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Thread 7627

Thread ID: 7627 | Posts: 6 | Started: 2003-06-25

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Madrid burns [OP]

2003-06-25 23:42 | User Profile

[url=http://www.lapress.org/article.asp?IssCode=&lanCode=1&artCode=3376]http://www.lapress.org/article.asp?IssCode...=1&artCode=3376[/url]

Larry Luxner. Jun 19, 2003

Once prosperous shop owners shutter their businesses and migrate to Israel.

Marina, aged 36, is the grand-daughter of concentration-camp survivors. Her parents worked in the textile industry but never saved much money because they had seven children to raise. Today, Marina hawks CDs on the streets of Montevideo and takes care of other people’s dogs, but is barely able to make ends meet.

Ester, a 63-year-old widow, was used to the good life. In the 1950s, her father owned eight butcher shops and was among the capital’s Jewish elite. But the pension she receives from the Uruguayan government is not enough to live on. Nor is the help she gets from her two children, one of whom lives in Israel.

Ester and Marina, who prefer not to divulge their surnames, are but two examples of Jewish poverty in Uruguay — a small, peaceful country that once had the most equitable distribution of income in South America.

Not long ago, more than 40,000 Jews lived in this nation of 3.3 million people. But almost half of them have emigrated — most to Israel — within the last five years.

Of the 23,000 remaining Jews, 95 percent live in Montevideo; the other five percent are scattered around smaller cities such as Paysandú, Salto and Punta del Este.

"The general population thinks the Jewish community is in excellent shape, and that poverty among the Jews doesn’t exist. Even senators, congressmen and journalists will tell you that," said Ed Kohn, executive vice-president of B’nai B’rith Uruguay

According to a new 138-page study commissioned by the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee called "Poverty, Vulnerability and Risk in the Uruguayan Jewish Community," 22 percent of the country’s adult Jewish population is "poor" and 40.5 percent "vulnerable."

This is a direct consequence of the economic meltdown in neighboring Argentina (LP, Jan. 14, 2002), which used to send Uruguay two million tourists a year and, along with Brazil, accounted for much of the country’s external trade. But tourism and trade have suffered, and last year prices jumped by 25.9 percent while Uruguay’s Gross Domestic Product shrunk by an alarming 10.8 percent.

"The economy is very bad, one of the worst crises in the last 100 years," said 62-year-old motorcycle factory owner Leonardo Rozenblum. Five months ago, the Jewish community formed Fundación Tzedaka Uruguay, a non-profit organization aimed at helping impoverished Jewish families. Rozenblum, president of Tzedaka Uruguay, said the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee has awarded the foundation US$120,000 this year and that local Jews have pledged to match that amount.

"We’re giving people vouchers so they can buy food in supermarkets and scholarships [equivalent to about $2,000 a year] so their kids can attend Jewish schools for free," Rozenblum said. "We’re financing a community pharmacy to give free medicines to people who don’t have money. We’re also opening a training center with social workers and psychologists to assist individual cases."

Many of the problems Uruguayan Jews face are the same as those faced by Jews in Argentina. Yet, because Uruguay is much smaller, the community’s plight is not nearly as well-known abroad, said Rozenblum.

"The big difference between Uruguay and Argentina is that Argentina had more international marketing. It was in default," he said. "And they had the Argentine Israeli Mutual Association (AMIA) bombing and the Israeli Embassy attack [both in 1994] ... The Jewish world’s attention was focused on Argentina, not us."

For most of its 67-year existence, B’nai B’rith Uruguay focused its philanthropic activities on needy Gentiles, said the organization’s president, Luis Grosskopf. "Ten years ago, no one would have believed that our situation would become so critical that we’d also have to help a high percentage of the Jewish community," he said. The organization today has 700 members in Montevideo.

Along trash-strewn Calle Soriano, just a few blocks from B’nai B’rith headquarters, pedestrians walk past the shuttered storefronts of Jewish-owned shops that have closed for lack of business. Even with the country’s GDP projected to rise by 1-2 percent this year, the outlook for Uruguay’s small-business sector is bleak.

"At this moment, nobody’s selling or buying," said Kohn. "The buildings are empty and I’m not sure they’d be able to sell them, if they have to in the near future."

Marcelo Cynovich is a 38-year-old telecom consultant who serves as president of Hillel Uruguay. He’s also a volunteer at the Yavne Community Center in suburban Pocitos, home to 54 percent of Montevideo’s Jewish families — and he knows nearly everyone in the close-knit community.

"In the past five years, things have gotten worse, and these people weren’t telling us their problems," Cynovich said. "Many Jews still live in nice apartments, but they’re eating their savings, and the last thing they have is their house," he said, adding that "society as a whole is used to handling structural poverty, but not how to handle the new poor. "

Miriem Mautner de Liberman, president of the parents’ board at Yavne, said many of the 350 children who attend the schools are on scholarships because their parents can’t afford the $2,000-a-year tuition. "In the last two or three years, many of our young people have moved to Israel," she said. "Some went to Spain and others to the States."

In August 2001, community leaders launched Hillel Uruguay — the first of its kind in Latin America —to provide Jewish social and cultural life for young Jews remaining in the country. Cynovich says it’s one way of fighting what he calls an "explosion of intermarriage" in Uruguay. "Our goal is that everyone should move to Israel, but those who remain have the responsibility to continue with their Jewish lives," he said, adding that "as long as there are Jews in Uruguay, we have a Jewish future."

Raider of Arks

2003-06-26 00:03 | User Profile

Great, so all one has to do to be free of Jews is to be too weak to sustain parasites. Wonderful. :(

spartakos

2003-06-26 02:46 | User Profile

Ester and Marina, who prefer not to divulge their surnames, are but two examples of Jewish poverty in Uruguay — a small, peaceful country that once had the most equitable distribution of income in South America.

      The income is still equitable, the only difference is that now they are poor too!    And besides, they are still better off than the rest of the Uruguayees. Ester and Marina can move to Israel cost free, and get a new house and $60,000 to boot from us right here , the USA taxpayer. 
       I guess it doesn't look to good for the Palestinians if 23000 jews moved back to Israel. That explains all the hellicopter attacks by Sharon. He is trying to clear out some land for them.

:hyp:

Eendracht Maakt Mag

2003-07-01 22:56 | User Profile

Originally posted by rban@Jun 28 2003, 11:29 * It's unforunate that these Hispanic nations did not simply turn over the maangement of their economies to Jews. This would have saved them from economic collapse.*

Its unfortunate that the infeiror mongrel Hindus did not simply turn over the management of their economy to the British, or the Chinese, or just about anybody. If they had, than its quite likely that india would not be one of the 50 poorest nations in the world right now.

I am thinking that the formation of a Hindu-Jewish global consortium to offer outsourced fiscal management solutions to inferior nations would work wonders...

Perhaps a Jewish financial consortium would help inferior Indians drag their nation out of the third world. Indian living standards are, after all, inferior to those of Sierra Leone.

Roger Bannister

2003-07-02 01:21 | User Profile

*Originally posted by rban@Jun 28 2003, 11:29 * ** It's unforunate that these Hispanic nations did not simply turn over the maangement of their economies to Jews. This would have saved them from economic collapse. **

The reason they collapsed is because so much was turned over to the parasites. Let the Indians run S. America. Showing their homeland as a model will have takers lining up. Right. :lol:

Kevin Alfred Strom

2003-07-02 15:55 | User Profile

There are quite a few Whites in Uruguay. These are taken from a site that sponsored a trip to Uruguay:

[img]http://www.galenfrysinger.com/~galen/graphics/urug9a.jpg[/img]

[img]http://www.galenfrysinger.com/~galen/graphics/urug5.jpg[/img]

And here's a group of Uruguayan exchange students and their American hosts -- can you tell which is which?

[url=http://www.cheshirect.org/chs/school/forlang/urugChesh.jpg]http://www.cheshirect.org/chs/school/forla...g/urugChesh.jpg[/url]

I do note that the Uruguayan ambassador to the U.S. is named "Faingold." I haven't been to Uruguay, but am told that, like the United States, the racial situation there is getting darker and that essentially the same forces are responsible as here. A correspondent states that Uruguay and Argentina are, on average, probably Whiter places than the United States.

With all good wishes,

Kevin. [url=http://www.kevin-strom.com/]http://www.kevin-strom.com/[/url] [url=http://www.revilo-oliver.com/]http://www.revilo-oliver.com/[/url]