Raquel Liberman

Raquel Liberman (10 July 1900 – 7 April 1935) was a Polish-Jewish immigrant to Argentina, a victim of human trafficking. Her denouncement of her traffickers led to the breaking up of the Jewish human-trafficking network from Poland, Zwi Migdal, which in the early 20th century operated a worldwide white-slavery ring.

Early life Liberman was born on 10 July 1900 in Berdichev in the Kiev Governorate of the Russian Empire. According to the Jewish Women's Archive, she moved to Warsaw in Russian Poland with her family as a child. In 1919, she married Yaacov Ferber, a Warsaw tailor, according to Jewish rites. Ferber emigrated to Argentina and she followed him to Tapalqué, Buenos Aires province, with her two sons in 1922. Her husband died of tuberculosis soon after their arrival. Needing economic support and not knowing Spanish, Liberman left her children with a foster family and looked for a job in Buenos Aires. Liberman later kept the existence of her children a secret, and her children were unaware of her subsequent history. Exactly how it occurred is uncertain, but Liberman ended up working for a caftan (pimp) named Jaime Cissinger, whom she paid for protection. The criminal court magistrate Manuel Rodríguez Ocampo called Liberman to testify. Her testimony brought to light the criminal organization's methods, where women were forcibly transported from one place to another, and constantly abused physically and psychologically to make them subservient and prevent them from denouncing the organization.

During the investigation the complicity of the criminal organization with the federal police was uncovered. The magistrate's ruling was appealed. Despite Liberman's testimony, the appeals chamber magistrate only retained three members of the organization in custody, freeing its many other members. The appeals chamber magistrate justified this action by saying that only Liberman had testified (despite constant threats) whereas other victims did not.

Recognition Raquel Liberman has been the inspiration for a number of authors. Nora Glickman's book The Jewish White Slave Trade and the Untold Story of Raquel Liberman is a historical account. Writer and poet Ilan Sheinfeld has also written an account of that time, The Tale of a Ring. Carlos Luis Serrano wrote a play about her, Raquel Liberman: una historia de Pichincha. The novel THE THIRD DAUGHTER (HarperCollins, 2019) by Talia Carner is a penetrating look into early 20th-century sex-trafficking taking the cue from Sholem Aleichem's "The Man from Buenos Aires." Myrtha Shalom wrote the book La Polaca.