Argentine Dignitaries Attend ‘daia’ Function for Jewish Scientist

Highest officials of the Argentine Government, and a number of the country’s outstanding cultural and scientific personalities, attended a luncheon here today, given by DAIA, the central organization of Argentine Jews, in honor of Dr. Boris Chain, Nobel Prize winner in 1945 for his work on penicillin.

Prior to the luncheon, Dr. Chain was received officially by President Jose Maria Guido. Among the participants in the luncheon were Dr. Carlos Adrogue, Minister of the Interior; Dr. Bernardo Houssay, Argentine winner of a Nobel Prize in 1947; Msgr. Ernesto Dann Obregon, rector of the Catholic University of Buenos Aires; Rear Admiral Oscar Ouihillat, chairman of the Argentinean Atomic Energy Commission; and Dr. Luis Magnanini, chairman of the National Council of Education.

Dr. Isaac Goldenberg, president of DAIA, as chairman of the event, alluded to the intensified wave of anti-Semitism that broke out here recently, appealed for friendly relations among all groups of the Argentinean population, and sharply denounced those Argentineans who “by their silence” and failure to criticize the anti-Semites showed “cowardice, revealing society’s ills.”

Dr. Chain was also honored at receptions held at the Israel Embassy here and by the Buenos Aires Jewish community. On his visit to President Guido, he was accompanied by Dr. Moise Goldman, chairman of the South American executive of the World Jewish Congress; and Dr. Marcos Arson, president of the Argentine Committee for the Weizmann Institute. Dr. Chain’s visit to this country was under the auspices of the World Jewish Congress and the Weizmann Institute. He is an honorary fellow of the Institute.