From Évian to IHRA: A Dominican Legacy
In July 1938, as dark clouds gathered over Europe and delegates from 32 nations convened at the French resort of Évian-les-Bains to address the escalating Jewish refugee crisis, doors closed across the globe. One country after another cited economic burdens, immigration restrictions, or social concerns to justify inaction. Yet, against this backdrop of international hesitation and indifference, the Dominican Republic stood virtually alone in making an extraordinary offer: it was willing to accept up to 100,000 Jewish refugees fleeing Nazi persecution.
Nearly nine decades later, the Caribbean nation has taken another significant step in confronting antisemitism and preserving the memory of that history.
In August 2026, the Dominican government under President Luis Abinader officially adopted the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) Working Definition of Antisemitism. The decision comes as the Dominican state is also investing RD$50 million in the restoration and modernization of the Jewish Museum and synagogue complex in Sosúa, the community that became home to hundreds of European Jewish refugees during the Second World War. These contemporary actions are more than isolated diplomatic gestures. Together, they revive a remarkable historical thread connecting refuge, memory, diplomacy, and cooperation.
A Sanctuary Built in the Tropics: The Legacy of Sosúa.
To understand the significance of the Dominican Republic’s adoption of the IHRA definition, one must return to the north coast of Hispaniola. The Dominican offer at Évian came from the authoritarian regime of Rafael Trujillo, whose motives remain historically contested and included political, demographic, and economic considerations. The offer also followed the 1937 massacre of thousands of Haitians along the Dominican-Haitian border, and atrocity that had severely damaged Trujillo’s international reputation. That contradiction should not be erased from the historical record. Yet neither should the consequence for the Jewish refugees who eventually reached Dominican shores: at a moment when much of the world had closed its doors, they found a place of safety.
Following the Évian Conference, the Dominican Republic Settlement Association (DORSA) was established to facilitate the arrival and resettlement of European Jewish refugees. In 1940, the first settlers began arriving in Sosúa transforming a former plantation on the country’s northern coast into a pioneering agricultural community.
Facing tropical heat, language barriers, unfamiliar agricultural conditions, and profound separation from the European world they had known, the refugees built dairy farms, established communal bakeries, created a synagogue, and developed a cooperative economic model that would leave a lasting imprint on the region. Sosúa was not merely a refuge; it became a community and the Jewish presence in the Dominican Republic extended beyond Sosúa.
Among those who found refuge in the country was German-Jewish Erwin Walter Palm, whose scholarship helped document and preserve the architectural heritage of colonial Santo Domingo and the wider Americans. His wife, the poet and writer Hilde Palm would later adopt the literary name Hilde Domin, a name inspired by Santo Domingo, the city where she had found refuge.
Decades later, Dominican scholars such as physician, historian, and author Dr. Herbert Stern would help document the broader history of Jewish migration and its contributions to Dominican society, ensuring that this chapter of national history would not disappear from collecting memory.
From Refuge to Diplomatic Partnership
The relationship entered a new chapter with the creation of the State of Israel. The Dominican Republic supported the 1947 United Nations partition plan that paved the way for the establishment of a Jewish state. It subsequently recognized the newly established State of Israel in 1948, with full diplomatic relations established in 1949.
Over the decades, a relationship rooted partly in historical memory evolved into a modern diplomatic partnership encompassing agriculture, technology, water management, education, and development. One particularly significant area of cooperation has been water security, through agreements involving Dominican institutions such as the National Institute of Drinking Water and Sewerage (INAPA) and Israel’s national water company, Mekorot, Israeli expertise has been incorporated into efforts to develop a national master plan for water management in the Dominican Republic. It is a striking evolution: a relationship whose history includes wartime refuge now also encompasses cooperation on some of the most pressing resource challenges of the 21st. century.
The IHRA Definition and the Battle for Memory
The Dominican Republic’s adoption of the IHRA Working Definition of Antisemitism adds a new institutional dimension to this relationship. The IHRA definition provides governments, public institutions, educators, and civil society with a common reference point identifying and addressing contemporary manifestation of antisemitism. Its adoption by the Dominican government places the country among a growing number of nations in Latin America and the Caribbean that have embraced the framework; but perhaps equally significant is the decision to invest directly in the preservation of Sosúa’s Jewish history.
The Dominican government has announced an investment of approximately RD$50 million for the restoration and modernization of the Jewish Museum and synagogue complex in Sosúa. Such preservation matters because historical memory is ultimately fragile. Documents deteriorate, buildings disappear, personal letters are lost., witnesses die, and many other valid reasons.
As the generation that personally experienced the Second World War recedes from living memory, museums, archives, oral histories, and digital preservation increasingly become the witnesses left behind. Sosúa therefore represents more than a Dominican historical site. It is part of the geography of Holocaust memory.
Memory as Responsibility
The Dominican Republic’s relationship with the Jewish people is not a simple story, nor should it be presented as one. It began under a dictatorship whose motives for accepting Jewish refugees remain the subject of legitimate historical scrutiny. Yet history is composed of such contradictions: questionable motives can still produce consequences of profound human significance. For the Jewish men, women, and children who reached Sosúa, the Dominican offer was not an abstraction of diplomacy. It meant survivial.
Nearly nine decades later, the preservation of that history carries a different responsibility, By adopting the IHRA while investing in the preservation of the Jewish heritage of Sosúa, the Dominican Republic is connecting its past to the challenges of the present.
At a time when antisemitism remains a serios concern across many societies, remembering what happened in 1938 is not simply an exercise in national pride. It is a reminder of what can happen when nations close their doors, and of the difference one open door can make.
The distance between Évian and Sosúa was measured in thousands of miles. The distance between memory and responsibility is much shorter. Preserving that memory is one way of ensuring that the door opened in 1938 is never forgotten.