Language:
English
Year of publication:
2012
Titel der Quelle:
Journal of Jewish Identities
Angaben zur Quelle:
5,1 (2012) 89-110
Keywords:
Timerman, Jacobo,
;
Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945) Influence
;
Jews History 1945-
Abstract:
The publisher and journalist Jacobo Timerman was detained by the ruling military Junta (1976-83) in 1977. In 1979 he was freed and exiled to Israel, where he wrote his book “Prisoner without a Name, Cell without a Number” (1981), in which he described the torture he underwent, contending that he was detained because he is a Jew. He strongly criticized the passivity and indifference of the DAIA regarding his imprisonment, and the disappearance and murder of thousands of other Jews. He compared the DAIA to the “Judenrat” during World War II, and made other analogies between the repression in Argentina and the Holocaust. The DAIA strongly objected to Timerman's use of Holocaust metaphors. The organization took the stand that antisemitism does exist in Argentina, but it is not official, and that Timerman and other Jews were arrested for subversive and leftist activities and not for being Jews. Today there is a consensus on the view expressed by the DAIA, but it is also well-known that once the Jew was arrested he/she received “special treatment” as Jews: portraits of Hitler were hung in the torture rooms, swastikas were carved in the prisoners' bodies, and they suffered from jeering references to Auschwitz and other humiliations. Antisemitism occurred in the torture rooms and the detention center, a fact that the DAIA was unwilling to confront. Concludes that the DAIA's stance gave the Junta legitimacy, becoming an accomplice to the repression.
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