The American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee has allocated $1 million to the Jewish community of Argentina for the profound needs it has incurred since the July 18 terrorist bombing that leveled the Jewish community building in Buenos Aires and killed 99 people.
Of that sum, one-quarter will be paid out in the form of regularly scheduled salaries to the families of those who lost members in the bombing, Milton Wolf, president of the JDC, said in a telephone interview from Buenos Aires.
Wolf said that two months after the mass explosion shook the community here, emotional and psychological factors are continuing to take a toll on Argentine Jewry, which numbers over 200,000.
The JDC president, who met with a broad spectrum of community leaders, said that security remains tight at Jewish institutions in Argentina.
He said the JDC contingent witnessed heavy security at a Jewish day school they visited as well as at the bomb site itself, where his group said Kaddish for the dead before “the astonished eyes of the heavy police force that is still guarding the site.”
Wolf said that $1 million cannot redress the terrible damage wreaked by the bombing, for which no one has been brought to justice, but that this is just the first allocation in an ongoing effort to help the Jews of Buenos Aires.
JDC officials will be working with local community leaders to assess their needs, said Wolf, a former U.S. ambassador to Austria.
“About the only thing that has been determined is that the initial funds will be directed to the dependents of those killed in the explosion, because there is no way for those people to carry on and survive financially without getting some financial assistance,” he explained.
The allocation includes $200,000 from donations that came to the JDC “Open Mailbox” and $800,000 of standing JDC funds, Wolf said.
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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.
