Rosen wrote ten ‘comprehensive studies’ of American agriculture which totaled over 1,300 pages, which helped him earn his Bachelor of Science degree in agriculture in 1908. In that same year Rosen moved to Minneapolis, Minnesota, and became a U.S. citizen on December 30, 1909. Rosen was, by then, an expert on American farming techniques and technology, knowledge that would serve him well in his capacity as an agronomist. Indeed, after Rosen had closed the Minneapolis office in 1914 and moved to New Jersey, he became an agronomist and principal at the Baron de Hirsch Agricultural School located at Woodbine. Rosen later resigned his position at the Agricultural School and moved to New York where he became the U.S. representative for a St. Petersburg bank.In the early 1920s Rosen traveled back to his native Russia as a member of the United States’ American Relief Administration, headed by the future U.S. President Herbert Hoover. The team assisted the Russians during the massive country-wide famine of 1919-1922. In Russia Rosen served as head of the Jewish Joint Distribution Service. It was in this capacity that Rosen ‘got his feet wet’ as an administrator of the Jewish philanthropy.
Hoover had nothing but fine praise for Rosen writing that he was a fine personality and superb administrator.Rosen later teamed up with his future partner Rosenberg,round plastic pots to administer Jewish settlement schemes in the Ukraine and the neighboring Crimean Peninsula. Rosen’s partner, James Rosenberg, was the business side of DORSA. Trained as a corporate attorney practicing in New York, Rosenberg was the chairman of the Agro-Joint, a Jewish philanthropy that channeled funds to various projects. Rosenberg was the grandson of a German rabbi who had immigrated to Pittsburgh. The Rosenberg family had moved to New York when James was an impressionable youngster. His mother and father had enrolled James in the progressive Society for Ethical Culture, “founded in 1876 to promote the advancement of social justice.”Wells describes the mission of the Society as “one that was rooted in the intellectual mastery of nature, the glorification of life in art and with its consecration in morality.”This grounding in ethics was to serve the future attorney well, guiding him in the decision making processes that occupied his professional career. Rosenberg later entered a ‘Waspish’ private boarding school before his acceptance into Columbia Law School, then considered among the very best universities in the United States.After graduating from law school at Columbia University, New York, Rosenberg set about on the path to success as a corporate bankruptcy attorney, a profession which was soon to provide him with the funds and means to do charitable work. In truth, James Rosenberg was the quintessential American success story. A grandson of immigrants who arrived in America without the safety network of family and friends, he became widely successful in his chosen profession as a lawyer.
Rosenberg’s dogged determination served him well as he rose through the ranks of the corporate world as a young and brash attorney to become a member of what Wells termed a ‘sophisticated and elite group.’Joseph Rosen and James Rosenberg joined forces in the early 1920’s to assist the Russian Government in resettling of Jews in the Crimea and Ukraine as agriculturalists. This experience gave them a firm grounding in the nuts and bolts of starting and running agricultural settlements. The estimates of Jewish refugees who were resettled in the Crimean Peninsula and the Ukraine during the years 1924-1938 differ among the available sources. Kaplan uses the figure of 250,000, who ultimately cultivated three million acres, and also imported approximately 1,000 American made tractors.Wells gives slightly different figures, pegging the refugees at upwards of 150,000 Jews, and the land at nearly two million acres. The amount of money that the Joint earmarked for the project was the astronomical sum of seventeen million dollars.The valuable experience that Rosenberg and Rosen gained through the Russian settlement scheme was crucial, and provided a model for the Dominican settlement at Sosúa. The Crimea/Ukraine model that was developed by Rosen, and later put into effect at Sosúa, was based on a three-part plan: crop diversification, new ‘superior’ technology, and cooperative division of land, labor and resources. Rosen firmly believed that this plan could help transform the Jews from a parasitic bunch of rootless wanderers into productive members of society through the cultivation of land.Superior U.S. farm machinery, such as the tractor, translated into more acreage that could be put to use; and the cooperative nature of the settlements meant that all members could share the costs of fertilizers, seeds, and new equipment.
The division of labor was in the main determined by gender, men doing the heavy work such as the plowing and clearing of fields, the women cooking, planting, sewing and caring for the kids. There were doubts, however, that the Crimea program would succeed at all. Rosenberg summed up most succinctly his thoughts regarding the project: “The Crimean scheme had ended in ‘utter, complete, black tragedy.”Again, the political scientist Allan L. Kagedan argued that the Crimea plan was one that seemed to have little chance for success. Many people that were involved in the project believed in the “clear likelihood that the scheme would fail.” The majority of Jews were not, in the main, people of the land but urbanites mostly involved in some form of commerce. Indeed, Kagedan, writing in the academic journal Jewish Social Studies, quotes Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, the Lubavitcher Rebbe who reminded the JDC in March 1928 “that agriculture is an economic branch which is foreign to the Jews who are neither physically nor spiritually adapted to it.” Kagedan was aware that “not all Jews would transform themselves into farmers, many would abandon the land in short order.”The employment profile of the refugees was heavily weighted towards the professional ranks with very few of them having had any background or experience in agriculture. Yet the ultimate success of the Crimean and Ukrainian settlements gave both men high hopes of a repeat performance at distant Sosúa. The Rosenberg/Rosen partnership endured throughout the 1920’s and 1930’s culminating in the founding of Sosúa in the Dominican Republic. Rosenberg drew up the documents of incorporation for DORSA in New York during December of 1939, with himself as President and Rosen as Vice President. Trujillo was anxious to get the project up and running as soon as feasibly possible. The dictator was in international hot water for the mass murder of Haitians in October of 1937. The Parsley Massacre, in Spanish El Corte, was a stain on Dominican history and needed to be reconciled before the tiny Caribbean nation would again be respected on the world’s stage. Trujillo needed to remain in the good graces of the United States, its giant neighbor to the north, chief trading partner and principal benefactor. The dictates of the Good Neighbor policy of the United States provided that the U.S. not interfere in the affairs of its neighbors and satellite states. This foreign policy was central to F.D.R.’s presidency and “meant that the United States emphasized cooperation and trade rather than military force to maintain stability in the hemisphere.”
The Good Neighbor Policy also gave Trujillo free reign to rule as he pleased, without the fear of further economic sanctions or military intervention from the United States. The Dominican Republic had been subject to crippling economic sanctions since the U.S. took control of the Dominican Republic’s customs house. This was done to secure payment for its debt to bondholders. The receivership was a sore spot that severely strained relations between the two countries, and was something that El Generalíssimo wanted to resolve immediately in favor of his economically strapped nation. Indeed, in 1905 the United States announced that it would “guarantee the territorial integrity of the Dominican Republic [and] assume responsibility for customs house collections…using 55% of receipts to pay outstanding obligations, turning over the remainder for Dominican governmental expenditures”.This policy was eventually overturned on March 31 1941,hydroponic bucket and with its abolition the Dominican Republic now, after a long, humiliating thirty six years, finally controlled its domestic finances. Yet another point of contention involved the importation of Dominican sugar into the United States and its territories. Trujillo desperately wanted the U.S. to increase its import quota of sugar produced in the Dominican Republic, the U.S. instead favoring Cuba and Puerto Rico over the Dominican Republic. The dictator lobbied James Rosenberg for help in providing representation in Washington D.C.. Rosenberg could only promise Trujillo to do what he could to advance the Dominican cause in the U.S. press, thereby avoiding any possible conflict of interest that could derail efforts to reverse the crippling stranglehold that the sugar quota imposed on the Caribbean island nation’s economy. The plan was to create a favorable public relations spin via press releases and the like, which would cast Trujillo in a positive light. Rosenberg goes into some detail in his Diary I regarding exactly what Trujillo wanted from the United States: the abolishment of the Receivership Convention, and an increase of the U.S. sugar import quota. This would then allow the Dominican Republic to increase its sugar exports to its chief foreign market and infuse much needed hard currency into the nation’s coffers.
Trujillo knew the value of having an attorney as well connected as Rosenberg firmly in his corner. Rosenberg notes that an American named Mr. Rickards who had been “working down here first for the Government and then the sugar institute of which he is now head, his title being “Secretary-General,” paid him a visit on behalf of El Generalíssimo.”Mr.Rickards came around with heaps of papers, documents, records, etc. that Trujillo had sent him with…regarding the Convention, regarding sugar, regarding economic or legal problems confronting the country; that the General wanted me to have the facts.” On one of Rosen’s and Rosenberg’s visits to the Generalíssimo, the shrewd New York attorney relates that “Trujillo handed me the memorandum and said he would like to talk to me about it later.”The memorandum presented to Rosenberg spelled out the issues that Trujillo wanted resolved. Rosenberg promised the dictator that he would do everything in his power to effect a positive outcome through the use of politically connected people, mainly lobbyists, who Rosenberg knew well. Rosenberg was adamant that Trujillo needed elite representation in Washington, and told Trujillo that he would make recommendations as to who the Generalíssimo should use to represent the Dominican Republic. The U.S. Receivership of Dominican Customs had long been a source of embarrassment to Trujillo, the nation, and its people. Rosenberg noted in his diary that “…this interference with [Dominican] sovereignty was a constant irritation,” and continued “There are two main problems—sugar—Convention…It would seem to me important that the Dominican Government ought to make itself heard,” and following this line of reasoning Rosenberg continued “because of the many legal, economic and problems as to the Convention, you need able counsel in Washington. You should also see to it that the American public understands something of these problems which confront you.” In spite of Trujillo’s insistence that Rosenberg represent the Dominican Republic’s interests in Washington D.C., Rosenberg bowed out by telling Trujillo that “it was utterly out of the question for me to be the lawyer.” Trujillo pressed Rosenberg to select the lawyer with Rosenberg again turning down the dictator’s request. Rosenberg would, however, recommend a lawyer should Trujillo send the ‘right man’ up to the States.Yet another reason that explains Trujillo’s magnanimous offer at Évian was his desire to ‘whiten’, in Spanish blanquear, the Dominican populace through miscegenation. Trujillo believed that bringing Jews to his country would prompt inter-breeding between Jews and Dominicans, thereby creating a new, whiter breed of Dominican. This was an obsession of Trujillo and the Dominican people at large. The events of El Corte had generated world-wide, negative press, and prompted Trujillo to scramble to repair his damaged image through, among other means, diplomatic maneuvering and slick public relations campaigns. It is estimated that as many as 20,000 Haitians had lost their lives to roving bands of thuggish Dominicans, including some military officers and soldiers.It is ironic that sugar was at the root of the massacre, as it was also the cause of Dominican embarrassment on the world’s stage.