Jewish Diaspora in Uruguay

Since 2019, a team of PLU researchers–Dr. Rona Kaufman, Dr. Giovanna Urdangarain, and students Riley Dolan (2019), Kiyomi Kishaba (2021), Ellie Dieringer (2023), and Parker Brocker-Knapp (2023)–have been collecting, recording, translating, and sharing the testimonies of Uruguayan Jews who have experienced the Holocaust, migration, and the diaspora. Our research began at the Hogar Israelita in Montevideo, Uruguay, which was founded in 1937 as an orphanage for Jewish orphans and the aged who fled Europe during the Nazi reign. The team interviewed residents of the Hogar who survived the Holocaust or whose parents migrated to Uruguay before the war. The team also interviewed an Israeli rabbi with a congregation in Montevideo, the daughter of a survivor living in the Hogar, and a survivor living in Montevideo but not in the Hogar. Collecting narratives allows us to learn more about the Holocaust, about the role that Uruguay played as a refuge for Jews, about how the suffering of the first generation resulted in suffering of subsequent generations, and about the Jewish diaspora.