Las Polacas

Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo, 2014

A collection of contact sheets which attempt to rebuild a story of forgotten women in Latin America. What is left is their unsettling resting place and the streets where they lived and were forced into prostitution.

Zwi Migdal was a Jewish organized crime group involved in the trafficking of Jewish women from the shtetls of Eastern Europe for sexual slavery and forced prostitution, the women are still referred to as Las Polacas. Mainly based in Argentina, the group operated from the 1860s to 1939. The organization lured young women from poor Jewish villages in Poland or Russia promising better opportunities and wealthy husbands in South America.

In 1913, there were 431 brothels controlled by the Zwi Migdal in Rio de Janeiro. They were concentrated in a few streets near downtown, in the Mangue neighborhood. Since the Jewish community turned away from this issue, they would not allow these women to be buried in Jewish cemeteries since they were considered criminals. As in many religions, burial rituals are very significant, Las Polacas in Rio de Janiero felt it was their right to be buried in a Jewish cemetery with all the customs that accompany this occasion. They decided to form an organization and they bought a piece of land in Inhaúma to create their own cemetery for the Polacas. In São Paul, only recently they have transported the remains of these women to the cemetery of Butantã where they were placed close to the wall which is where criminals and people who commit suicide are buried by Jewish law.

These photographs are a work in progress and a reflection of not only our dark past but also of the alarming present we are facing with the trafficking of women and sex slavery.