Honoring Rachel Liberman

 Rachel Liberman

(AKA: Rebeka Fridman, Dona Beka)

Co-Founder of Chesed Shel Ermess, or Society of Truth

 

 Sexual Assault Awareness Month

Rebecca Freedman was one of the founders of the Chesed Shel Ermess, or Society of Truth, an organization founded by women forced into the human sex trade business in Brazil and later globally by the Zwi Migdal Society starting in the 1860s.  She became the leader of the group. Her mission was to perform the sacred Jewish tahara ceremony of washing the dead.  Deeply religious, she died in either 1984 or 1986, at the age of 103.  She was last president of the Society of Truth.

According to reports, Rebecca was born in Poland and arrived in  Brazil around 1916 from the United States when she was thirty-five years old.

Thousands of naive, impoverished Jewish girls from eastern Europe were sold by Jewish mobsters into sexual slavery. Originally believing they were leaving their homes to get married. Most of these women were from poor families, their parents hoping for a better life for their daughters, were shipped off to various locations.  This kidnapping, rape and forced prostitution of young Jewish women lasted from the end of the 1860s until the start of the Second World War.

This hugely profitable (annual revenues of $50 million in the 1890s) commerce in flesh was operated by the Zwi Migdal, a criminal association  It was centred in Buenos Aires, with branch offices in several locations in Brazil; Buenos Aires, Argentina; New York City, NY; Warsaw, Poland; South Africa; India; and China.

The first boatload of young Jewish women arrived in Brazil in 1867; by 1913, there were 431 brothels in downtown Rio alone.

The three women who created the organization were Sophia Chamys, Rachel Liberman and Rebecca Freedman.  The three women were also finally able to provide testimony which helped an honest cop destroy the Zwi Migdal in Argentina back in the 1930s.

 

For more information about the Zwi Migdal Society, CLICK HERE.