Gift of Dezider and Shirley Scheer and family

Id no. 2008.P.12, Photograph

1940s, Dominican Republic, Sosua

Created by:  Willy Hauser

Subject(s):  Ritual, Education, Purim, Refugees

This is a photograph of Dezider Scheer with students celebrating Purim in Sosua, Dominican Republic, 1940's. Scheer left Slovakia in 1939, hoping to get to Palestine. In 1940 he was interned in a refugee camp near Salerno, Italy. A representative of the Dominican Republic Settlement Association came to the camp and selected him and a group of young people to join the Jewish agricultural colony being established in the Dominican Republic. In Sosua Scheer cleared the land, planted vegetables, and had a farm. He became the director of the school for refugee and Dominican children. He lived in Sosua for 10 years, then left to join his brother in Canada.