Lee M. Friedman, a one-time president of the American Jewish Historical Society, wrote that in Brazil, where most of the Africans actually went, "the bulk of the slave trade was in the hands of Jewish settlers."
Marcus Arkin wrote that the Jews of Surinam used "many thousands" of Black slaves.
Herbert I. Bloom wrote that "the slave trade was one of the most important Jewish activities here (in Surinam) as elsewhere in the colonies." He even published a 1707 list of Jewish buyers by name with the number of Black humans they purchased.
Cecil Roth, writer of 30 books and hundreds of articles on Jewish history, wrote that the slave revolts in parts of South America "were largely directed against [Jews] as being the greatest slave-holders of the region."
"I gather," wrote Jewish scholar Wilfred Samuels, "that the Jews [of Barbados] made a good deal of their money by purchasing and hiring out negroes..."
According to the Jewish historians, all Barbadian Jews owned slaves - even the rabbi had "the enjoyment of his own two negro attendants."
In Curacao which was a major slave trading depot, Isaac and Susan Emmanuel report that "the shipping business was mainly a Jewish enterprise."
Says yet another Jewish writer of the Jews of Curacao, "Almost every Jew bought from one to nine slaves for his personal use or for eventual resale."
Seymour B. Liebman in his New World Jewry, made it clear that "[t]he ships were not only owned by Jews, but were manned by Jewish crews and sailed under the command of Jewish captains."
Moshe Kahan stated bluntly that in 1653-1658, " Jewish-Marrano merchants were in control of the Spanish and Portuguese trade, were almost in control of the Levantine trade...were interested in the Dutch East and West Indian companies, were heavily involved in shipping; and, most important, had at their disposal large amounts of capital."
In Brazil, where most of our kidnapped ancestors were sent, Jewish scholar Arnold Wiznitzer is most explicit about Jewish involvement:
"Besides their important position in the sugar industry and in tax farming, they dominated the slave trade. From 1636 to 1645 a total of 23,163 Negro slaves arrived from Africa and were sold for 6,714,423 florins. The West India Company, which monopolized imports of slaves from Africa, sold slaves at public auctions against cash payment. It happened that cash was mostly in the hands of Jews. The buyers who appeared at the auctions were almost always Jews, and because of this lack of competitors they could buy slaves at low prices. On the other hand, there also was no competition in the selling of the slaves to the plantation owners and other buyers, and most of them purchased on credit payable at the next harvest in sugar. Profits up to 300 percent of the purchase value were often realized with high interest rates....If it happened that the date of such an auction fell on a Jewish holiday the auction had to be postponed. This occurred on Friday, October 21, 1644."
