TORONTO — If you’d asked Jonathan and Adriana Rosemberg five years ago whether they’d be seeking refuge in Toronto, the Venezuelan couple would have responded incredulously.

Jonathan and Adriana Rosemberg

Yet that’s exactly what they’re doing now, having fled Caracas for Toronto last month to escape what they say is a growing surge of unbearable anti-Semitism in their homeland.

Caracas, the capital, is home to the majority of Venezuela’s Jews.

“Anti-Semitism has become socially acceptable in Venezuela now. It’s a normal occurrence,” Jonathan, 30, told The CJN in a recent interview at the couple’s hastily rented apartment in Toronto.

“In Venezuela, [Jews] live in homes that are prisons with fences. You carry guns everywhere. We didn’t want to live like that anymore,” he said.

Both have left family and friends behind, and hope they can convince their relatives to escape what they describe as a “very unsafe situation for Jews” under Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez’s radical, socialist regime.

According to world Jewish population counts compiled by the American Jewish Committee, the Venezuelan Jewish community numbered slightly more than 15,000 in 2006.

It’s likely that number has dropped dramatically since that time, the Rosembergs believe.

“At least 80 per cent of my Jewish friends and family have left Venezuela,” Jonathan said. “Chavez has created [a society] that lives in ignorance and fear. Now you hear anti-Semitism on [national] radio. They are officially [quoting] from the Protocols of the Elders of Zion as ‘facts’ about Jews. ‘Zionist’ is a word you can barely use in Venezuela anymore.”

It’s a situation that is eerily reminiscent of German Jewry’s reaction to the rise of Nazism, the Rosembergs said, referring to how many Jews chose to flee Germany in the years preceding the Holocaust.

Additionally, according to popular rumour spreading throughout Venezuela, Chavez is flirting with conversion to Islam, the Rosembergs said.

In recent years, Chavez has befriended Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, praised Hezbollah during the 2006 Israel-Lebanon War and has pledged monetary support for Iran’s nascent nuclear program.

It’s now widely believed that Hezbollah – the Iranian-backed terrorist organization – has established a base of operations in Venezuela.

“There’s now a direct flight between Tehran and Caracas,” Jonathan said.

Citing a rash of attacks on synagogues and Jewish establishments over the last few years, the Rosembergs accused the Venezuelan government of complicity in these events, and of using them to obtain and build a registry of Jews for their own nefarious reasons.

“I had a lot of friends back home who aren’t Jewish, and [now] they reject you due to stereotyping,” Adriana said, with Jonathan translating from Spanish.

The couple came to Canada on student visas, but hope to settle here permanently.

Adriana, 27, a Spanish-language communications specialist by profession, is enrolled at the University of Toronto in English language courses in order to facilitate a career, if she is able to remain in the country.

For his part, Jonathan is fluent in English, having obtained a bachelor’s degree in political science from McGill University during a four-year stay in Montreal. He’s starting this fall at the George Brown College Chef School.

Though he comes from a well-established family – the Rosembergs have lived in Venezuela since the early 1950s, he said – Jonathan said Chavez encourages the populace to scorn the rich, particularly wealthy Jews.

“Chavez is giving people permission to be violent,” he said, noting that things became so bad for him at one point, he  could only leave his home accompanied by bodyguards to feel any semblance of safety, something that would have been unthinkable to him just a few years ago.

Last year, while living in an apartment complex in Caracas, Adriana and Jonathan said they were also subjected to frequent anti-Semitic graffiti on their building, such as “Jews go home” and “Zionist=Nazi.”

Being proud Jews and politically active, the Rosembergs said they often participated in rallies back home against Chavez’s policies, braving rubber bullets and tear gas from Venezuelan police.

“Venezuela is a beautiful country, don’t get me wrong. Up until a few years ago, the people were the nicest. Then, everything changed,” Jonathan said.

The Rosembergs also allege that Venezuela’s Jewish lay leadership has not been helpful to the country’s community, as they’ve opted for a more appeasing approach to dealing with Chavez and anti-Semitic activity.

In May, Jewish members of the U.S. Congress opposed a resolution expressing solidarity with the Jewish community in Venezuela at the behest of the Confederation of Israelite Associations of Venezuela (CAIV), the country’s main umbrella group of Jewish organizations.

In a phone interview with JTA at the time, Fred Pressner, a past president of CAIV, emphasized that the biggest problem with the resolution was its “bad timing.”

“All of our institutions are protected by the police – we cannot complain about that,” Pressner said, noting that “the government reacted well” to the earlier attacks. He added that the Jewish community had recently had some “informal communications with some top level officials of the government.”

However, allegations of the Chavez regime’s anti-Semitism won’t go away.

Among other anti-Semitic influences, the U.S. Anti-Defamation League cites Norberto Ceresole, an Argentine political scientist and Holocaust denier, as one of Chavez’s ideological mentors. Ceresole wrote a book titled Caudillo, Ejercito, Pueblo (Leader, Army, People) about the Chavez revolution. Its introductory chapter is titled, “The Jewish question and the State of Israel.”

“There’s no question Chavez will continue to harass the Jewish community,” Jonathan said.

Since landing in Toronto, the Rosembergs have secured the services of an immigration lawyer in an attempt to stay in Canada permanently. They’re also keen to meet other Jews and integrate into the community.

“The Toronto Jewish community has received us very well. We’ve been invited to dinners… and I’m impressed with the way it’s organized,” Jonathan said, adding that they’ve been urged by community members to apply to the government as “political refugees.”

But the Rosembergs have so far declined to do that, insisting they want to get work and apply for citizenship, and “come into Canada through the front door” if possible, he said.

With files from JTA