President Raul Alfonsin has appointed Dr. Gregorio Klimovsky, of the Latin American branch of the World Jewish Congress, and Rabbi Marshall Meyer, spiritual leader of Congregation Beth El here, to the newly created national commission investigating the disappearance of individuals under previous Administrations during the “dirty war “in the mid-1970’s.
Alfonsin decreed the creation of a 16-member commission to satisfy the “legitimate interest” of civilian society “in participating in the clarification of the tragic episodes in which thousands of people have disappeared.” According to reports by human rights agencies, some 30,000 people have disappeared. Among the “disappeared ones” are an estimated 3,000 Jews.
Klimovsky, a respected professor and mathematician, is a long-standing officer of the advisory committee of the Latin American branch of the WJC, and Meyer is director of the Latin American Rabbinical Assembly. Both were appointed by Alfonsin on the basis of “their zeal in the defense of human rights and their public prestige.”
The commission’s task will be to “receive charges and evidences on cases (of disappearances) and submit them to the courts …. investigate the whereabouts of missing persons … establish the whereabouts of missing children separated from their parents or guardians … with the alleged purpose of repressing terrorism,” and, in the latter cases, to submit the evidence to courts dealing with minors.
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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.
