History of the Jews in Uruguay

The history of the Jews in Uruguay goes back to colonial times. In the 1700s, Jews escaping from the Inquisition arrived in the Banda Oriental, territory of present-day Uruguay. However, the most important influx of Jews to Uruguay occurred during the end of the 19th century and to a greater extent during the first half of the 20th century, especially during World War I and II.
With an estimated 16,600–22,000 Jews, according to the American Jewish Year Book 2019, Uruguay is home to the fifth-largest Jewish community in Latin America, and the second-largest as a proportion of the total population after Argentina. The country's community is mainly composed of Ashkenazim. It also includes Holocaust survivors and descendants.
The arrival of Jews to the Banda Oriental goes back to the 16th century, when conversos began settling there. The Spanish Inquisition was not a significant force in the territory, and the first recorded Jewish settlement there was in the 1770s. When the Inquisition ended in 1813, it paved the way for Jews being more accepted in Uruguay throughout the 19th century.
Significant Jewish immigration to Uruguay began in the late 19th century, with the arrival of Jews from Brazil and Argentina. At the beginning of the 20th century, Uruguay became an attractive destination for Jews due to the secularism and prosperity following the reforms carried out during the Batlle era. The largest Jewish population was in Montevideo, whose Villa Muñoz neighbourhood received a large amount of the European Jewish immigration that came to Uruguay, which led it to become the Jewish quarter of the capital. Jewish schools and the first synagogue were established there in 1917 by a small Ashkenazi community.
The first recorded minyan happened in 1912. Despite the majority of Ashkenazi immigration, a significant number of Sephardim from the Ottoman Empire settled in the country. Most of them were poor and working-class, so upon their arrival they lived in tenements located in neighborhoods such as Ciudad Vieja, Palermo and Barrio Sur. In 1915, 30 Jewish families from Belarus and Bessarabia settled in the rural area of the Paysandú Department and established an agricultural settlement, Colonia 19 de Abril. Around that time, a Jewish cemetery was also established in the city of La Paz, 20 kilometers from Montevideo.
In the early years of the century, as the Jewish community in Uruguay grew, different institutions were founded to bring it together and help the newcomers settle and adapt. After World War I, the number of Ashkenazim in Uruguay increased significantly, with the arrival of Jews from Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania and Czechoslovakia escaping antisemitism. The majority of Jewish immigration to Uruguay took place in the 1920s and 1930s. A large percentage of Jewish immigrants during this period were German Jews and Italian Jews.
Uruguayan Jews initially made a living in small retail trade and peddling, with some becoming craftsmen and artisans. In time, they moved up the economic scale, and many became the owners of large stores or medium-sized businesses. They became primarily middle-class, particularly as many of them were by then second or third-generation Uruguayans. Their economic advancement was aided by the creation of Jewish loan and assistance funds, which evolved into Jewish banks.
The Uruguayan government's open immigration policy waned during Gabriel Terra's rule in the 1930s. During the Terra dictatorship (1933–38), immigration restrictions were imposed with the passing of laws establishing several reasons for refusing entry into the country. However, despite the fact that some refugee ships were refused entry to Montevideo "for failure to meet requirements", the arrival of Jews to Uruguay continued during the 1930s. In 1936 the Uruguayan division of B'nai B'rith was established.
Once settled in Uruguay, Jews were grouped based on their origin, however in 1940, with the union of the Israelite Community, the Sephardic Israelite Community, the Nueva Congregación Israelita, and the Hungarian Israelite Community, the Central Israelite Committee of Uruguay (CCIU) was formed, as a central and representative organization of the entire community.
With the rise of Nazism in Europe and the subsequent outbreak of World War II, the arrival of Jews from Central and Eastern Europe to Uruguay increased. The German Jews were mostly middle class, including bank employees, skilled workers, cattle breeders, researchers, lawyers and physians. Since by the end of the war in 1945, Uruguayan law did not allow the entry into the country of people who could not prove that they had the economic resources to live on their own, in January 1945 the government stipulated that people who had relatives already residing in Uruguay would be exempt from this obligation. Thus, from January to September 1946, approximately 1,578 Jewish survivors of the Holocaust settled in the country, most of whom were from Poland, Germany and Hungary.
During the establishment of Israel in 1948 and the subsequent 1948 Arab-Israeli War, which involved the mass exodus of Jews from Arab and Muslim countries, primarily to Israel, more than 18,000 Jews immigrated to Uruguay, including a number of Russian Jews and Hungarian Jews.
Uruguay, which had supported the creation of a Jewish homeland during the 1920 San Remo conference, was one of the first nations to recognize Israel, and the first Latin American country to do so. It was the first Latin American country and fourth country overall in which Israel established a diplomatic mission. It was also one of the few nations to support Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and oppose internationalization of the city. Its diplomatic mission in Jerusalem was upgraded to the status of an embassy in 1958, but subsequently moved to Tel Aviv after the enactment of the Jerusalem Law.
In 1952 the American Jewish Year Book estimated that Uruguay had about 40,000 Jews. However, in 1960 it was estimated at 50,000, the time in history when there were more Jews in the country.
The community experienced a serious decline in the 1970s and 1980s as a result of emigration. By the mid-1990s, there were no Jews in the upper echelons or military, and little Jewish representation in the legislature. In 1994, a Holocaust memorial was opened on the Rambla in the Punta Carretas neighborhood.
As of 2009, 20,000-25,000 Jews live in Uruguay, with 95% residing in Montevideo. Throughout the country, there are prominent organized communities in Punta del Este and Paysandú. As of 2003, there were 20 synagogues, but only six of them held weekly Shabbat services, and one functioned every day.
In 2017, a Holocaust memorial in Montevideo was vandalized with antisemitic graffiti, with phrases such as "The Holocaust of the Jewish people is the biggest lie in history" and “Gas chambers were a fraud.” This act of vandalism followed a renovation of the memorial which attempted to clean up the monument from previous acts of antisemitic vandalization.