More than 3000 persons, many of them youthful, attended a mass meeting here to commemorate the Holocaust. The meeting, held in this city’s largest theater, the Rex, was co-sponsored by the Delegation de Associaciones Israelitas Argentinas (DAIA), the central organization of Argentina; the Buenos Aires Kehilla, the Argentine Zionist Organization, the Association of the Survivors of Nazism and other societies.
Israeli Ambassador Eliezer Doron said it was not surprising that there was still anti-Semitism in the world 29 years after the crushing of the Warsaw Ghetto. The Western world, he said, cannot be absolved for its “indifference and weakness in the face of our catastrophe,” which he said was repeated in 1967 before the Six-Day War.
The DAIA’s general secretary, Nehemias Resnitsky, said that it was astonishing that it was possible for anti-Semitism to be spreading through this country today in an “Argentine version of the ‘Protocols of the Elders of Zion.'” At this time, he declared, “we must emphasize that Argentina faces a social and economic crisis, and spreading this libel is an attempt to charge the Jewish community with this situation, trying to convert it into a scapegoat.”
Resnitsky urged political parties, labor unions, business leaders and intellectuals not to fall for this line, which he attributed to Arab propagandists. He also called on Argentina’s Arab community–“with which we have lived in peace and harmony”–not to let itself be “dragged into this provocation,” Also addressing the meeting were Buenos Aires Chief Rabbi Dr. David Kahane, who spoke in Yiddish, and Rafi Milberg, representing youth.
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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.
