Despite the warning issued by Interior Minister Carlos Adrogue that the Argentine Government will not tolerate any anti-Semitic attacks, unidentified persons today fired on a synagogue here from machine guns, spattering bullets into the building. The synagogue attacked is the Sephardic prayer house, on Camarago street. No one was injured.
Dr. Isaac Goldenberg, president of DAIA, the central organization of Argentine Jewry, today held a press conference, at which he pointed out that the latest manifestations of overt anti-Semitism here, climaxed by what has come to be known as “the Sirota case,” constituted only “the latest explosion” in a campaign of anti-Semitism “that had existed in the country for years.” The Sirota affair was the one in which a 19-year-old Jewish medical student at Buenos Aires University, Miss Graciela Sirota, had been tortured by as-yet unidentified assailants who carved a swastika on her body.
“This series of events,” said Dr. Goldenberg, “did not begin with the Sirota case, and cannot be considered finished only with Dr. Adrogue’s statement,” He stressed that during the period of grave crisis in the last few weeks, Argentine Jewry “stood firm and united, perhaps more from instinct than through organizational alignment.” He revealed that certain attempts were made in non-Jewish quarters to split the Jewish community, but these efforts failed.
CALLS FOR JEWISH UNITY; LAUDS J.T.A. REPORTS ON ARGENTINE EVENTS
“The sudden interruption of the anti-Semitic actions in the last week, following Dr. Adrogue’s statement, has been noted by us,” he declared. He urged the Jewish community to remain organized “so that we might prevent the danger of a split in the future which Nazis might try to provoke.”
“It is obvious that anti-Semitism is being used by machievellian forces in an effort to destroy the entire foundation of Argentine society,” Dr. Goldenberg said. “It appears that a plan exists, in which destruction of Argentine Jewry is the means and not the ultimate objective. It would be well for Argentine leaders to understand this transcendent danger which puts into jeopardy the entire Western position and all of Latin America. Latin American leaders must understand that Nazi aggression is as dangerous as Communist aggression. It is a tragic, historic error to believe that Communism can be fought with Nazism.”
Dr. Goldenberg expressed the Argentine Jewish community’s gratitude to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, whose dispatches during the recent crisis, he said, “gave public opinion abroad the opportunity to learn the facts of what has been transpiring here.”
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.
