Warsaw Ghetto Rally in Buenos Aires Links Israel Fight with Negro Struggle

"Israel’s fight for existence and the struggle of Negroes for dignity and equality are one and the same battle–the fight of Abel against Cain," a leader of Argentine Jewry declared here at a mass rally paying tribute to the six million martyred Jews of Europe and the Warsaw Ghetto fighters of 1943. The speaker was Dr. Isaac Goldenberg, president of the Daia, central representative body of Argentine Jewry. The rally, attended by more than 20,000, was organized by the Daia along with the Buenos Aires Jewish community and the Zionist Organization of Argentina.

Dr. Goldenberg spoke following solemn memorial services in which six huge candles were lighted and Yizkor and Elmale Rachamim, the traditional prayers for the dead, were chanted. He likened the assassin’s bullet that killed the American Negro civil rights leader, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., to the first bullet fired in Berlin in 1933 that killed the first of the six million Jews. He castigated the new anti-Semitic campaign in Poland. "We must join forces in order that Jewish flesh shall no longer be used as a diversion from social unrest," he declared.

Israel’s Ambassador to Argentina, Moshe Alon, also warned of renewed anti-Semitism. "It pains us," he said, "to see countries that were the site of the Nazi holocaust returning to those days." Mrs. Tzivia Lubetkin, one of the few surviving Warsaw Ghetto fighters, spoke of the ordeal of 25 years ago. In Warsaw, she said, we had two choices–to go straight to the death camps or to fight. Both choices meant death but the second meant death with dignity, she said. Referring to the official ceremonies in Warsaw last week marking the Ghetto revolt, Mrs. Lubetkin said "our friends are those who help us, not those who put flowers on our tombs."

In a statement issued in connection with the rally, the Daia appealed "to free men to firmly engage their energies to prevent a repetition of the terrible experience of Nazism."