JEWISH PROSTITUTION AND TRAFFICKING IN WOMEN

Jewish trafficking in women did not begin in a vacuum. Jews joined the crime wave that swept over East European Jewish society and spread throughout the world.

Prostitution and international trafficking in women, which were among the gravest plagues in Western society from the end of the nineteenth century on, did not bypass Jewish society, which had been undergoing enormous changes since the 1880s.

The migration from town to city and the increase in poverty contributed to the development of prostitution among Jews.

In most big cities that contained a large, poor population of Jews (Warsaw, Odessa, Vilna, Cracow, Budapest and Vienna, for example), there were concentrations of Jewish prostitutes working in brothels for Jewish pimps.

It was virtually impossible to work as a prostitute in small towns and shtetls where everyone knew everybody else and prostitutes were ostracized.