Argentine Government Leaders Attend Right-wing Rally at Which Crowd Shouted ‘jews to the Gallows’

The Provisional President of the Argentine Senate, who assumes that country’s presidency during the absence of Maria Estela Martinez de Peron, was one of three Senators who attended a recent Buenos Aires meeting of a right-wing, anti-Semitic group at which the crowd chanted “Jews to the gallows.”

According to a report prepared by Rabbi Morton M. Rosenthal, director of the Latin American Affairs Department of the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith, Provisional President Jose Antonio Allende was one of the three legislators present at the meeting held in a Buenos Aires theater and sponsored by Alianza Libertador Nacionalista (ALN). The other two were Senators Juan Carlos Cornejo Linares, notorious for his anti-Zionist and anti-Semitic affiliations, who was one of the main speakers; and Juan C. Beni. The Rev. Raul Sanchez Abelenda, dean of the Faculty of Philosophy at the University of Buenos Aires, was also present.

The Jewish community’s concern was also expressed in a meeting by a DAIA delegation with President Peron, during which a copy of DAIA’s “Peron and the Jewish People,” containing Juan Peron’s compiled statements on Jews and Israel, was presented to his widow. The President told the Jewish leaders that her husband often praised the DAIA, the representative body of Argentine Jewry. She reaffirmed the principles that guided his government and repudiated any attempts to use religious hatred to divide the Argentine family.

The ALN meeting which sparked the latest consternation among Argentine Jews was called by the extremist group to celebrate a new law permitting the return of the remains of its hero. Juan Manuel Rosas, from England. ALN first came into prominence as an anti-Semitic organization in 1944, when about 300 of its members marched toward the Buenos Aires Jewish quarter chanting, “Death to the Jews.” Disbanded by government order shortly after the ouster of Juan Peron in 1955. the group was reorganized last year when its leader, Juan Queralto, return from his exile in Paraguay.

MINISTER REPUDIATES ANTI-SEMITISM

Rabbi Rosenthal noted that Sen. Allende’s only explanation of his presence at the meeting was that he was invited by Se? Linares, a known Jew hater. His statement, however, claimed that the shouts reported in the press had not occurred while he was in the theater.

Outraged by the outbursts and the presence of the high-level officials, DAIA warned Interior Minister Alberto Rocamora that such anti Jewish activity has historically been a prelude to an attack on a country’s democratic institutions. DAIA called upon the Minister to condemn the action and take measures to prevent its repetition. In his response, Rocamora repudiated all acts which incite haired saying “every manifestation of anti-Semitism is an act of barbarism which is an attack on Argentine unity.”