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Argentine Anti-semites Use Bombs in Retaliation for Eichmann’s Execution

June 4, 1962
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Two “Molotov cocktail” bombs were tossed today from a passing automobile against the Union of Israel School on Paso Street. At about the same time, occupants of another speeding car machine gunned the windows in front of the offices of the Zim Israel Navigation Company, on Intalcahuano Street. Only material damage was caused by both attacks, and no one was injured.

The attacks are believed to have been the work of extremists seeking revenge for the execution of Adolf Eichmann who was captured in Argentina and brought to Israel for trial. Argentine police posted special guards, as soon as word of Eichmann’s hanging was received here, around the buildings occupied by the Israeli Embassy, Jewish centers and synagogues.

This morning, leaders of the DAIA, central organization of Argentine Jewry, held an emergency meeting with Dr. Jorge Walter Perkins, Minister of the Interior in the Argentine Government. They requested that special security measures be taken to protect Argentine Jewry and Jewish institutions from further attacks by extremists and terrorists.

(A Jewish Telegraphic Agency dispatch today from Montevideo reported that government police of Uruguay had adopted special security measures to guard the Israeli Embassy and synagogues, and to prevent any violent actions in protest against Eichmann’s hanging in Israel.)

The police guards stationed today around various Israeli and local Jewish buildings emphasized the rash of threats and disturbances that have occurred since the Eichmann story in Israel had begun to reach the climax achieved there with Eichmann’s execution. Bombs have been thrown against other Jewish schools; in a provincial city an Israeli flag was burned on a main street; and the wall outside the Buenos Aires cemetery for heroes was daubed with an inscription, in red letters, proclaiming; “If Eichmann dies–death to the Jews.”

The Argentine Foreign Ministry issued a communique, stating: “According to information received from Jerusalem, Adolf Eichmann has been executed. The Foreign Ministry regrets that Israel’s justice tribunals did not take into account the explicit provisions of Argentine law, according to which the condemned man should have suffered lesser punishment.

“This manifestation does not in the least diminish the energetic and indignant repudiation of crimes against humanity in which the sentenced man was said to have been involved as author or co-participant, according to the sentence pronounced by the court in Jerusalem. In the history of modern times, these crimes, which were directed more against humanity than against the Jewish people, will never be obliterated. Neither will they be obliterated with the expiation of one human life–an action not foreseen in our criminal code,” the Government communique concluded.

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