One of the most unexpected museums in the Caribbean, the Sosua Jewish Museum documents the story of the Jewish refugees who came to this stretch of Dominican coastline in the early 1940s, when most of the world's doors were closed to them. In 1938, at the Evian Conference, the Dominican Republic under President Trujillo — himself a brutal dictator seeking to improve his international image — offered to accept up to 100,000 Jewish refugees. About 800 eventually arrived, and around 600 settled in Sosua.
The museum, housed next to the synagogue that the refugees built in 1941, displays photographs, documents, and personal objects brought from Europe. The community that developed here built a dairy cooperative that still operates today, and several descendants of the original settlers remain in town. The contrast between the tropical setting and the desperate circumstances of the arrivals is striking. The museum is small but carefully curated, and the entry fee (around 300 pesos) is worth it. Open Monday to Friday, mornings.
story: "The Sosua synagogue, built in 1941 from lumber cut in the Dominican jungle, is one of the few functioning synagogues in the Caribbean and among the very few built by Holocaust refugees on the run. When it was completed, the congregation held services in Spanish because most of the German-speaking refugees had been learning the language since arriving on the island."