4

DETROIT JEWISH CHRONICLE and the Legal Chronicle

September 19, 1941

An Arbor, Michigan Extends Sincere Rosh Hashonah Greetings

Is Colonization in Argentina a Failure?

By MRS. ARCHIBALD SILVERMAN

Editor's Note: The author
of this article is now touring
South America on her second
visit within three months. In
this analysis she presents the
problems of the Jews who live
in the original Baron de
Hirsch colonies, once consid-

A Happy and Prosperous New Year

Diehl Wreckers

GARAGE SERVICE
Parts for All Makes of Cars
Reasonable Prices—Glass Reset

1773 PLYMOUTH RD.
PHONE 2-2327

ANN ARBOR, MICR.

New Year's Greetings to All

J. J. HAMMER

AGENT

Sinclair Refining Co.

1635 S. STATE ST.
Ann Arbor, Mich.

New Year's Greetings to All

MUEHLIG
LANPHEAR

Hardware

311 SOUTH MAIN ST.

PHONE 2-3277

ANN ARBOR,

Season's Greetings and Best Wishes

AMERICAN
RUG CLEANING
WORKS

ered the "answer to Jewish
landlessness."

Wherever I have gone, either
through the Argentine or here in,
the United States, I have been
asked, "How do the Baron de
Hirsch colonies compare with the
colonies of Palestine?"
My answer is, "There is no
comparison. There can be no com-
parison. It would be unkind and
unfair to the South American
colonies to compare them with
what has been accomplished in
Palestine."
And yet, Zionist though I am
—and as such intensely opposed
to the mass colonization of Jews
anywhere in the world outside of
Palestine—I am going to try to
be the most objective in summing
up my observations.
My first stop was 50-year-old
Moiseville, 35 kilometers from the
nearest railway station and four
Rours by rail from either Rosario
or Santa Fe, the nearest cities.
Moiseville, one of the first col-
onies, is today an all-Jewish town
of about three thousand inhabi-
tants. This town is the hub of
the many scattered colonies in
that section.
The Unpaved Roads
Due to the heavy rains, not
only were Moisesville and the
nearby colonies almost completely
isolated from the outside world,
but even when the roads were
considered "passable" I had to
ide the 35 kilometers in a dilap-
,dated truck. That was the only
vehicle in town that could navi-
gate the deeply rutted, clayey
mud roads.
In he town itself I found the
.inpaved streets equally impas-
sable, except at street corners
where planks were laid for pe-
destrians to cross the wide-span
ditches which run parallel to the
Adewalks.
The houses, too, took on the
forlorn, neglected look of the
unpaved roads and the perpetu-
ally open ditches, filled with ref-
use that breeds flies, mosquitoes
and disease. Whether or not I
imagined it, the people, too, had
an "I don't care" sort of look
and manner—all of which made
of Moisesville a most depressing
spot. It was not at all like the
busy, bustling supply center it

Rosh Hashonah Greetings

JOE'S SNAPPY SERVICE

332 S. MAIN
Ann Arbor, Mich.

1032 GREEN ST.

PHONE 8115

Le Shono 'Foy° Tikosevu

ANN ARBOR, MI C11.

Prekete's
SUGAR BOWL

A Happy New Year to All

SHORTY'S
WELDING SHOP

H. HUNAWILL, Prop

.

PORTABLE EQUIPMENT
Expert Electric and Acetylene
Welding and Cutting—Boilers
Motor Blocks — Wheel Cut
Downs Pipe Thawing—
Trailer Building.
24-HOUR SERVICE
CALL 6010
117 N. First Street. in Rear
Nights4-.Call H. Hunawill
1604 Westminster Place

ANN ARBOR, MICH.

Home Made lac Cream El Candies

Beer—Wine
The Best Meals in the City

109 S. MAIN ST.

ANN ARBOR, M1( . 11

Rosh Hashonah Greetings to All

W. H. L. ROHDE

BUILDERS' SUPPLIES

202 E. MADISON

PHONE 2-3271

ANN ARBOR. MICH.

SINCERE HOLIDAY GREETINGS

The Ann Arbor Press

A. J. Wiltse, Mgr.

317 Maynard

Ann Arbor, Mich.

should by now have become, for

the many surrounding colonies.
In the colonies where each col-
onist owns from '75 to 350 hec-
tares of land (a hectare is two
and a half acres or ten dunams),
I found that rarely does anyone
cultivate much of his acreage.
Until this year corn was planted
in many places, but with a sur-
plus of over six million tons of
corn worrying the government
(since even the destruction of this
surplus constitutes a grave prob-
lem), no more corn is being
raised. With the cultivation of
only enough vetetables for his
own use, a few hens and a couple
of cows, the farmer uses his land
mainly for grazing purpose—cat-
tle and sheep.
For this work he usually em-
ploys Argentinians. He himself
supervises. Rarely does one find
the younger generation, and prac-
tically never the women, tilling
the soil or performing other man-
ual labor.
The children are sent to schools
in the cities after their 11th
year. The women devote them-
selves to housework just as if
they lived in the cities. The re-
butt is the following:
On my expected arrival in the
"kampf" (individual farm) I
round the farmer, his wife and
family, all dressed up to wel-
come. the guest. I was immediately
shown into the house where I
usually found a beautifully set
table, with fine linens, silver,
glassware, and dainty refresh-
ments prepared in my honor—
all very much in best city style.
Invariably, they eagerly started
the questioning, for they were
hungry for news from Pales-
tine!
Drift Back to Cities
When, finally, I asked them to
tell me about themselves, their
beginnings, and the development
of their colonies, they shook their
heads sadly. They bemoaned the
fact that too many of the colon-
ists were drifting back to the
cities. The children would not re-
main on he soil. Most of them
were selling their farms.
When I asked to be shown
around, I was taken to the pas-
ture gateway. The cattle or
sheep were grazing in the dis-
tance. The poultry was kept in
a primitive hen house where a
few hens managed to exist. I did
find a few farms specializing in
dairy products, but these were
the exceptions.
I could not help but compare
this picture with that of the
colonies in Palestine. I make the
comparison not in a derogatory
sense, but only to present more
vividly the picture of coloniza-
tion in the Argentine.
In the Argentine, each farmer
is concerned not only with creat-
ing a livelihood for himself.
Henche, it is his comfortable, al-
most city-like house which is his
goal. The farm is a means to an
end, the "end" being a com-
fortable living for his family
and himself. True, he himself
has worked hard. It was certain-
ly no easy task at best to trans-
form himself from a Russian
city dweller to an Argentinian
farmer, but he does want his
children to have an easier life than
he has had. At a very early age
they are sent to school away
from the dull primitiveness of the
colonies. Later he bemoans the
fact that the young people take
to the professions and remain in
the cities.
In the colonies of Palestine, on
the other hand, one rarely thinks
or speaks in terms of self. A visi-
tor is proudly shown, first, the
children in their school and kin-
dergarten, then the heavy-uddered
cows with their Hebrew names,
or the newly-born calf that came
in the night. (I once saw a stal-
wart young chalutz weep because
a calf came still-born.) Then
there is the new incubator with
its six thousand or more tiny
chicks pecking their way out of
their shells, the. modern, sani-
tary hen house, the recently-dug
artesian wells, the intensive vege-
table farming as a result of
plentiful irrigation, the recently
completed houses for which they
had been waiting for 12 years
or more. At long last, the dwell-
ings are being turned over to
the children of the Youth Aliyah,
while the long-suffering, hard-
working chalutzint remain fiir a
while longer in their inadequate,
oft-times leaky shacks. At lunch
time, we adjourn to the mess hall
where a substantial meal is served
*simply.

Argentina and Palestine
No one refers to "me," "my,"
or "mine" in speaking of the
tremendous progress made in the
colonies, where oft-times on less
than 2,000 dunams (200 hectares
100 or more families are settled.
The difference between the two
—Argentina and Palestine—lies
in the private ownership on the
one hand, and the collective co-
operative development on the
other. One is concerned with build-
ing a home for himself and for
himself only; the other concen-
trates on building through him-
self a homeland for his people.
It is this fundamental difference
that spells the doom of Jewish
colonization as such in the Galuth,
while it presages the success it
is already proving itself in Pal-
estine.
I visited a number of colonies
in the vicinity of Moisesville,
among them the "Colony of the
Twelve," which means that where
there were formerly 30 Jewish
colonists there are now only
12 left. So, too, there is the
"Colony of the Four," where in-
'stead of the 24 Jewish families
which had settled there, only four
remained. The vast ranches were
sold to non-Jews. The original
settlers or their descendants live
in the cities.
True, thereare still a few of
the older farmers, who, having
wrested success out of a soul-
trying experience, have really
become attached to the land. They
have remained in the colonies and
they are the ones who so bitterly
denounce the ones who have fled.
I found warm-hearted . Jews in
the colonies of Baso-vil-basa,
ntre-Rios and Dominques. In
Dominques I met that remarkable
Russian-Jew, Zacharov, expert
colonizer, who went there 50 years
ago as teacher and leader. It
was pathetic indeed to note his
sorrow and disillusionment as he
confessed his heartbreak and dis-
appointment in the outcome of
colonization in Argentina.
It was he who told me that
there are today about 3,500 Jew-
ish families on the soil. "But,"
he added, with a tear in his
eye, „ for every family that has
remained, three families have dis-
appeared.”
In summing up, I want to
point out the following:
After 50 years of experimenta-
tion in the Argentine, not only
have the Jews there not con-
tributed culturally to Jewish life,
but to my mind, it is a miracle
that they have survived as Jews.
Fortunately they were Russian,
Polish or Lithuanian Jews with

strong religious and Zionist back ,
grounds. Hence, isolated though
they „were in this far-flung out-
post of civilization, they always
fell back on their Judaism and
Zionism to keep them within the
Jewish fold. As one colonist put
it, "The closer we came to under-
standing and loving this soil, the
more we yearned for our soil, the
soil of Eretz Israel."

New Year's Greetings to All

Ann Arbor's Most Modern and
Complete Food Market

Varsity Flower Shop

C.
PERRINE
1119 S. UNIVERSITY'
ANN ARBOR, MICH

Happy New Year to All!.

Craft Press
Printers

305 MAYNARD AVE.
PHONE 8805

Ann Arbor, Mich.

A Happy Ness Year to All

YAHR BROS.

Paint and Body Shop
Body Repairing. Refinishing
and Painting

206 W. Huron St.

Phone 4121
Ann Arbor, Nlich.

Rosh Hashonah Greetings to All'

Francisco £
Boyce Photo Co.

723 N. University
Phone 4514

Ann Arbor, Mich.

A Happy and Prosperous New Year

CAPITOL
MARKET

123 E. WASHINGTON ST.

PHONE 2-3111

ANN ARBOR, 511(211.

A Happ$, New Year to All

QUALITY
BAKERY

Rosh Hashonah Greetings

347 S. MAIN Si.
PHONE 4014

ANN ARBOR,

NIICII.

Season's Greetings and Best Wishes

B. H. GRAF 8 SON

THE QUARRY
Inc.

Camp Support—Artificial Limbs
Sick Room Equipment
Surgical Instruments
Splints, Trusses, Hospital Supplies

Sheet Metal Contractors

332 S. SEVENTH ST.
PHONE 2-1451

320 SOUTH STATE ST.
PHONE 2-3109

ANN ARBoR, MICH.

ANN ARBoR,

Mielf .

SEASON'S BEST. WISHES

EBERBACH 8 SON CO., INC.

Manufacturers and Dealers

SCIENTIFIC INSTRUMENTS—CHEMICAL
APPARATUS—REAGENTS

200 E. LIBERTY

ANN ARBOR, MICH.

