca pública, las escuelas (mi padre decía que él solía ir a la escuela a caballo, ahora se veían solo bicicletas), la Kadima, las tres sinagogas, el museo, la escuela hebrea, el internado y la iglesia católica.
En los tiempos de mi padre no había escuela secundaria. Para seguir sus estudios tuvo que separarse de sus padres para ir a Rosario donde estudió en la escuela industrial. Luego procedió a estudiar ingeniería en la Universidad de Córdoba donde obtuvo el título de Ingeniero Civil en 1921. En 1927 ganó, por concurso, una cátedra de profesor adjunto en la Facultad de Ingeniería de la Universidad de Córdoba.
La edificación de Moisesville, es baja y varía desde algunas casas originales desde el comienzo de la colonia, hasta atrayentes casas modernas.
Después de un suculento almuerzo en el “Comedor de Jane”, un restaurante que pertenece a la Sra Sandra Carina Bernstein, en la calle Baron Hirsh 296, siempre bajo la guía de la Sra Rosenthal, hicimos las visitas específicas.
En el cementerio israelita visitamos la tumba de mi abuelo Berl Sigal, a quien no pude conocer porque murió en 1922, antes de que yo naciera. La Sra. Rosenthal tradujo para nosotros la inscripción en la tumba. Daba como ciudad natal, Triesk en la provincia de Volydnia. De acuerdo con información que yo poseía, él había nacido en Turijsk, en la misma provincia. Una investigación preliminar me hizo llegar a la conclusión que quizás Triesk, era una aldea pequeña vecina a Turijsk (quizás el ghetto judío). Turijsk figura en mapas pero no Triesk. Por la inscripción aprendí que el nombre de mi bisabuelo era Iakov Halevy Sigal.
También nos detuvimos frente a la tumba de un tío político, Luis Glombovsky. Él era un joven médico en la localidad de Tostado, Pcia de Santa Fe. Fué asesinado por un paciente en 1932, a los 27 años de edad, cuando su hija tenía 4 meses. Su esposa, mi tía Ana Salzman tiene ahora 97 años. Vive en Posadas, rodeada por su familia: su hija y prima mía, Laura Glombovsky de Edelman , Oscar Edelman su yerno, nietos, bisnietos y hasta una tataranieta. (14 personas en total).
En el edificio de la Kadima el hermoso teatro indica la importancia que las actividades culturales tenían y tienen en el pequeño pueblo.
De las tres sinagogas, la que más nos impresionó es el interior de la Brener, con su araña central (obtenida de la demolición del antiguo teatro Colón de Buenos Aires), y la hermosa decoración de madera tallada, en su mayor parte obra de artesanos locales. La fachada, en particular, requiere extenso trabajo de reparación.
Por último visitamos el museo Rabino Aarón Halevy Goldman. Hay muestras de elementos que los colonos trajeron de sus lugares de origen, y objetos, fotos y documentos que revelan las diferentes fases de la evolución de la colonia.
Fue muy emotivo encontrar en el libro del antiguo juez de paz, Blasberg, el registro, manuscrito en hebreo, del nacimiento de mi padre. Menciona el nombre no sólo de mis abuelos, Berl Sigal y Clara Finkelstein, sino también el de los bisabuelos, Iakov Halevy Sigal y Abraham Finkelstein, cuyos nombres yo no conocía.
El museo tiene un sistema informático (base Goldman) con archivos sobre las familias y la vida en Moisesville (22.000 datos registrados). Obtuvimos información sobre el barco en que los abuelos llegaron a la Argentina, la fecha, y la lista de todos los hijos. También las fechas de visitas de mi padre a Moisésville y algunas de las actividades literarias de un tío, Samuel Sigal. El fué el segundo y último hijo de Berl que nació en Moisesville (en 1899) y vivió allí, hasta 1923.
Terminada la visita al museo, el Sr Nussbaum nos llevó al aeropuerto de Santa Fe a tiempo para el vuelo de las 20.05 hacia Buenos Aires. A las 21.30 estábamos de regreso en Buenos Aires, muy satisfechos con nuestra experiencia. Uno de los sueños de mi vida se había cumplido. El éxito del viaje se debe en gran medida a los esfuerzos y la gentileza de la Sra Rosenthal.
En nuestro próximo viaje, trataremos de visitar Médanos, en la Provincia de Buenos Aires, donde uno de mis bisabuelos maternos, Simón Gueler, se asentó. Su tumba, la de mi bisabuela y la de mi tatarabuela (la madre de Simón) están en el cementerio de esa localidad.
Jorge B Sigal
Junio, 2002 Moisesville- Information from computer of Museum.
From: Museo Goldman [museo_mv@interclass.com.ar]
Sent: Friday, May 17, 2002 9:00 AM
To: george sigal
Subject: Envío de información
Le adjuntamos la información encontrada en la Base Goldman. Este es nuestro sistema informático y tenemos alrededor de 22.000 datos registrados.
PLANILLA: Barcos
Llegada de Clara Finkelstein con hijos- Clara (Chaia) edad 37 Partio de Odessa en el vapor Bósforo (Marzo 10, 1894) En Genova cambio al vapor Orione que transporto la familia a Buenos Aires. Llegada: Abril de 1894. Hijos acompa;ando a Clara:
1-Schulim, edad 17-Nunca supe de su existencia-Debe haber muerto a poco de llegar.
2-Nachman, edad 10- Nunca supe de su existencia-Debe haber muerto a poco de llegar
3-Ruvien Leib, edad 3- Coincide con la fecha de nacimiento de Luis Sigal. Conclusión el
es Luis Sigal
4-Reisa (Rosa) edad 19
5- Ruchla (Raquel). Edad 7
6-Suva (Sara), edad 5
Aparentemente Berl llego antes que el resto de la familia. No hay información sobre su llegada.
Actividades de Samuel Sigal
Tomadas aparentemente del periodico El Alba
Febrero 21, 1922- viaje a Cordoba
Enero 9, 1923 ( a los 24 a;ios- Profesión: escritor- El Naturalismo y Emilio Zola.
Enero 30, 1923- Biografia de Max Nordau
Febrero 6, 1923- Reunion por la partida de Sara Waxemberg de Schiffrin
Febrero 13,1923- Conferencia sobre Literatura Francesa.
Febrero 20, 1923- Replica al periodico La Tribuna por articulo sobre el idish- viaje a Cordoba
Marzo 20, 1923- Replica de Samuel Sigal a cierto articulo con alusiones hacia el
Junio 3, 1923- Acto de simpatia del Periodico El Alba hacia Samuel Sigal
Profesión: Estudiante universitario- Colaborador con el Periodico El Alba.
Es posible que en esa epoca ya vivia en Cordoba con su madre y estaba estudiando en el colegio secundario. Siendo un autodidacta, tenia amplios conocimentos e hizo los 5 a;os en 2.
septiembre 1. 1923 Nuevo viaje de Cordoba a Moisesville
Actividades de Moisés Sigal (profesión ingeniero)
Enero 23-30, 1923, viaje de Cordoba a Moisesville- Es posible que fue para llevar la madre a Cordoba, donde ella residio hasta su muerte en 1929.
Junio 26,1923, viaje de Cordoba a Moisesville
Actividades de Luis Sigal, profesión: doctor (en realidad odontólogo)
Enero 26, 1922 Viaje de Rosario a Moisesville
