Note: While continuing my longstanding search for Heinz Ludiwg Berliner, one of my father’s first cousins who is reported to have wound up in Bolivia, I learned that he was merely one of about 20,000 Jews who escaped there from Nazi Europe. I discuss Bolivia’s motivation for allowing so many European Jews into the country when the doors to them in most other countries had been closed.
The Circulo Israelita de Bolivia (Jews of Bolivia (haruth.com ) is the highest synagogue on earth, located at an altitude of more than 12,000 feet in La Paz, Bolivia. The synagogue serves the 500 to 700 Jews in a country where the citizens are predominantly Catholic. It retains copies of various documents and newspaper clippings related to the immigration of Jewish people to Bolivia and the creation of the Jewish communities in La Paz, Cochabamba, and Santa Cruz. I first contacted the Circulo Israelita de Bolivia in 2019 after learning that my father’s first cousin, Heinz Ludwig Berliner, survived the Holocaust by somehow making his way there. (Figure 1) I had hoped they might have evidence of Heinz’s presence in the country, but regrettably not.
After my last contact with the synagogue in January 2020, shortly before the Covid pandemic burst upon the global scene, I set aside my pursuit to track down my father’s first cousin. Thus, it came as a big surprise when the Circulo reached out to me recently with new information. I’d clearly planted a seed during our earlier exchanges. Synagogue staff explained that an anthropologist named Dr. Sandra Gruner-Domić is currently in Bolivia doing research on the history of Jews there, and the topic of Heinz Berliner came up.
It turns out, Dr. Gruner-Domić had found a so-called “Censo De Extranjeros,” a foreigner census form (Figure 2), for a gentleman named Erich Blumenthal Berliner. This document is a mandatory declaration that Bolivia’s Minister of Immigration required be filled out by all foreign immigrants. Obviously, given the identical surname to my ancestor Heinz Berliner caused synagogue staff and Dr. Gruner-Domić to wonder whether there might be any connection between these two Berliners. After briefly getting my hopes up, I quickly realized they are not related in any way I can easily discern.
Still, as I had done and discussed in Post 129 for my unrelated but similarly surnamed individual named Dr. Henrik Brück, interred in “El Cementerio Judio” in Presidencia Roque Sáenz Peña in Chaco Province, Argentina, I searched in ancestry for any evidence of Erich Berliner’s life in Germany. Intriguingly, I found his marriage certificate showing he married a woman a widow or divorcee named Edith Charlotte Rotenstein née Totschek in Berlin in 1934 (Figures 3a-c); this matches the maiden name of Erich Berliner’s wife on his foreigner census form. So, just as I had tracked Dr. Henrik Brück to his place of birth in Alba Iulia, Romania from Argentina, I was similarly able to backtrack from Bolivia Erich Berliner to his place and date of marriage in Berlin. Relevantly, however, neither is related to me.
I exchanged a few emails with Dr. Gruner-Domić incidentally sharing Erich Berliner’s Berlin marriage certificate ruefully remarking this Berliner is unrelated to Heinz. Sandra then sent me a page from the database of individuals buried in the Jewish cemetery in Cochabamba with the names of two other Berliners, Frida and Lothar Berliner, with their specific birth and death dates. (Figure 4) This also allowed me to check their names in ancestry. I was very precisely able to find a birth certificate for an Adolf Lothar Berliner who was born in Berlin on the 11th of October 1883 matching the date of birth from the Cochabamba database. (Figures 5a-b) I also found Lothar’s marriage certificate showing he got married on the 11th of July 1921 in Berlin to a woman named Frieda Anna Pauline Dammann born the 24th of November 1887. (Figures 6a-c) While her forename matches the Berliner buried in Cochabamba and I believe her to be Lothar’s wife, her date of birth is different. What to make of this is unclear.
In trying to find a photo of Sandra to include in this post (Figure 7), I learned much more about how Jews found refuge in Bolivia during the Nazi era. I’ll briefly review the historical context for this based on a Webinar Sandra delivered at the JDC Archives in May 2022: “Sandra Gruner-Domić Lectures on Bolivia, a Forgotten Refuge During the Holocaust: Jewish Immigration 1937-1941 | JDC Archives” This is a topic of potentially much greater interest to readers than my search for Heinz Berliner, although it fits well into trying to better understand how he wound up in Bolivia.
Dr. Gruner-Domić is a migration scholar and is on a Fulbright Scholarship to Bolivia for the 2022-2023 academic year. Recently, she has been examining the immigration of Jewish refugees in Bolivia during the Holocaust, including the role played by a Moritz Hochschild, a Jewish entrepreneur, and the second-wealthiest man in Bolivia at the time.
The immigration of Jewish refugees to Bolivia is a lesser-known chapter of the Holocaust. Amazingly, approximately 20,000 Jewish refugees fleeing Nazi Europe arrived in Bolivia between 1937 and 1941, at a time when other Latin American countries had closed their doors. Bolivia was among the 32 nations who attended the Évian Conference in July 1938 at Évian-les-Bains, France, to address the problem of German and Austrian Jewish refugees wishing to flee persecution by Nazi Germany. The conference was deemed a failure because aside from the Dominican Republic, delegations from the participating nations failed to come to any agreement about accepting the Jewish refugees fleeing the Third Reich. At the Évian Conference Bolivia also refused to accept any Jewish refugees.
However, a month after the conference Bolivia notified the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees of their willingness to begin accepting Jewish refugees. So, along with Shanghai and the Dominican Republic, Bolivia was the last country in the world in the lead up to WWII still issuing visas to Jews trying to flee Nazi persecution. Regular readers will recall that in Post 122, I talked about how another one of my relatives, Herta Brauer, escaped to the Dominican Republic.
As just mentioned, Bolivia issued 20,000 visas to Jewish refugees between 1937 and 1941. Let’s briefly examine Bolivia’s motivation for deciding to do so.
Between 1932 and 1935, Bolivia and Paraguay fought the Chaco War over control of the northern part of the Gran Chaco region, known in Spanish as Chaco Boreal, which was thought to be rich in oil. (Figure 8) The Chaco War was the bloodiest interstate military conflict fought in South America during the 20th century and was fought between two of the continent’s poorest countries, both of whom had lost territory to neighbors during 19th century wars. Bolivia lost its Pacific coast to Chile during the 1879 War of the Pacific, while Paraguay lost almost half of its territory to Brazil and Argentina in the Paraguayan War of 1864 to 1870. As a result both countries wound up landlocked. Although the 600,000 km2 of the Gran Chaco region was sparsely populated, control of the Paraguay River running through it was especially important to Bolivia because it would have provided access to the Atlantic Ocean.
In any case, because of the war, Bolivia lost almost 60,000 people, or roughly 2 percent of its population; in addition, Paraguay captured around 10,000 Bolivian civilians, many of whom decided to stay in Paraguay after the war. Clearly, Bolivia was hemorrhaging people. Following the war, Bolivia was trying to counter its population loss as well as stem further losses by people seeking better economic opportunities in surrounding countries.
After the Chaco War, Bolivia was at an important historical crossroad amidst a nationalist resurgence. Immigration was one step in the country’s transformation, the goals of which were to modernize and repopulate the country, as well as colonize the eastern region of the country with the aim of expanding agricultural development there. Beginning in January 1937, President José David Toro Ruilova once again allowed the free entry of foreigners into the country that had been suspended during the Chaco War. Shortly thereafter Jews began to arrive in Bolivia.
The year 1937 was a turning point for Jews in Europe, with a massive exodus beginning in 1938, and the years 1938 and 1939 being characterized as the “Panic Migration Years.” The involvement of Moritz (Mauricio) Hochschild, a Jew who’d emigrated to Bolivia during the 1920’s, played a part in allowing Jews from Nazi Europe to enter the country. As Bolivia’s second wealthiest man and a leading mining industry businessman, he became an economic advisor to President Toro; the two of them found commonality and their personal relationship played a role in convincing Bolivia to allow Jewish migration. According to Dr. Gruner-Domić, the refugees arriving from Europe were viewed primarily as Europeans and secondly as Jews.
The first concrete measure taken by the Bolivian government was an agreement it signed in January 1937 with the Polish government to allow the resettlement of 250 Jewish families; an agreement was also signed with then-Czechoslovakia. In a few instances, even Jews who’d been incarcerated in concentration camps were released if they’d been lucky enough to obtain a Bolivian visa.
Prior to the mass migration of Jews into Bolivia, which peaked in 1939, there were only about 200 Jews in the entire country. It’s reported that on the 22nd of February 1939 alone, more than 800 Jews arrived. The arrival of this many Jews at once strained the country’s infrastructure, so a decision was made to limit the number of refugees to 250 a month, though it’s unclear this limit was ever implemented.
The path by which most European Jews who’d secured a Bolivian visa came was via boat leaving from Hamburg, Germany or Milano, Italy, traveling through the Panama Canal, landing in Arica, Chile (Figure 9), then taking the train to La Paz; others came via train from Argentina or Brazil. Most Jews who found refuge in Bolivia in the late 1930’s and 1940’s did not stay, so today’s Jewish population is estimated at between 500 and 700. Following the war, those who had families elsewhere left. Judging from the relatively small number of Jews in Bolivia today, I reckon that Heinz Berliner was among those who decamped to a yet unknown country.
Note: In this lengthy post, I discuss one of my Jewish relatives by marriage who along with her family wound up in the Dominican Republic during WWII. I explore the cultural and political context in which Herta Brauer worked and her role in introducing ballet to the country under the sponsorship of Flor de Oro Trujillo, the daughter of the country’s longtime dictator Rafael Trujillo.
It is generally accepted there are seven continents in the world, from largest to smallest, Asia, Africa, North America, South America, Antarctica, Europe, and Australia. Probably not unlike many readers, I can trace ancestors or relatives connected to all these continents apart from Antarctica. Within North America, I occasionally learn about family that passed through one of the Caribbean islands, usually Cuba. This post dwells on one Jewish family member, Herta Brauer, who lived with her family in the Dominican Republic for several years. As a result of a relationship she mysteriously established with Flor de Oro Trujillo (Figure 1), one of the daughters of the Dominican Republic’s longtime notorious and brutal dictator, Rafael Leónidas Trujillo Molina, Herta was instrumental in the introduction of ballet into the country. In this post I discuss Herta Brauer’s time in the Dominican Republic and the significance of her contribution to Dominican culture.
For the benefit of new subscribers as well as longtime followers, let me briefly review how I learned about Herta Brauer, a relative by marriage whom I introduced to readers in Post 34. Several years ago while in Germany visiting the son of my deceased first cousin, I was perusing my uncle Dr. Fedor Bruck’s photographs that had been inherited by this cousin. One picture immediately caught my attention. On the reverse was written in German what translates as, “Three generations: Grete-Herta-Till & Neubabelsberg 1933”; Neubabelsberg is located near Spandau, on the western outskirts of Berlin. Then, in what was unmistakably my uncle’s shaky handwriting he had added: “Aunt Grete Brauer (mother’s sister with her daughter-in-law and grandson).” (Figures 2a-b) I had an epiphany at this moment when I realized that my grandmother’s sister, Margareth Auguste Berliner, whose birth record I had previously discovered on LDS Microfilm Number 1184449 (Figure 3), had survived to adulthood; this was an “aha” moment because my father had never mentioned the existence of his maternal aunt, so I assumed after first learning about her that she had died at birth or in infancy. As I explained in Post 34, I would eventually learn that my great-aunt Margareth, Grete for short, had been murdered in Theresienstadt in 1942.
I first came across the surname “Brauer” when examining the personal papers of my paternal great-aunts Franziska Bruck and Elsbeth Bruck that are archived at Berlin’s Stadtmuseum, coincidentally also in Spandau. Here, I discovered multiple letters written to my great-aunt Elsbeth in East Berlin from Calvia, Mallorca by Hanns & Herta Brauer between 1965 and 1967. (Figure 4) The letterhead on some letters read “Dr. E. H. Brauer,” and they were variously signed “Ernst,” “Hanns,” and “Ernst & Herta.” Elsbeth’s archived materials also include photos the Brauer family sent her, though none of Grete Brauer. (Figures 5-6) Until I found the previously mentioned photo of Grete, I had assumed the Brauers were friends of my great-aunt, not closely related family.
Margarethe Berliner (1872-1942) married a man named Siegfried Brauer (1859-1926) in August 1891. (Figure 7) They had two sons, Kurt Brauer (born on July 7, 1893) and Ernst Han(n)s Brauer (born August 9, 1902) (Figure 8) and at least one daughter, Hildegard Brauer (born April 8, 1892), who was also murdered in the Holocaust; possibly, a Thea Brauer born in 1911 who perished in 1919 and who was buried in the Jewish Cemetery in Ratibor [today: Racibórz, Poland] may have been another of their daughters. Kurt Brauer died in 1920 and was also interred in the Jewish Cemetery in Ratibor, but Ernst Hanns Brauer (1902-1971) married Herta Brauer née Stadach (1904-1983) in 1932. (Figures 9a-c) Herta had a daughter by a previous marriage while Ernst and Herta had two sons. The vital statistics for Margarethe and Siegfried Brauer and select descendants and close family are included in a table at the end of this post.
As I explained to readers in Post 34, after learning of my maternal great-aunt’s existence, I quickly turned to ancestry.com. There, I found a surprising number of documents and information on the Brauer family which began to fill in some temporal gaps. With information recently acquired, I am better able to partially understand the Brauer family’s movements from 1941 onwards although their length of residence during some periods is still unclear.
One document I found for Herta Brauer was her Social Security Death Index which indicated that she died in August 1983 (Figure 10), and that her last supposed place of residence was in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Aware of a Puerto Rico connection, I Googled the Brauer surname and Puerto Rico, and found a promising lead in the form of a “Till Carl Brauer Mongil”; as an aside in most Spanish-speaking countries offspring carry two surnames, that of their father and mother, thus “Brauer” and “Mongil.” Since Till Brauer once ran a fishing business in Puerto Rico (Figure 11), I was easily able to contact him via email and confirm that he was indeed related to Ernst and Herta Brauer; he was their grandson. We exchanged information and photos and have continued to stay in contact.
Fast forward. The source for an increasing number of my Blog stories is inspired by readers who contact me through Webmail. Typically, I’m asked for or offered information about the people whom I write about, or people ask whether we are related; often readers are curious as to the source of my information.
I was recently contacted by a Mr. Francisco Pou (Figure 12) from the Dominican Republic who is working on a documentary about the history of classical ballet in his country. It turns out that Herta Brauer is the person who introduced ballet into the Dominican Republic. Since Francis stumbled upon mention of her in my Blog, he was curious whether I could provide additional background information about Herta since she disappeared from the country’s records “almost mysteriously,” according to Francis. I sent him some ancestry.com documents, as well as copies of the letters written by Ernst and Herta Brauer from Calvia, Mallorca to my great-aunt Elsbeth Bruck in East Berlin in the mid-1960’s; I also sent Francis a few family photos obtained either from Till Brauer or found among my great-aunt Elsbeth’s personal papers archived at the Stadtmuseum in Spandau. However, the tale that Francis related is much more compelling, the telling of which will allow me to share lesser-known history about the Dominican Republic’s role during WWII offering to save Jewish refugees.
Let me provide some context for the Dominican Republic’s role in offering Jews safe haven during WWII and the direct impact this had on Herta Brauer and her family.
In July 1938, delegates from 32 countries met in Evian, France to try and address the issue of German-Jewish refugees caused by the Nazis’ aim to make Germany judenrein (cleansed of Jews). This international conference was in response to the mounting political pressure on the United States and other nations. Most Jews from Germany and elsewhere wanted to go to the United States but were unable to obtain visas needed to enter. Even though the violent pogroms in Germany of November 1938 were widely reported on in the news, Americans were unwilling to welcome Jewish refugees; amid the Great Depression, Americans feared these displaced persons would compete with them for jobs and social programs set up to help them.
Rather than sending our Secretary of State to the Evian Conference, President Roosevelt instead selected a businessman and close friend of his to attend, Myron C. Taylor. During the nine-day meeting, while nation after nation expressed sympathy for the plight of the Jews, most nations including the United States refused to accept any refugees. One notable exception to this position of refusing to allow more Jewish refugees was the tiny nation of the Dominican Republic. Astonishingly, they offered to accept up to 100,000 refugees.
The Dominican Republic Settlement Association Inc. (DORSA) acquired 22,230 acres on the north coast of the country in a place called Sosúa from the Dominican President Rafael Trujillo; the American Jewish Joint Agricultural Corp. (Agro-Joint) heavily subsidized the project. The agreement ultimately negotiated and signed by DORSA and the Dominican Republic assured the immigrants freedom of religion and eased immigration by offering tax and customs exemptions.
While the Dominican Republic had agreed to accept up to 100,000 Jewish refugees, it is estimated that only about 5,000 visas were issued and that barely 700 Jews made it there. The reality is that while the visas would have allowed the recipients to escape the Holocaust, most of the refugees receiving them never reached the Dominican Republic since transatlantic travel proved to be extremely difficult, especially for Jews from occupied countries.
When WWII started, there were only about 40 Jews in the Dominican Republic. The first immigrants arrived in the middle of 1940, and it is estimated that by 1942 the Jewish population was 472. Jews continued to arrive in the Dominican Republic after WWII ended so that by 1947, they numbered 705. The project to bring Jews to Sosúa was intended to promote agricultural development along the Dominican Republic’s northern coast though most refugees were not inclined towards agriculture and preferred to work as businessmen and artisans. Each refugee family was given 82 acres of land, 10 cows plus one additional cow per child, and a $10,000 loan at one percent interest. The number of Jews in the Dominican Republic gradually continued to decline in the decades after WWII. By the 1980’s, most of the Jewish refugees in Sosúa had sold their land to tourist developers and left the country to pursue economic opportunities elsewhere. According to the estimates of Hebrew University demographer Sergio Della Pergola’s “World Jewish Population, 2016,” the Dominican Republic is home to between 100 and 300 Jews.
The motivation for Jews to escape to the Dominican Republic during WWII is obvious but readers may wonder what motivated President Trujillo to offer to accept up to 100,000 Jewish refugees. As previously stated, Trujillo hoped that these refugees could contribute to the country’s agriculture and consequently donated land in Sosúa in anticipation of a Jewish agricultural settlement. It is also believed that he supported letting Jewish refugees into the country as part of his strategy to encourage European rather than Haitian immigration. Trujillo was reputedly extremely racist and wanted Jewish immigrants as a way of “whitening” the Dominican Republic. Additionally, Trujillo personally profited by pocketing the “processing fees” that immigrants (or their sponsors) had to pay to be allowed in.
Trujillo used this same approach with refugees from the Spanish Civil War and Japanese migrants. In the case of the latter, the Dominican Republic signed a treaty with Japan in 1956. The Japanese motivation was to use emigration policy to improve the country’s international image following WWII by having the Japanese contribute to the development of foreign countries. Trujillo, dictator of the Dominican Republic from 1930 until his assassination in 1961, by contrast sought to use Japanese migrants as a buffer against black Haitian squatters by settling them along the country’s western border with Haiti.
There is a tragic side note to Trujillo’s decision to accept Jewish refugees during WWII. In 1937, the border between Haiti and the Dominican Republic, who share the island of Hispaniola, was the scene of a mass slaughter in which historians estimate between 9,000 and 20,000 Haitians were killed in the Dominican Republic. It earned the name the “Parsley Massacre” because Dominican soldiers carried a sprig of parsley. When the soldiers encountered people suspected of being Haitian, they would ask them to pronounce the Spanish word for it, “perejil.” Haitians whose first language was Haitian Creole found it difficult to say it correctly, which cost many of them their lives.
In any case, the U.S. administration regarded Trujillo as a staunch ally but after the scale of the massacre emerged, President Roosevelt’s administration made the Dominican Republic pay reparations to the victims’ families, money which ultimately never reached them. Regardless, it is believed that by agreeing to take in Jewish refugees Trujillo was trying to get back into the good graces of the United States.
Let me turn now to discussing Herta Brauer and her family’s arrival in the Dominican Republic, and the specific role she played there insofar as it is known. Shortly after Francis Pou contacted me, he sent me copies of the Dominican Republic Immigration Bureau’s “Application for residence permit in accordance with law no. 95” for Herta and her family. (Figures 13-16) It shows they arrived at Ciudad Trujillo (https://www.encyclopedia.com/…/ciudad-trujillo), as Santo Domingo was known from January 1936 until November 1961, on the 25th of March 1941. Herta was accompanied by her husband Ernst, their son Till Brauer, and Herta’s daughter by her first marriage, Yutta Maria Muenchow.
A ”List or Manifest of Alien Passengers for the United States” shows the family left Lisbon, Portugal on the 22nd of February 1941 aboard the ship the “S.S. Marques de Comillas” (Figure 17); this same form shows their last previous address was in Rome, Italy. The “Record of Aliens Held for Special Inquiry” form shows the family arrived in New York City on the 12th of March 1941 (Figure 18), so a little less than three weeks later. A handwritten note on this form indicates they “Transshipped to Santo Domingo” on the 20th of March 1941 aboard the “S.S. Cosmo.” Another “List or Manifest of Alien Passengers for the United States” confirms the family sailed from New York City on the 20th of March 1941. (Figure 19) The family appears to have briefly made landfall in San Juan, Puerto Rico on the 25th of March before sailing onto Santo Domingo the same day; the nautical distance between these two spots is 252 miles. Prior to receiving the Brauer’s Dominican immigration forms from Francis, I had mistakenly assumed the family had ridden out the war in Puerto Rico. It’s now clear to me that by the 25th of March 1941, Herta and her family were in fact in the Dominican Republic.
The Dominican immigration forms sent to me by Francis Pou show the family resided at “Calle Socorro Sanchez #9” in Ciudad Trujillo upon their arrival. However, according to Francis, the family did not stay in Ciudad Trujillo, nor did they relocate to the Jewish community of Sosúa. Instead, they moved to the town of Jarabacoa, located in the Central Mountain Range of the Dominican Republic at an elevation of more than 1700 feet; Francis characterizes this as the “Switzerland of the Caribbean.” (Figures 20-21) Francis believes that Herta and her family moved to this mountain town because it was in a safe and remote place, and only later relocated to Ciudad Trujillo when they realized the Dominicans were no threat to them as Jews and because her work required her to be in a larger city.
The name Jarabacoa comes from Taino indigenous people who spoke a dialect of the Arawakan language group. Notably, the Lucayan branch of the Taíno were the first New World peoples encountered by Christopher Columbus, in the Bahama Archipelago on October 12, 1492.
I recently stumbled on a 2015 paper by Jorge Mendoza entitled “Danza en República Dominicana: raíces, tradición y vanguardia,” translated as “Dance in the Dominican Republic: roots, tradition and avant-garde.” This paper includes numerous references to Herta Brauer and explains the political and cultural context in which she worked; it rounds out my understanding of Herta’s involvement in the Dominican Republic. I will highlight some of the author’s findings.
The dictator Rafael Leónidas Trujillo Molina was sworn in as head of the Dominican Republic on the 16th of August 1930. A devastating cyclone hit the island 18 days later that is estimated to have killed between 2,000 and 8,000 people, a significant percentage of the capital’s 50,000 inhabitants. Trujillo’s emergence and the rapid reconstruction he instigated in the wake of the devastating cyclone resulted in the emergence of lower-class workers and peasants and middle- and upper-class civil servants, intellectuals, and businessmen who supported the dictatorship. Herta Brauer arrived in the country amid Trujillo’s 31 years in office when the life of Dominicans revolved around his image and that of his family.
Jorge Mendoza uncovered information on Herta in an article published on the 9th of October 1944 in the defunct Dominican newspaper “La Nación” entitled “Nace el ballet en República Dominicana,” “Ballet is born in the Dominican Republic.”; the article was based on an interview conducted with her by a journalist identified only by the initials “R.M.A.” Curiously, the news story noted that Herta and Dr. Ernst Hanns Brauer apparently received a special dispensation from Pope Pius XI himself to marry while they were living in Rome. This notation is a bit puzzling since Herta and Ernst are known to have gotten married in Berlin on the 12th of March 1932 and self-identified as Jewish. Could this marriage exemption mean they had converted to Catholicism after they arrived in Italy whenever that was? If I’m interpreting things correctly, it was around the same time Pope Pius XI granted the Brauers a special marriage release that they decided to emigrate to the Dominican Republic. Whether the Pope interceded on their behalf to facilitate this or whether they obtained visas under the terms negotiated at the Evian Conference is unknown.
The idea of creating a dance school came to the Brauers while they were living in Jarabacoa. According to the journalist R.M.A., the Brauers “. . .became intoxicated with the light and color of the tropics,” and listening to the typical merengue imbued them with the rhythmic sense of “the simple people of the mountain.” The Brauers lived for a year in Jarabacoa before relocating to a house in Ciudad Trujillo located a block away from the ocean that still stands today.
While Herta Brauer was not alone in teaching ballet in Ciudad Trujillo, through circumstances that are unknown, she was fortunate to meet and obtain the financial support of Flor de Oro Trujillo, Rafael Trujillo’s first-born daughter. According to Francis Pou, Flor de Oro Trujillo was very different than the dictator’s other children. She was not a criminal like her siblings and had a very troubled relationship with her father. She was very liberal, well-educated, and a socialite in Europe. She was married an astonishing nine times and spent the last twelve years of her life in New York, dying there in 1978 reliant on friends for financial support; she’d clearly been disinherited by her family.
Soon after Herta relocated to Ciudad Trujillo she started offering ballet classes in the living room of her house probably beginning in early 1943. (Figure 22) Flor de Oro covered the scholarship expenses for Herta’s pupils, while other donors apparently covered the cost for ballet slippers, costumes, and tights for regular practices. As in other countries, ballet in the Dominican Republic was born as a pastime of the middle and upper classes. Training sessions are known to have lasted between six and seven hours a day.
It’s hard to imagine that Herta was unaware that she had escaped one totalitarian regime only to be taken in by another. Perhaps her ambition forced her to overlook this uncomfortable truth because, clearly, she could not have opened her academy without the help of Flor de Oro Trujillo. When it did eventually open it was named after her benefactor. This could have been out of gratitude or because she was compelled to identify herself with and contribute to the general atmosphere which paid constant homage to Generalissimo Trujillo.
During Trujillo’s rule, art and culture became a means of propaganda and a distraction from the regime’s brutal excesses. Trujillo imposed merengue as the national dance in Dominican society, and in his honor, merengues were written extolling his virtues. Herta Brauer was the first dance teacher to bring merengue to ballet. Taking the basic steps of this popular dance, she combined them with the techniques of ballet to favorable review. In the first merengue ballet she choreographed, Herta named the musical piece “El general llegó,” “The General Arrived,” a clear reference to Trujillo. There can be little doubt that Herta had taken note of the price she had to pay for the privileges she was granted by the Trujillo regime, which included being “untouchable” by any competitors wishing to diminish her cultural influence.
Francis believes that Flor de Oro’s cultured lifestyle may have drawn her to Herta and that introducing her father to ballet may have given Flor an entrée into his government.
Herta Brauer will be prominently featured in the documentary Francis is currently developing. She is important because she introduced ballet into the Dominican Republic, because she was the first person to blend Dominican folk music with ballet, and because she created choreographies for public events where Trujillo was in attendance. Significantly, coming from a country of a little more than ten million people, Herta trained a generation of accomplished ballet dancers that continue to be over-represented in some of the world’s major ballet companies, such as Martha Graham, the Washington Ballet, etc.
Regardless, in around 1947 Herta decided to take leave of the Dominican Republic leaving everything in the hands of a Hungarian dance teacher, a Magda Corbett, another Jew. (Figure 23) The reasons for Herta’s departure are not entirely clear, although a negative review may have angered her, or she may simply have accepted a better offer from the University of Puerto Rico.
A “Passenger Manifest” for Pan American Airways shows that Ernst Brauer arrived in San Juan, Puerto Rico alone from the Dominican Republic on the 7th of October 1947 (Figure 24), roughly coinciding with the time the Brauers are believed to have left the country. As with historic documents that provide temporal information, the passenger manifest includes another interesting fact. It shows that at the time that Ernst Brauer departed the Dominican Republic he was still deemed to be “Stateless” and had only ever been issued a Dominican residence permit; he never received Dominican citizenship even though he had lived there for almost seven years. It may be that only Ernst and Herta’s youngest son, Oliver Brauer (Figure 25), born in the Dominican Republic on the 24th of January 1942 ever obtained Dominican citizenship. (Figure 26) What is known about Oliver is that he along with the rest of the Brauers became American citizens, likely in Puerto Rico. To avoid the draft during the Vietnam War Oliver left for Germany, where he is believed to have died.
It’s unclear how long Herta and Ernst Brauer resided in Puerto Rico. However, an undated newspaper article about Ernst and Herta Brauer’s continued balletic work in Mallorca, Spain after their arrival there unequivocally states they remained in Puerto Rico for eight years. (Figure 27) Assuming they arrived there from the Dominican Republic in 1947, that would mean they stayed until around 1955; this would also coincide with their arrival in Mallorca, Spain. The “Report of the Death of an American Citizen” was completed for Ernst showing he died on the 19th of May 1971 in Calvia, Mallorca, where he is interred. (Figure 28) As previously mentioned, Herta’s Social Security Death Index indicates she died in August 1983 and claims her address at the time was in San Juan, Puerto Rico. (see Figure 10) For this reason, I erroneously assumed she had left Mallorca and rejoined her children in Puerto Rico following her husband’s death. Till Brauer, however, confirms that Herta Brauer died in Mallorca and is buried in the same cemetery alongside Ernst Brauer.
In reading the undated news article discussing Herta and Ernst’s continuing work in Mallorca, it’s clear that Herta taught dance while her husband oversaw the business aspects of running the dance studio. Why Ernst and Herta came to Mallorca is another unanswered question, but Francis directed me to a 1954 video on YouTube showing the close relationship that Trujillo had with Generalissimo Francisco Franco of Spain. Is it possible that Flor de Oro Trujillo recommended Ernst and Herta to Franco? Like in the Dominican Republic, according to Francis, it appears that their school in Mallorca was also subsidized and that free ballet lessons were offered. Regardless, it seems that Ernst and Herta could not avoid living in yet a third totalitarian country.
REFERENCES
ANU Museum of the Jewish People. “The Jewish Community of the Dominican Republic.” https://dbs.anumuseum.org.il/skn/en/c6/e250705/Place/Dominican_Republic
Davis, Nick (2012, October 13). The massacre that marked Haiti-Dominican Republic ties. BBC.
“History of the Jews in the Dominican Republic.” Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Jews_in_the_Dominican_Republic
“Japanese Settlement in the Dominican Republic.” Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_settlement_in_the_Dominican_Republic
Johnson, Rudy (1978, February 17). Flor de Oro Trujillo, Whose Father Led Dominican Republic. New York Times, Section D, Page 12.
Mendoza, Jorge (2015, January-December). Danza en República Dominicana: raíces, tradición y vanguardia (Dance in the Dominican Republic: roots, tradition and avant-garde). Istimica, pp. 99-130.
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VITAL STATISTICS OF MARGARETH BRAUER NÉE BERLINER & SELECT FAMILY & DESCENDANTS
NAME
EVENT
DATE
PLACE
SOURCE
Auguste Margareth Berliner (self)
Birth
19 March 1872
Ratibor, Germany [today: Racibórz, Poland]
Margareth Auguste Berliner’s birth record (LDS Microfiche 1184449, p. 101); 1891 marriage certificate
