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Argentine Jewish Graves Vandalized

October 22, 1996
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Vandals desecrated about 100 headstones at the Jewish cemetery in La Tablada, near Buenos Aires, Argentine police said this week.

At least seven people took part in the early Saturday attack, police said, adding that no one had been apprehended.

The vandals daubed swastikas on headstones, smashed others and painted “the Holocaust is the great Jewish lie” on the cemetery grounds.

The incident incensed Jewish community officials.

“We demand answers, not just words of solidarity with every new attack,” according to a statement from the Argentine Jewish umbrella organization DAIA, the Delegation of Argentine Jewish Associations.

DAIA Treasurer Rogelio Cichowolsky said the attack “might be part of a larger movement.”

“We had recently detected a campaign of distribution of anti-Semitic literature in areas near the cemetery,” the treasurer said.

DAIA and other Jewish organizations here demanded better security from the government.

In the past five years, eight attacks on Jewish cemeteries in Argentina resulted in the destruction of more than 400 headstones.

Vandals were caught in only one of those attacks.

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