el patriarca de la comida trufa

Aaron Rubashkin, 92, patriarch of troubled kosher meat empire

BY BEN HARRIS MAY 27, 2020 10:07 AM

Aaron Rubashkin is seen outside his Brooklyn butcher shop, June 3, 2008. (Ben Harris)

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(JTA) — Aaron Rubashkin knew a thing or two about mistreatment at the hands of governmental authorities.

As a child in the Russian town of Nevel, he saw his Jewish school shut down by the Soviet government in 1938. After the Nazis arrived in the summer of 1941, the Rubashkin family fled on foot, landing in Uzbekistan before finally arriving in the United States in 1953.

So it was perhaps not surprising that in 2008, when hundreds of federal agents descended on the tiny Iowa town where his  family operated what at the time was the largest kosher meat producer in the United States, Rubashkin saw it as another case of government mistreatment.

“Everything is a lie,” Rubashkin said of the many misdeeds alleged against the company, Agriprocessors, chiefly that it was employing hundreds of undocumented workers.