Volodia Toitlebaum, the Communist Party Senator during the Allende Administration, is in Rome, according to reports reaching here from Italy. This is the first news about the fate and whereabouts of any of the leading Jewish members of the government of Dr. Salvador Allende Gossens which was overthrown last week by a military coup. According to the reports from Italy, Toitlebaum and other left-wing Chilean diplomats and politicians who oppose the military junta met yesterday with Carlos Vassalo, Chile’s Ambassador to Italy.
Toitlebaum was respected by friends and enemies alike as a leading intellectual and the man who was most influential in formulating the political program and ideology of Allende’s left-wing coalition, this correspondent was told last spring when he visited Chile. He was regarded as a brilliant orator and writer.
Despite his intellectual dazzle and his staunch support of the Soviet Union; Toitlebaum found it difficult to defend the Soviet Union’s policy toward the Jews. During a television interview last spring he was asked to define his views on this question but parried the interviewer’s question. His criticism of the Soviet government’s policy on this issue was expressed only privately to close friends.
Meanwhile, there is still no information about other leading Jews who were part of the Allende government or who were prominent in public life during Dr. Allende’s term in office. Among those involved are Oscar Waiss, editor-in-chief of “La Nacion.” which was the former official government newspaper; Jacobo Shaulsohn, a member of the five-man Constitutional Tribunal; Dr. Enrique Testa, head of the Defense Council; Dr. Enrique Testa, head of the Defense Council; Leon Chimino, president of the Zionist Federation; Dr. Isaac Icekson, vice-president of the Zionist Federation; Jaime Faivovich, Mayor of Santiago; Jose Berdichevsky, chief of military aviation in the Southern Region; Daniel Silberman, director of the Copper Mining Corporation; and Jacobo Kogan Bercovich, a member of the Radical Party (part of Dr. Allende’s Popular Unity Coalition) and a member of the Ministry of the Interior.
WIDESPREAD ANXIETY EXPRESSED
In the past few days word did arrive from Santiago that Jewish institutions had not been damaged during the takeover of the country by the junta. Yesterday this correspondent received a telegram from Moises Yudelevich Goldbaum, director of the “Der Idishe Vort – La Palabra Israelita” (The Jewish Word) that “Jewish institutions working normally, no national harm, no human harm in the community.”
Meanwhile the waiting continues and the anxiety mounts as the Junta rounds up more and more “foreign extremists” among whom are some Jewish youths, former political leaders are held incommunicado and further arrests are being made.
The widespread anxiety over the fate of the Jewish political personalities under the Allende Administration is expressed each day by the numerous telephone calls from all parts of the country that come into the Jewish Telegraphic Agency’s editorial office in New York. The questions are always the same: “What’s happening and is there any word about Mr…..” The answer must continue to be, until there is positive evidence to the contrary, that some of the former leaders may be in trouble.
On Sept. 28, from 9-10 p.m., WEVD will present a special hour-long documentary commemorating the 30th anniversary of the rescue of Danish Jewry from the Nazis. The program includes on-the-spot interviews with people involved in various facets of the rescue operation 30 years ago.
Officer NEW YORK . WASHINGTON . PARIS. LONDON . JERUSALEM . TEL AVIV. JOHANNESBURG . BUENOS AIRES . SAO PAULO . LIMA Correspondents Ins UNITED NATIONS . CHICAGO . LOS ANGELES . TUCSON . MONTREAL . TORONTO . MEXICO CITY . CARACAS . SANTIAGO de CHILE . RIO de JANEIRO . BONN . BRUSSELS . AMSTERDAM . ROME . ATHENS . COPENHAGEN . VIENNA . GENEVA
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
