ABSTRACT
Jewish immigration to Cuba began slowly after the Spanish-American War of 1898, reaching a peak after World War I, when large numbers of Sephardic Jews from Turkey and North Africa and Ashkenazi Jews from Eastern Europe came to the island. Even at the height of the Cold War, a foreign observer otherwise predisposed to find evidence of official hostility by Cuba’s revolutionary government towards religious expression on examination of conditions admitted that the regime was “beyond criticism in its respect for and consideration of Jewish religious needs” (Gendler). Cuba accepted about 8,000 Jewish refugees from Nazism, making Cuba in absolute terms indisputably Latin America’s principal haven for Jewish refugees outside of South America. The Cuban experience differed from other places in Latin America where Jews emigrated. Unlike the other countries, Cuba achieved independence eight decades after most of its regional neighbors and then only under US military occupation and heavy political and economic pressure.
