The Argentine judge investigating the shooting outside a suburban Jewish cemetery here last week says “Nazi sympathizer groups” were responsible.
But Judge Orfeo Maggio did not identify the groups, nor has any claimed credit for the attack. No arrests have been made.
The main entrance of the cemetery in Berazategui, south of Buenos Aires, was fired on during the evening of April 9. Two spent 9-mm bullets and shell casings were found at the cemetery gate. No one was hurt.
Maggio, who said the perpetrators acted with “seeming confidence,” noted that the attack was carried out on the 50th anniversary of the first deportation of Jews to the Auschwitz death camp.
The Berazategui cemetery was vandalized last year on the 101st anniversary of Adolf Hitler’s birth. The assailants desecrated 112 tombstones.
Judge Maggio, who was in charge of that investigation as well, said he is studying the relationship between the two incidents. He has received several death threats.
But the DAIA, the representative body of the Argentine Jewish community, called the episode “minor.” It said the shooting was in a class with the bomb scares and telephone threats that began after a car bomb nearly demolished the Israeli Embassy in Buenos Aires on March 17, killing some 30 people and injuring hundreds.
REMINDER: The JTA Daily News Bulletin will not be published on Monday, April 20.
JTA has documented Jewish history in real-time for over a century. Keep our journalism strong by joining us in supporting independent, award-winning reporting.
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.
