Raquel Liberman: The story of a woman who was a symbol of the fight against human trafficking

Raquel Liberman died in 1935. Thyroid cancer had consumed her. She no longer spoke. The agony was short but very painful. Before she fell ill, her appearance was not good either. She was 35 years old, but looked to be in her fifties. She was a worn-out, broken person. With a past that would not leave her, with a perpetual pain running through her. Yet she was a quiet woman. She had fought, she had not given up despite the adverse circumstances and she had won. Against all odds.

Ruchla Laja Liberman was born on 10 July 1900 in Berdichev, present-day Ukraine. As a child she emigrated with her parents to Warsaw, where she spent more than two-thirds of her short life. In 1919 she married Iaacov Ferber and the following year had her first child, Joshua. In 1921, when she was pregnant with her second child, her husband emigrated to Argentina in search of work. But it was her final years (and the name she adopted during them) that brought her immortality. Her destiny was to go unnoticed, to be subjugated, one more victim, like so many thousands of others. But she refused, she rebelled, and with unusual courage she stood up to her exploiters.

It inspired - with many historical licences - the character played by Eugenia La China Suárez in Argentina, land of love and revenge.
At the beginning of the last century, life in Poland was very hard. Hunger, need and pogroms. For young Jews, any way out seemed tempting, any other destination in the world offered illusion.

Ruchla como tantas otras jóvenes polacas judías partió hacia Argentina buscando un futuro mejor, escapar a la miseria. Pero su historia no es igual a la de las demás. «La Polaca» emigró a la Argentina en 1922 junto a dos pequeños hijos -Josué de dos años y Moisés de meses- para reunirse con su esposo, que la esperaba en la localidad bonaerense de Tapalqué. Elke, la cuñada de «la Polaca», era la madama de un burdel. «No se sabe si Raquel sabía de esto antes de llegar al país o si creía que iba a trabajar ayudando a su marido, que era sastre, pero nunca había conseguido trabajo y vivía de su hermana.”

Soon after, tuberculosis caused the death of Jacob. Ruchla, who upon arriving in Argentina adopted the name of Raquel Liberman(the names of the immigrants used to be Spanish) left her children in the care of people from Tapalqué and settled in Buenos Aires, ready to make a living. Prostitution, a mark of the times, was a path almost impossible to avoid.
Ruffians moved all over Buenos Aires. They were of all origins. Italians, Spaniards, French, Jews. The organisation that eventually gained the most fame was the Zwi Migdal, of Polish Jewish origin.

Raquel Liberman worked for several years in the brothels of the Zwi Migdal. Her deal was better than that of the other girls. She kept a higher percentage. Thus, she was soon able to buy her freedom for $1,500.

She continued to practice on her own. She married Joseph Korn, considered by many to have been sent by the Zwi Migdal to bring her back into their clutches. From such mafia associations, no one gets out easily. This man swindled Rachel. He bought a house in her name with 60,000 pesos of her own money in a fraudulent scheme. Korn set up a brothel in that house, as could not be otherwise. Once again, Raquel was left with nothing. And her search for justice began.

The downfall of this prostitution emporium, which was raking in millions a year, began in this little scam that the cracked thirty-year-old decided not to forgive. Ambition and impunity lost the Zwi Migdal. She crossed paths with a woman who was determined and tired of harassment, a principled commissioner and a judge who did not give in to the temptation of venality.

Raquel had the same fate as the other polaquitas: to give up her youth to ruffians and clients, to grow old prematurely, to become jaded by life and be replaced by a younger one, perhaps only five years younger than herself, but without the obvious wear and tear, without the rictus of defeat chiselled on her face, without the marks of exploitation marring her body.

The woman demanded her money. That money was her independence. The paradox is that she managed to end the organisation of ruffians and, with her savings, she wanted to become a madam herself. They did not listen to her demands. Neither her ex-husband Korn nor the managers of the Zwi Migdal to whom she went. Who would pay attention to a Polish prostitute? What kind of investigation could they not stop with a few bribes?
Commissioner Julio Alsogaray, a moralist with a reputation for incorruptibility, listened to Raquel and took action: he had been behind the organisation for years and had always come up against the wall of silence and complicity. Nobly, Alsogaray warned Raquel of the risks of ratifying her denunciations. Raquel chose to go ahead. She found an echo in an honest judge, the magistrate Manuel Rodríguez Ocampo.

In order for the complaint to succeed, Raquel lied about her origin. She wanted to protect her children. She only followed the script of the legend. She said that she travelled seduced by a deceptive marriage proposal and that when she disembarked at the port she was kidnapped and forced into prostitution.

Como escribió Jorge Luis Borges sobre su Emma Zunz: «La historia era increíble, en efecto, pero se impuso a todos, porque sustancialmente era cierta. Verdadero era el tono, verdadero el pudor, verdadero el odio. Verdadero también era el ultraje que había padecido; solo eran falsas las circunstancias, la hora y uno o dos nombres propios.»

Raquel, que comenzó solo reclamando su deuda, terminó denunciando y describiendo el funcionamiento de la red criminal. La Zwi Migdal no pudo resistir el embate. El juez ordenó 108 detenciones. La justicia de aquella época -en las vísperas de la llamada «década infame»-, a través de la Cámara de Apelaciones, finalmente dejó bajo el régimen de prisión preventiva a solamente tres miembros secundarios de la organización. Todos los demás, fueron liberados. Pero las circunstancias hicieron que el emporio de los rufianes fuera demolido.

Public opinion was becoming more moralistic (in 1936 prostitution was outlawed by law: Rachel did not get to see it, she died the year before). The impact of the news and sensationalism gave it a big impact, and the anti-Semitic factor also played a role. More important and established prostitution networks were overlooked because they belonged to other communities.
With her denunciation, Rachel had brought about the downfall of the Zwi Migdal. It was an unintended consequence. The story of the trip, of the fraudulent marriage, of the swindling of her credulity, was repeated for years.

At one point Rachel rejoined her children and lived for a few more years in Buenos Aires. She reportedly wanted to get a passport to return to Warsaw, but the trip to Poland never took place. A few months later, on 7 April 1935, she was admitted to Cosme Argerich Hospital, where she died.
Thirteen years had passed since their arrival in Buenos Aires. If that return to Warsaw had not gone wrong, José and Moisés would have fallen into the clutches of the Nazis who were already flying over Germany and especially over Poland.

The children were left with only a few photographs of their mother, in which she was happy.
This woman who escaped from misery in Poland and travelled with hope to Argentina, in search of an opportunity, found death, pain, abuse and exploitation here. However, in her own way, alone, against an entire era, she dared to fight, to fight for what was hers. That is her legacy, although unfortunately she would not learn of the National Prophylaxis Law of which she was the seed.

En 2015, cuando se cumplieron 80 años de su muerte, colocaron una placa en su honor en el cementerio de Avellaneda. Durante la Década Infame se decía que ese era «el lugar para enterrar prostitutas y proxenetas». No se sabe dónde está su tumba porque los libros de las parcelas están en Israel. Pero sí que está junto a Iacoov.

Su historia de valentía trascendió en el tiempo. Se escribieron otros libros sobre la Polaca. La Subsecretaría de Derechos Humanos y Pluralismo Cultural de la ciudad de Buenos Aires entrega cada año el «Raquel Liberman Prize» a todas las personas y organizaciones no gubernamentales comprometidas con la protección y/o promoción de los derechos de las mujeres sobrevivientes de situaciones de violencia», según dice la página oficial de la Ciudad.

A bill submitted to the Porteña Legislature requests the addition of the name of Raquel Liberman a la estación Callao de la línea D. La autora del proyecto, la legisladora de UCR-Evolución Patricia Vischi dijo que «nos pareció muy importante que fuera esta estación del subte D porque la vida de Raquel Liberman se desarrolló en esta zona, donde ella fue victimizada, pero también donde, cuando pudo recuperarse, pudo poner un comercio con mucho sacrificio para criar a sus hijos».

Compilation of texts from: Infobae, La Nación. With the people news, Researcher of the National Library José Luis Scarsi. Myrtha Schalom in her book La Polaca demolished all these legends with a formidable research work.