Special to the JTA Speculation High About the Fate of Four Chilean Jews

The mother of Luis Alberto Guendelman Wisniak, a missing Chilean Jew, has convinced Argentinian authorities that a badly mutilated corpse found near Buenos Aires is not the body of her son, the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith revealed today.

According to Rabbi Morton M. Rosenthal, director of the League’s Latin American affairs department, the development raised new speculation about the fate of Guendelman, one of four missing members of the Chilean Jewish community believed to be in jail or to have died while in custody. The others are Diana Aaron, Juan Carlos Perelman and David Silberman.

The corpse was found with personal documents identifying it as Guendelman and a sign which said “Executed by the MIR,” a left-wing revolutionary group. Argentinian police declared that the body was not his after Guendelman’s mother examined it at the morgue and forensic tests disclosed that it contained bones which had been surgically removed from Guendelman when he was a child.

Guendelman, according to an affidavit signed by his wife, was arrested by Chilean intelligence officials in Sept., 1974, and has not been seen since, Rabbi Rosenthal reported. A high Chilean official has denied that he, Miss Aaron or Perelman were ever arrested and disclaimed any knowledge of their present location, Miss Aaron, who was active in left-wing politics, disappeared in Oct., 1974. Perelman, who was a friend of a political activist, was listed missing earlier this year.

SILBERMAN’S DISAPPEARANCE HAS REPERCUSSIONS

Chilean government officials, who acknowledge that Silberman was in the Santiago penitentiary serving a 13-year sentence imposed two weeks after the military coup in September, 1973, contend that he has escaped with the help of friends and that they do not know his present whereabouts This has been disputed by those close to Silberman who say he has been seen in several government detention centers since his supposed escape, Rabbi Rosenthal said.

Members of his family, who had visited him regularly at the prison, last saw him in Sept., 1974. He left the jail on Oct. 4 in custody of six military personnel who allegedly were to take him to another facility for interrogation. Silberman’s disappearance has had international repercussions because of his prominence during the Allende era as general manager of CODELCO, the national copper corporation, and general manager of the world’s largest copper mine, Chuquicamata.

Silberman and Guendelman are among more than 1000 Chileans who were arrested after the coup and are now listed as missing. The government-controlled Chilean press claims that more than 100 missing persons who fled the country were subsequently killed by leftist guerrillas or security forces in Argentina and elsewhere.

This contention, however, has been challenged by the Committee of Cooperation for Peace, a human rights organization sponsored by Catholic, Protestant and Jewish clergy. The Committee, in a lengthy statement, declared that: “The deaths of such a high number of Chileans–which is alleged to have occurred in violent form in various countries–cannot be accepted as long as no complete and serious investigation is made.”

KIRBERG STILL IN CUSTODY

Twenty-eight Jews jailed since the coup, allegedly for political reasons, have been released and subsequently left the country, according to Rabbi Rosenthal. He said that one of the few who remains in custody is Prof. Enrique Kirberg, whose continuing detention has aroused worldwide protest, Kirberg, the former Rector of the State Technical University, was arrested in his office on the morning of the coup, Sept. 11, 1973.

Imprisoned on Dawson Island with 36 other prominent Chileans, he was detained for almost two years without trial. Although the political charges were dropped, he was fined $4000 and sentenced to 500 days in the Santiago penitentiary for reportedly evading $2800 in income taxes.

Contending that he is serving a sentence for tax evasion, rather than for a political crime, the Chilean government has refused to release Kirberg, despite appeals by the presidents and many faculty members at Brandeis, Harvard and M.I.T., as well as an offer of a teaching position from Columbia University. The United Nations Commission on Human Rights has also appealed for his release, Rabbi Rosenthal reported.

According to him, community leaders discount anti-Semitism as a factor in the arrest and detention of any Jews. The military government has assured them, as it did an ADL delegation earlier this year, that Jews, as such, have no reason to fear discriminatory action.