My paternal Russian grandfather deserted the tsar’s army and survived WWI and the ensuing civil wars. He emigrated from Poland to Argentina in 1925 and, within less than fifteen years, owned with his younger brothers an iron foundry that employed three hundred workers. Delving into the role of Jewish immigrants during the 1930s, the period of Argentina’s industrialization, I came across a group of Jewish entrepreneurs who developed businesses ten and twenty times as large as my grandfather’s. Based on my past experience as a CEO, one question puzzled me: How? How did uprooted penniless newcomers find the financial means to become industrial tycoons?
The search for answers led me to local banks; however, most Jewish banking records were lost or destroyed, and bankers, by nature, are generally reluctant to satisfy inquisitive historians about their clients’ transactions. I was fortunate to have access to unedited reports and publications from the relevant period, and to receive the generous assistance of librarians. Among them, I am especially grateful to Juan Pablo di Mateo at Archivo y Museo Históricos del Banco de la Provincia de Buenos Aires; Patricia León at Biblioteca Tornquist; Nicolás Rodríguez and his team at Biblioteca Prebisch; Jesús Monzón at Buenos Aires University’s Faculty of Economics, and Ezequiel Semo at Centro Mark Turkow. The materials collection of Valentín Rougier at Buenos Aires’ Archivo General de la Nación and of Travis Petty at Washington’s United States Holocaust Memorial Museum was enormously helpful and time-saving (thank you Adriana Brodsky for facilitating the contact).
James P. Brennan made important comments and suggestions when he read my research proposal, and my consultations with Leonardo Senkman, Margalit Bejarano, Mariusz Kalczewiak, Marcos Silber, Ilya Vovshin, and other topical experts contributed helpful insights for the preparation of this study. I also had the opportunity to hold stimulating in-person scholarly conversations with the Argentine business, enterprise, and banking historians Marcelo Rougier (whose generous collaboration included granting me access to valuable resources), Claudio Belini, Andrés Regalsky, and Daniel Plotinsky. María Inés Barbero and Andrea Lluch’s expert eye provided valuable comments and suggested helpful corrections. Raanan Rein, who guided my MA thesis and mentored me throughout the work on my PhD dissertation at Tel Aviv University’s Zvi Yavetz School of Historical Studies, deserves a particular word of gratitude. Together, we have published three journal articles on Jewish-Argentine entrepreneurs. I am indebted to Gabriel Salomón, Andres Pérez Teubal, Luciano Matalón, Roberto Pinkus, and Daniel Weisburd for sharing family and personal experiences, documents, and
I wish to thank Malgorzata Matysic Levi for her translation of Polish reportages, the editorial team of Brill’s Jewish Latin America book series and Beryl Belsky for her patience in style and copy editing my work.
Ultimately, my lifetime companion Nitza’s unwavering support throughout the entire journey made it all happen.