A ranking member of Chile’s military government has promised the Jewish community that every effort will be made to apprehend the persons responsible for a rash of anti-Semitic incidents in recent months.
Gen. Rodolfo Paredes, Director General of Investigations, condemned the incidents and conveyed assurances that a determined effort would be undertaken to find the perpetrators, according to two Jewish community leaders with whom he met. They are Isidoro Gorodischer and Jose Avayu, president and secretary, respectively of the Representative Committee of Jewish Organizations in Chile, the Jewish community’s umbrella organization.
Gorodischer and Avayu conveyed to Paredes their community’s serious concern over the reappearance of anti-Semitic pamphlets and advertisements in Chilean newspapers by the California-based Institute for Historical Review, a rightwing revisionist organization which claims the Holocaust was a Jewish hoax and never occurred. The community is also troubled by the recent daubing of swastikas on the walls of the Hebrew Institute here and the Galvarino Gallerdo Jewish kindergarten.
Gorodischer also disclosed after the meeting that the Jewish Representative Committee had requested an audience with Interior Minister Ricardo Garcia to discuss how Arab pressure tried to prevent the national television network from showing a film on the life of the late Moshe Dayan who served as Defense Minister and Foreign Minister in successive Israeli governments.
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