The “Bolivian Schindler” Who Saved Thousands of Jews—Then Faced Imprisonment
A new book details how mining titan Moritz “Mauricio” Hochschild helped Jews escape the Nazis in Bolivia, only to be scapegoated himself.
As World War II transformed Europe into a genocidal hell, the continent’s Jews were desperate to flee to any country willing to provide them refuge—even far-flung Bolivia. In the new book Escape a los Andes, journalist Raúl Peñaranda and historian Robert Brockmann tell the long-buried story of how thanks to the efforts of mining magnate Moritz “Mauricio” Hochschild, an estimated 12,000 Jews found safety in the altiplano. There’s a phrase in the Torah about Jews being “strangers in a strange land.” For European Jews, there could perhaps be no stranger land than Bolivia. Not...
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