The Tragic Plight Of Three Jewish Women Forced Into Prostitution In The Americas.
The acclaimed journalist and author of 'Hitler's Silent Partners' reveals for the first time one of the most shameful and secret chapters in history - the forced slavery and prostitution of thousands of young Jewish women from the 1860s to the beginning of World War II.
Sophia Chamys, Rachel Liberman, Rebecca Freedman. Young and poor, these Jewish women and thousands of others like them were sold or duped into slavery, forced to become prostitutes by the Zwi Migdal, a notorious criminal gang comprised entirely of Jewish mobsters.
From the late 1860s until the beginning of World War II in 1939, the women left behind the grinding poverty and anti-Semitism of Eastern Europe's teeming urban ghettos and rural shtetls to find themselves working in brothels in South America, Latin America, South Africa, India, and New York.
Though these women were forced into this terrible life, the Jewish community deemed them unclean and refused to accept them. Barred from synagogues and shunned by their coreligionists, they were also forbidden from partaking in the sacred Jewish burial ritual. Eventually they formed The Society of Truth, a religious order of love, honor to God, and faith in one another that established women-only synagogues, kosher kitchens, and cemeteries.
Culled from archival documents, academic studies, and interviews, 'Bodies And Souls' illuminates the tragic plight of these long-forgotten women and elevates them to their rightful place in history.
