Conceptual and Methodological Clues for Approaching the Connections between Mexico and the Holocaust: Separate or Interconnected Histories?

Introduction

This article examines the contacts and connections that developed between Europe during the consolidation of the Nazi regime—particularly in regard to its policies of segregating, persecuting, expelling, and ultimately exterminating Jews—and Mexico, where structural traits and conjectural trends determined processes, attitudes, and behaviors. Moving beyond the interconnectedness inherent in the increasingly global nature of history during the twentieth century, intensified and also interrupted by the Second World War, our goal is to analyze several main links and interactions developed within and between nation-states during this period. Therefore, we examine how individual and collective agents interacted at the levels of state, society, and community.

For this purpose, a transnational analytical perspective is adopted to shed light on the specificities of actors—as well as the convergences and divergences between them—whose linkages and exchanges transcended national borders. When considering types of connectedness, we refer not only to concrete practices—political, material, or even commercial—but also to the circulation of information and knowledge, perceptions, and cultural representations as well as a comprehensive ideological and ideational universe.

Focusing on a critical era defined by global warfare and the Diaspora condition of the Jewish people, this article considers ideological and institutional frameworks at different levels of analysis: states and societies, as well as Jewish communities and individuals with bonds of cohesion and solidarity across a diversified political and organizational spectrum which characterized their collective life in dispersion. In so far as our research problem is multidimensional and complex, given the participation of diverse actors, countries, and cultures, this article is structured around specific conceptual and methodological clues that guide our analysis while suggesting new avenues of investigation. Our multidisciplinary approach combines history and sociology with contemporary Jewish studies, seeking to connect the national and global spheres with the specificity of the Jewish group and its culture.

Although the Holocaust has been extensively researched, relatively few historical studies integrate the actions and decisions of actors in Germany and Europe with the varied processes that took place in countries geographically distant from the territory of the Holocaust, such as the Latin American nations. In the case of Mexico and Latin America, valuable pioneering studies have outlined these interconnections, but they focus mainly on governmental policies toward Jewish immigration, including the selective and restrictive criteria for admission and the complex national and international realities in which they took shape (Avni, 1986, 2005; Bokser Liwerant, 1991b, 1996, 2006; Gleizer, 2014; Kaplan, 2008; Lesser, 1995; Milgram, 2003; Senkman, 2003; Spitzer, 1998; Wojak, 2003). Other studies have placed the victims and their agency at the center of the debate, without necessarily focusing on the complex web of processes and policies to which they responded in their decisions and actions (Mam, 2003; Shabot, 2002).

Researchers point out the importance of approaching the Holocaust through integrated lenses that reveal how different choices and actions were related. Timothy Snyder (2010) observed that the Holocaust is still conceived to be the result of national or European processes that were not necessarily interconnected. Methodologically, the prevailing approximations of the Holocaust are still constrained by the national–political boundaries of individual states. In Snyder’s (2012) view, “transnational history is not ‘diplomatic’ cover for someone else’s story. It is a way of researching and reasoning that … might help us … understand the Holocaust.” ¹ This suggests that the social and historical processes analyzed cannot be limited to dynamics in the national realm, that is, we must overcome what Ulrich Beck (2007) called “methodological nationalism.”

Seen from this perspective, how to connect the geographies of the Holocaust and of Latin America, a potential haven for refugees, in order to trace cultural, political, and social processes that extend beyond Europe and include rescue and host actors on the local, regional, and global levels? Relations and exchanges between Jewish and non-Jewish actors will also be explored. Mexico, the focus of this case study, is not defined simply according to its territorial borders but instead, without disregarding the central place of the national sphere, we seek to incorporate in our analysis, the regional and the global as they are linked by transnational dynamics.

We are aware that this poses important conceptual, methodological, and empirical challenges, including the need to weave together macro- and micro-histories, to connect geographies, and to understand the connections and tensions between local, regional, national, and global processes, and between the Jewish singularity of the Holocaust as well as its universality. Whereas in the European East, an integral historical approach sheds light on the particular dynamics of local collaboration in the killing and in Latin America, it raises new questions about rescue, survival, and integration.

At the root of our analysis is a fundamental distinction between interconnected and separate histories. By interconnected histories, we refer to situations where close contacts, exchange of information or ideas, pressures, relations, and links developed between individuals, community leaders, political elites, and governmental officials across the borders of nation states. Intense and frequent interactions impact the decisions of social and political actors. For instance, Jewish transnational organizations collaborated with other humanitarian groups that sought to rescue Jews by identifying new opportunities for refuge in Mexico. By separate histories, we refer to situations where processes develop locally, totally independent from events in other states. When a crisis or question of international import arises, decision makers respond according to national or personal considerations. For example, disputes and divergent opinions on the Jewish refugee issue among Mexican governmental agencies and public officials led actors to separate the plight of the victims from national concerns. One illustrative case is Mexico’s refusal to allow the disembarkation of European ships carrying Jewish refugees, such as Orinoco. Additionally, several local initiatives in Mexico were undertaken to stop the arrival of refugees, block their entry, or deny their requests for asylum.

Between the poles of interconnectedness and separation lies a wide spectrum of intermediate situations in which external and internal factors alike play a role in decision-making processes and influence historical developments. A review of events in Mexico in the 1930s and 1940s shows that some processes remained separate from international concerns, while others were closely interconnected. Thus, interconnected and separate histories are not mutually exclusive scenarios.

Interconnected phenomena may coexist with social and political efforts by a society to disassociate itself from the issue or problem at hand. International forums that addressed the refugee crisis during Nazism are exemplary cases. At both the Evian Conference (France, July 1938) and the first meeting of the Intergovernmental Committee on Refugees (London, August 1938), the Latin American nations were influenced by each other’s positions as well as by pressure from the great powers and thus acted as a regional bloc, rather than making decisions solely on the basis of local or national considerations. Debates in these arenas expressed, transmitted, and reinforced prejudices that shaped national attitudes, yielding arguments that strengthened ambivalence, fostered indecision toward the refugee problem, and ultimately led to policies of exclusion (Bokser Liwerant, 1996). Through these transactions, the mental representations and perceptions that guided the actors were mutually reshaped, leading to alterations in how Jewish Otherness was conceived. Thus, prevalent notions of the Jew in Mexico as a hard-working immigrant, vigorous entrepreneur, and an element that would contribute to the building of the nation were displaced by arguments that emphasized the separateness of the Jewish community and its differences from the general population or, as we will see, the notion that collectively, Mexican Jews brought inconveniences and risks to the country.

Latin America was connected to the Holocaust through the refugees’ urgent need for a haven and various ways in which the nations in that region responded. When refugees sought to emigrate but potential host countries maintained their restrictive quotas without making humanitarian concessions, their indifferent or negative responses may be seen as deliberate attempts to draw a line between the plight of the victims and national interests while prioritizing the latter, resulting in separate rather than interconnected histories. A country could downplay the role of stereotypes and prejudices in making these decisions by recurrently appealing to national interests.

The first two sections of this article provide background on Latin America’s response to the Holocaust, including a discussion of the role of the Holocaust and the refugee question in Latin American foreign policy. The third section focuses on the situation in Mexico, particularly as it was handled by the government, as an example of the separation of histories. In the fourth section, we survey the broad range of international connections that linked various sectors in Mexico—including Jews, German-speaking exiles, Mexican intellectuals, Mexican government, and the press—to events in Europe prior to and during the Holocaust. The fifth section tracks the experience of Jewish refugees in Mexico, processes whereby they accommodated themselves to life in their new country, and their status in Mexico in the decades following the Holocaust, thus extending the temporal dimension of Mexico’s interconnections with the geographies of the Holocaust into the present. The concluding remarks include some suggestions about how the conceptual framework and methodology used in the article can be applied to other countries that are geographically distant from the territory of the Holocaust.

The Holocaust and Latin America: A Brief Overview

While the Holocaust has generally been regarded as an event without direct connections to Latin America, studies challenging this view began to emerge in the 1980s and 1990s (Avni, 1986; Bokser Liwerant, 1991, 1996, 1999; Lesser, 1995; Spitzer, 1998). On one hand, Latin America was geographically remote from the Holocaust and its perpetrators and victims and on the other hand, the number of Jewish refugees admitted to Latin American nations is second only to the number received by the US. The traditional openness of Latin American countries toward immigration granted them a non-marginal place within a highly interconnected scenario, as multiple contacts and exchanges developed both within and beyond the region (Avni, 2003; Bokser Liwerant, 2003; Gleizer, 2014; Kaplan, 2008; Milgram, 2003; Wojak, 2003). A historical approximation of the subject reveals a complex reality: the same nation could simultaneously, on different levels, be historically separate from as well as interconnected with events in Europe.

The number of Jewish refugees entering Latin America between the rise of Nazism and the end of the Second World War was not insignificant, and indeed could have been larger. It is estimated that between 1933 and 1943 close to 100,000 Jewish refugees immigrated to Latin America and the Caribbean (Milgram, 2003). ² In comparison, between 1933 and 1942 about 140,000–160,000 European Jews entered the US, and 66,500 reached Mandate Palestine (Avni, 2000). The number of refugees admitted to each Latin American country, however, varies greatly; from over 35,000 and 23,500 in Argentina and Brazil respectively, to less than 2,000 in Mexico (Milgram, 2003). Statistics for other host countries—including Chile, Uruguay, Bolivia, Paraguay, the Dominican Republic, and Ecuador—vary widely depending on the sources and availability of data. ³ It is noteworthy that some small, less developed Latin American countries such as Bolivia were more willing to receive refugees than countries with a greater capacity to do so, such as Mexico.

It is not only the number of refugees that arrived in Latin America that matters, but also their individual circumstances and experiences: who came to the region, their awareness of prevailing interconnections during their decision-making process, what possibilities they faced, what types of experience they brought with them, and the particular links they established with the local community and the host society. Thus, in addition to rescue and survival, issues of integration are also central to this analysis.

International/Intergovernmental Connections

As stated, the most important connection between Latin American countries and the plight of the persecuted Jews was the potential of the region to accommodate part of the flow of Jewish exiles that began when Hitler took power and it increased sharply in 1938 when Germany annexed Austria. The beginning of the Second World War and the adoption of the “Final Solution” gave further urgency to the question of Jewish refugees. Although Latin America was not originally considered a potential refuge, the region acquired unprecedented importance due to its history as an extra-European space traditionally open to immigration.

Latin American countries first confronted the refugee question in 1935, when the League of Nations adopted measures to coordinate global assistance for refugees who left Germany and began to issue a certificate of identity to German nationals who did not enjoy the protection of the Nazi government. Some of the first contacts between Latin America and the crisis in Europe were established by James McDonald, the League of Nations’ high commissioner for refugees from Germany, during a tour of the region in 1935. His purpose was to evaluate the region’s ability to receive refugees and concluded that “increased nationalist tendencies […] amongst which stood the problem of immigration,” ruled out Latin America as a destination for fugitives (Avni, 2005, p. 312). Nevertheless, in 1936, Latin American governments were invited to sign the Provisional Arrangement concerning the Status of Refugees Coming from Germany, and later the 1938 Convention on the same topic, and therefore had to define their position on this question.

Mexico, however, did not sign either of these treaties, choosing to regard the refugee question as a European problem. In addition, Mexico did not distinguish between immigrants and refugees, who received no special treatment despite their dire condition. On the other hand, the foreign policy of President Lázaro Cárdenas (1934–1940) was characterized by its explicit positions on European matters. At the League of Nations, Mexico protested the invasions and conquests undertaken by the great powers: the Italian invasion of Abyssinia (1935), the German annexation of Austria (1938), and the Soviet invasion of Finland (1939). Mexico’s protests were merely rhetorical, but its condemnation of European oppressors was significant in the context of international relations during the pre-war period. As part of its foreign policy, Mexico defended the principles of nonintervention, national sovereignty, right of weak countries to defend themselves, and the imperative to protect the persecuted.

Although Mexico refused to take a stand on the refugee question in the League of Nations, its participation in the Refugee Conference at Evian signaled its apparent willingness to host victims of dictatorships. The speech of the Mexican representative Primo Villa Michel at Evian revealed empathy and sensitivity toward the victims of totalitarian regimes without, however, expressing a commitment to act. Villa Michel underlined that this was not “a normal case of immigration or asylum, but of international solidarity imposed by the interdependence of the people, so that Mexico will cooperate to its utmost insofar as possible” (AHSRE, file III–1246–9–I). His words were interpreted with optimism by refugees and by leaders of the Jewish community in Mexico. Applications for asylum increased significantly and the local Jewish community, expecting a steady flow of exiles, organized the Comité Pro-Refugiados (Committee for Refugees) in 1938, which unfortunately did not have much work to do.

In addition to Villa Michel’s statement at Evian, the Mexican government’s attitude toward the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939) and its decision to offer asylum to defeated Republicans raised hopes that Mexico would also open its doors to Jewish exiles. Mexico’s hospitality toward Spaniards was interpreted, then and even later, as an evidence of its humanitarian attitude that did not distinguish between different kinds of refugees, although the reality was different.

Mexico was represented in the Intergovernmental Committee in London that emerged from Evian. It also participated in several Latin American meetings where European emigration to the region was discussed, and later hosted the Inter-American Conference on Problems of War and Peace (1945). However, Mexico’s participation in international forums had the effect of reducing its willingness to accept Jewish refugees. Although in early 1938, Mexico was willing to take in a certain number of refugees, when its representatives abroad learned of the global indifference toward Jewish exiles, it reversed its position. The Evian Conference prompted Latin American governments to form a regional bloc opposed to the admission of refugees—a more or less unified response to pressures from the great powers to welcome them, although this pressure was more imagined than real. ⁴

The Mexican government cited its uncertainty about the prospects of international cooperation as an excuse to refrain from acting on the refugee question. Minister of the Interior Ignacio García Téllez declared in 1938 that insofar as no conclusions had been reached regarding international cooperation, the country would only admit persecuted refugees who were “outstanding fighters for social progress” or “selected exponents of the sciences or the arts.” Later, García Téllez maintained that for Mexico’s response to be consistent with that of the other countries represented in the Intergovernmental Convention in London, it was first necessary to establish the contribution that each of the participating countries would make to aid the refugees. Mexico’s participation in international organizations allowed it to demonstrate its willingness to contribute to solving the refugee problem without being obliged to take concrete action.

International dynamics coexisted alongside regional and binational ones. In the US, the tension between President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s global project and his inability to play a central role in European and Asian events strengthened his conviction that it was necessary to construct a united hemispheric platform, if the US was to exert an influence on international diplomacy (Paz Salinas, 1985). In this context, the conflict between Mexico and the international oil companies operating in the country, which led to the nationalization of the foreign oil industry, was a test of the Good Neighbor policy and the principle of nonintervention (Gellman, 1979, pp. 24, 73). Roosevelt consented to this test, privileging hemispheric unity over the interests of the affected oil companies. The use of force against Mexico would undermine the trust that the US was cultivating and would also invite a more aggressive intervention by the Axis powers, something that had to be prevented at any cost (Cline, 1963, p. 243). President Cárdenas affirmed that he preferred to maintain commercial relations with democracies but also warned that if democracies were not interested, Mexico would find other markets—mainly among the Axis powers, which it eventually did.

Thus, from Roosevelt’s point of view, the creation of an Inter-American system was an urgent priority. Efforts in this direction began at the Seventh International Conference of American states in Montevideo (December, 1933), where the foundations were laid for the Good Neighbor policy, noninterventionism, and principles of peace and economic cooperation. Other regional forums included the Inter-American Conference for the Maintenance of Peace (Buenos Aires, 1936), the 8th Pan American Conference (Lima, 1938), conferences at Panama (1939) and La Habana (1940), the Consultative Meeting by Ministers of Foreign Relations (Rio de Janeiro, 1942), and the Inter-American Conference on Problems of War and Peace (Mexico, 1945).

Between Connections and Disconnections: Mexico and the Refugee Crisis

As discussed above, the Mexican government used its participation in international organizations as a way to define its policy toward the Jewish exiles. Nevertheless, domestic considerations and national interests were paramount. Thus, while Mexico responded to the refugee question in forums that transcended national borders, separate decisions were made by local actors as well.

In contrast to other Latin American countries, Mexico is not a country that encourages immigration but rather one that has expelled significant number of persons. Thus, it did not have the experience to host a great influx of refugees, nor any legislation that could help chart a course of action. For the most part, decisions on immigration were improvised, resulting in laws and policies that were incoherent, if not contradictory. In addition, the need to repatriate 350,000 Mexicans expelled by US authorities between 1929 and 1933 as a result of the Great Depression (Alanís Enciso, 2007, pp. 17–18) and the government’s offer of asylum to defeated Spanish Republicans may have constrained its ability to accommodate Jewish exiles (Avni, 1986; Bokser Liwerant, 1996; Gleizer, 2009a). On top of all this, during the 1930s, the post-revolutionary Mexican state was in a process of institutional consolidation, and in 1938, the same year that the exodus from Germany acquired a worrisome character, the government of Lázaro Cárdenas faced a profound internal crisis.

In April 1934, Mexico’s Ministry of the Interior issued a confidential document prohibiting the immigration of Jews as well as members of other ethnic, national, religious, and political groups (Circular Confidencial no. 157). Specifically, Mexico sought to block the entry of “non-assimilable” or “non-desirable” persons. Immigrants’ capacity to assimilate was assessed in relation to the Mexican nationalist ideology of mestizaje (literally “miscegenation”), which celebrated the country’s racial mix of indigenous people and Spaniards as an ethnic, social, and political resource for building national identity. This ideology justified attempts by post-revolutionary governments to homogenize the ethnic character of the local population. Beginning in 1926, the Population Laws promoted the immigration of “similar races,” including persons who belonged to the two main original branches of mestizaje or to a culturally related group and Jews were not included in these categories (Bokser Liwerant, 1991, pp. 102–120; Gleizer, 2014, pp. 29–39).

Nor were Jews considered to be political refugees. Initially, they were classified as potential immigrants, but when it became apparent that their emigration was compulsory, the minister of the interior coined the term “racial refugee” to describe someone who “had sought asylum due to racial persecution” (Gleizer, 2014, p. 89). He also acknowledged that the policy followed in the case of racial refugees differed from the one applied to political refugees. As he declared regarding Jewish refugees: “It is advisable to avoid that those individuals who are dedicated to undesirable economic activities enter the territory through their immoderate, disorganized, and fraudulent affluence. We have no information on their status as persecuted people” (AGN, PLC, file 549.2/18).

The contradiction between the government’s official discourse, which at times alluded to a longstanding Mexican tradition of asylum, and its refusal to admit Jewish refugees was acknowledged by some public officials (AHSRE, file III–541–5–I). Traditional tensions between the Ministry of Foreign Relations and the Ministry of the Interior intensified, as the former was willing to accept a certain number of Jewish refugees under a controlled scheme of rural colonization while the latter rejected the proposal outright. ⁵ These disagreements led to a direct conflict in 1939 when President Cárdenas sought advice from both agencies which ended with the Ministry of Interior achieving complete control over immigration issues, except for Spanish refugees, who were treated separately and remained under Cárdenas’s direct control.

As the search for refuge became more urgent, many Jewish and non-Jewish organizations tried to negotiate with the Mexican government a scheme for colonization. Ramón Beteta, the vice-minister of foreign affairs trusted by Cárdenas, elaborated a plan that had the support of the Joint Distribution Committee—one of the main American Jewish organizations financing European emigration—as well as the American Friends’ Service Committee (a Quaker organization), but was ultimately rejected by the government. Another interesting project was promoted by the governor of Tabasco, Francisco Trujillo Gurría, who sought to bring Jewish refugees to his state but the proposal was cancelled after it was leaked and severely criticized in the national press (AGN, PLC, file 546.6/16).

Aside from these colonization projects, some failed attempts to settle Jewish refugees in the countryside (in Tabasco, Hidalgo, and Veracruz) showed that, as in the case of Spanish refugees, Europeans had a hard time adapting to rural Mexico. Projects to rescue orphaned children (whose parents were sent to forced labor in France) failed likewise. This was also the case with the last effort in 1944 to rescue Hungarian Jews, even though the Mexican government planned to provide them with documents allowing them to exit Hungary but without, however, granting them visa to enter Mexico. All of these failures were characterized by a lack of volition, delays, difficult negotiations, communication problems, and a neglect of humanitarian considerations.

The Mexican public opinion, sympathetic toward Germany, did not favor the entry of Jewish refugees. Additionally, commercial and industrial organizations cited national economic interests as they proposed measures to rectify what was considered disloyal competition and the displacement of nationals by immigrants, mainly Chinese and Jews (Bokser Liwerant, 2006). Nationalist groups that endorsed Fascism, anti-Semitism, and xenophobia, although not politically relevant, were very effective in voicing their opposition to immigration and organizing demonstrations. ⁶ While Cárdenas’s government combated nationalist organizations on the extreme right, it struggled to control middle-class union groups that defended the national interest—also a priority of Cárdenas’ progressive administration—but had not yet been incorporated by the ruling party. However, it is possible that the combined pressure of all these groups converged with and reinforced by the anti-Semitic prejudices of certain individuals in the government, resulted in these groups exercising a greater influence on the refugee question than they were able to wield in other matters, especially given the absence of a clearly defined governmental policy toward the Jewish exiles.

When Mexico joined the Allied forces in May 1942, it closed its doors to non-American or non-Spaniard immigrants. This closure coincided with the Nazis’ prohibition of Jewish emigration from occupied territory. News of the “Final Solution” did not change the government’s policy (Gleizer, 2009a). With its ban on foreign immigration, Mexico effectively disconnected itself from the refugee crisis in Europe.

Nevertheless, refugees who had family members in Mexico were still able to enter the country legally because the Population Law allowed the immigration of relatives; this explains why the majority of the Jewish refugees who did reach Mexico were Polish. Landlords or investors were also permitted to enter, as well as those who received special permits from the Mexican government. The rest had to seek out other paths of entry. This led to widespread corruption, including the sale of Mexican visas and passports in Europe and bribery in Mexican harbors. As a result, a few Jews were in fact able to enter the country as political refugees.

To sum up, the position of the Mexican government toward Jewish exiles was not defined in advance but was improvised along the way. There were moments of relative flexibility when the Mexican government was willing to allow the entry of a greater number of refugees, frequently in response to external pressures, but none of the proposed frameworks for organized Jewish immigration materialized. Instead, the government devoted itself to preventing the arrival of Jewish refugees, blocking the entry of stateless people, and rejecting requests for asylum on the grounds of various laws and provisions, some of which had been designed explicitly for this purpose.

Transnational Interconnections: Actors, Decisions, and Implications

During the war, social and political non-governmental actors, both Jewish and non-Jewish, exchanged information and ideas and established contacts, links, and networks of collaboration to facilitate the movement of Jewish refugees across the borders of European nation-states, and beyond Europe. These actors included humanitarian associations, the press, and intellectuals. At the individual level, refugees made decisions based on prevailing interconnections, although they were not always conscious of them.

Interconnections on the Individual Level: The Refugee–Victim–Survivor

To understand the particular interconnections that developed between Mexico and the Holocaust during the years of Nazism and its aftermath, it is necessary to focus on individuals. The emigrant himself/herself is a vehicle who connects geographic spaces and bridges cultures and societies. Additionally, in a context of war and destruction characterized by rumors, uncertainty, and incredulity, emigrants were reliable witnesses who communicated essential information on developments in Europe. In the face of the largely unprecedented mass violence orchestrated by the Nazis, such information provided invaluable corroboration of rumors regarding the annihilation of Jews and suggested strategies for rescue.

People who suffered through discrimination, exclusion, hunger, and illness bore within their bodies, minds, and emotions the consequences of those experiences years or even decades later. Refugees and survivors led a “normal” daily life in their new countries, but as a vast literature has shown, they carried with them trauma, loss, and pain (Cohen, 2015; Segev, 2015). Jews who immigrated to Mexico had endured very different experiences in Europe; some were sent to forced labor while others were concentrated in ghettos or deported to camps of different types; some were able to escape and find refuge in the woods, towns, and cities, while others were sometimes rescued by non-Jews. While in hiding, some had to repress or change their Jewish identity or surrender their children to other families.

Refugees and survivors brought with them to Latin America objects that represented a place of origin, original identity, or a lived experience, thus connecting two worlds. They also brought their culture, knowledge, theories, and worldviews, which affected host countries in particularly important ways. Interconnections that developed on the individual level had communal and societal impact, transcending the war, geographies of the old continent, and the attempt to destroy European Jewry.

Examining such interconnections at the individual level requires taking into consideration such qualities as agency, self-awareness, and autonomy, as well as the constraints imposed on the decision-making process of people living under a totalitarian state. Freedom of action by Jews—and many other groups of victims—was gradually curtailed under Nazism, but individuals still had choices to make about their future; whether to emigrate or wait for the improvement of conditions; whether to leave as a family or send the children abroad first, and whether to take time to amass funds for the journey by selling one’s house or business, or to leave quickly and without resources. There was also the matter of choosing a destination, although ultimately this was determined by the availability of visas.

Those who were able to leave as well as those who failed in their attempts to emigrate had to develop strategies to deal with bureaucratic requirements in order to secure a visa (exit, transit, and entry) or a ticket for a ship, among other necessary documents. They interacted with families and friends (for advice and support), governmental authorities, people who provided information and services, rescue agencies, consuls, diplomatic representatives, and frequently with members of the resistance or “coyotes” (fixers) who, for example, led refugees through the Pyrenees from France into Spain. Thus, they faced many dilemmas in their country of origin. Holocaust refugees and survivors in Mexico came from numerous European countries, namely, Poland (in larger numbers), Lithuania, Romania, Hungary, Greece, Germany, Austria, Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, Italy, Slovakia, Austro-Hungary, Belgium, and Belorussia. Some of them did not want to shed their original national identity, while for others it became important to repress their past and their group identity.

Recovering the subjective experience of refugees and survivors is a complex task. A central research tool for learning about their past is the oral testimony, which is mediated by time and affected by the changing character of memory and by later constructions of the Holocaust in the collective imaginary. The subject’s testimony is also affected by the situation in which the interview is conducted, as well as its structure. Nevertheless, it is still an essential methodological tool for accessing individual stories, which may provide a bridge between micro- and macro-historical processes of rescue, survival, and integration. Individual narratives also provide a double interconnection: spatial (between Europe and Latin America) and temporal (between the remembered past and the moment when testimony is given). The testimonies of refugees and victims/survivors reveal the types of interconnections that they experienced and remembered and the significance of those interconnections for their survival not only during the Holocaust but also in its aftermath.

Oral testimonies of Holocaust survivors who came to Mexico identify various actors who contributed to their rescue, including consuls and family members. It is interesting to point out that although recent historical studies demonstrate the involvement of aid organizations in the rescue of refugees and survivors, such as the Emergency Rescue Committee, Jewish Labor Committee, and local committees like the Sociedad pro Culturay Ayuda (Society for Culture and Aid) and the Liga pro Cultura Alemana (League for German Culture), the testimonies of survivors do not describe in depth, and sometimes even omit the complex web of interactions involved in their individual survival (Gleizer, 2015). This may be explained in part by the fact that those interviewed were children or adolescents during the rise of the Nazis and the outbreak of the war.

Arriving in Latin America, refugees and survivors faced a two-fold process of integration. On one hand, they quickly found ways to connect with the local Jewish community to find a place to live and support themselves, make new friends, marry and form a new family, and find communal and religious institutions of belonging. In other instances, immigrants chose to distance themselves from the Jewish community to fully integrate into the larger society. For some, national integration was a priority and implied learning the local language, going to school, finding a job, and participating in professional activities. While many survivors led a successful life in Mexico, others remained in poverty or faced difficulties in their daily interactions with others.

In the aftermath of the Holocaust, some survivors felt the need to talk about their experiences while others chose to repress their memories. Refugees arrived in new Latin American settings not only as immigrants but also as victims and survivors. As in other places, however, a “conspiracy of silence”—self-imposed or established by the surrounding community—prevailed, leading to numbness, isolation, or depression (Hayes, 2015; Judt, 2015; Segev, 2015). ¹⁷ In Mexico, only a tiny number of survivors told their story early on ¹⁸ and their collective silence broke down in the 1990s when survivors were increasingly seen by the Jewish community and some sectors of Mexican society with empathy and recognized not only as victims but also as bearers of courage, resilience, and hope (Shabot, 2002). ¹⁹ As part of the “musealization” of memory, their stories transcended their private lives and were placed in the public sphere.

In narratives of their arrival in Mexico, some survivors refer to very positive encounters with relatives and fellow Jews while others describe conflict. In Mexico, as in many other places, there was great solidarity between the local Jewish community and the survivors, but also tensions and not all who approached the survivors intended to help them. Some took advantage of their situation, as in the case of landowners who sought to sell worthless property to refugees whose migratory status only allowed them to settle in rural areas.

In general, however, the assistance given by local Jews to refugees and survivors was indispensable. Several refugees describe how the local Jewish community (either through a synagogue or a Jewish institution, school or organization) was an entry point into the new society and a path toward “normalization,” rebuilding, and continuity. In fact, the Jewish community established a committee to “Mexicanize” refugees (Comité demexicanización) by helping them learn the Spanish language and Mexican history and traditions. However, on the other hand, some refugees and survivors recalled their difficult encounters with the local Jewish community as a result of, among other things, cultural differences and their own sense of uneasiness when trying to integrate. Thus, they decided to remain apart from or unconnected to the local community. While connections between individuals in Mexico and their birthplaces were diverse, some narratives of survivors incorporate nostalgia or idealizations of their country or community of origin. ²⁰

With respect to Mexican society, we also find romanticized depictions of a welcoming, democratic, and free country in both historiographic and oral narratives (Mam, 2003; Shabot, 2002). Holocaust survivors may possess idealized memories of their arrival in Mexico because of its stark contrast with the place from which they fled, or because they feel the need to express gratitude. However, oral testimonies and memoirs also point to a series of difficulties in the new land, including differences with family members who hosted them, challenges in finding a job, or struggling to learn the language or to master a new way of life (from local cuisine to local customs). What initially appeared dissonant was gradually learned and internalized by most individuals. With the passing of time, refugees or survivors and their children went to schools, found jobs, created new friendships, and inserted themselves in professional, business, political, social, and cultural realms.

Final Reflections

Our analysis offered the image of a map crossed by multiple connections between geographical and cultural spaces, and between very different social and political actors. As a whole, it shows that Mexico, a space that could be seen as totally removed from Europe and the Jews had many diverse links to events that took place far away from Latin America. The difficulty in systematically tracing such contacts and interactions results from their own complexity, the different levels on which they occurred, and the multiplicity of interests that was at stake.

It is worth underlining that “interconnections” refer to close contacts and frequent exchanges, and not necessarily to fruitful negotiations or positive outcomes. One of the main contributions of this article is that its focus not only on the relation between Mexico and the Holocaust in terms of outcomes, but also on the initiatives and efforts launched to assist the refugees. The inclusion of initiatives and efforts allows us to take into account the large amounts of energy invested both within Mexico and abroad to engage the Mexican government, as well as other sectors of society, in the rescue of Jews during the Nazi period and it also accounts for a great number of connections that would otherwise be lost.

There were an infinite number of initiatives to help the refugees, including failed colonization projects, unsuccessful attempts to rescue orphaned children, plans to secure Mexican visas at any cost, proposals to import European industries owned by Jews, and even the idea of creating a university with talent that had been forced into exile. Huge amounts of effort were displayed by different groups at home and abroad. In Mexico, they included the local Jewish community and its diverse groups, the Mexican anti-Fascist movements and left-wing organizations, German-speaking exiles that arrived in the country and intellectuals who sympathized with Jews. Abroad, Jewish transnational organizations were part of a particularly dense institutional network and were joined by other humanitarian groups that shared the goal of rescuing Jewish individuals. All of them attempted to broaden the possibilities for refuge that Mexico offered, especially during the progressive government of Lázaro Cárdenas, which seemed to be sensitive to the victims of totalitarian dictatorships—or at least this was the impression it gave in the international forums.

In relation to our initial question, it is interesting to observe that there were both interconnected as well as separate histories of Mexico and the Holocaust. Many actors—mainly governmental—insisted that Mexico did not have to involve itself in an issue that was primarily European. However, the international scenario forced the country to articulate its policy and take part in an event of global dimensions, even though position of non-engagement prevailed. Those who argued in favor of a “separate history” insisted that the country did not have to become entangled in a European issue of no concern to Mexico and warned of the “dangers” of receiving refugees and mobilized the nationalism of that period to strengthen isolationist positions. In this connection, it is important to point out that the Mexican government had a selective policy regarding refugees and included in its laws clauses prohibiting the entry of Jewish refugees into the country, which provided legal justification for separation from the crisis. Right-wing groups drew on a common core of arguments to prove that economic nationalism would be threatened by the entrance of foreign workers, while the Mexican social body would be jeopardized by “racial mixture.” Thus, in the Right’s alleged defense of the national interest, economic and ethnic arguments overlapped. On the other hand, those who advocated Mexican involvement in European events advanced humanitarian as well as pragmatic arguments, claiming that refugees would enrich the country in many ways through their culture, knowledge, and technologies. They also maintained that immigrants fostered economic development rather than constraining it.

When looking at complex situations involving interactions between different cultures, geographies, and groups, we observe that concerns of central importance to a minority group were of marginal concern to some public officials, social sectors, organizations, intellectuals, and opinion leaders. Thus, when considering the Nazi era and the Holocaust, a distinction between pluralism and relativism is required. As Isaiah Berlin argued over 30 years ago, pluralism entails “many objective ends, ultimate values, some incompatible with others, pursued by different societies at different times, or by different groups in the same society, by entire classes, churches or races, or by a particular individual within them” (Berlin, 1991, p. 79). Nevertheless, we should be careful not to conflate pluralism and relativism, as the latter makes humans’ captives of history without the capacity to consider, evaluate, and judge. It is precisely this distinction that brings liberal tradition to grapple with the question of diversity (Berlin, 1983).

The Mexican example suggests some strategies for thinking about interconnectedness in other non-European contexts. First, it allows us to examine the global dimension of interconnectedness by considering Mexico’s relationship to the great powers. It is clear that given Mexico’s domestic situation and the importance of maintaining bilateral relations with the US, Mexico would have been willing to open its doors if international pressure—more specifically, pressures from the US—had been strong. Since this was not the case, the Mexican government evaluated the refugee issue within the framework of domestic political considerations rather than foreign policy. Other Latin American nations acted like Mexico in this regard.

Second, the case of Mexico shows why international councils that sought to resolve the refugee crisis were paradoxically ineffective. The Latin American governments came to understand that the good intentions motivating these efforts were mainly a response to the demands of American public opinion, and that no real change in policy was expected. Thus, initially willing to shelter refugees, the Mexican government pushed back. It was precisely Mexico’s participation in international forums that allowed it to justify its indeterminate position on the Jewish exiles by arguing that it would act just as soon as an international plan to address the refugee crisis was formulated.

Furthermore, the analysis presented here illustrates how global conflicts find local expression. Such was the case with the diverse assessments within the Jewish world of strategies for rescue and plausible solutions to a critical situation. Bundism, the varieties of Zionism, and Communism converged and diverged in their visions, tactics, and alliances as they confronted the refugee crisis. Methodologically, this article has followed an interdisciplinary approach that stitches societal and communal processes together with individual stories. By using Mexico as a case study, it opens up future lines of research on the interconnectedness between the Holocaust and Latin America—or between the Holocaust and other non-European geographical spaces—that will address key themes such as rescue, survival, and integration. Thus, studies that combine historiography with oral history can be of particular value in this field. It is important to mention that while this article underscored the role of governments and political elites, non-governmental associations and community leaders, intellectuals, activists, and the press (at different levels of agency) in the rescue (or non-rescue) of persecuted Jews, the role of other actors (such as businessmen or diplomats) and groups that had a central role in the rescue of refugees deserves further research.

Our suggested typology of separate and interconnected histories should be seen in the framework of moments of encounter between universal, national, and transnational histories, and between territories and Diaspora peoples in time and space. This article shows that while the encounter between Mexico and Jewish refugees in the 1930s and 1940s was initially conceived in terms of a stream of immigrants who would contribute to the country’s development, this historic period led to outcomes that reflected great divergences.