POLITICS-ARGENTINA: Outrage over Nazi Congress near Jewish Centre

By Marcela Valente Reprint | | Print |

Marcela Valente

BUENOS AIRES, Aug 19 1998 (IPS) - Argentine Jewish community organisations and anti-discrimination leaders were outraged Wednesday by a secret Neonazi congress held opposite the new office of a Jewish centre blown up killing 86 people in 1994.

The 300 or so participants at the “First Meeting of National Socialism” carefully avoided direct reference to the Jewish commuity, stating instead their opposition to immigrants, prostitutes, narcotraffickers and the party system.

Delegates from both Argentina and abroad discussed their 1999 election platform, despite lacking sufficient votes to even stand for election.

There are two Neonazi groups in Argentina – the New Triumph and New Social Patriotic Order Party.

The Argentine Israelite Mutual Association (AMIA) – working out of the Delegation of Argentine Israelite Associations headquarters since its own building was destroyed – saw the meeting as an act of provocation.

The AMIA building was blown up two years after another bomb attack on the Israeli Embassy in Buenos Aires which killed nearly 30 people. In both cases, the main thrust of investigation is down Islamic fundamentalist lines.

And these two bloody attacks were not unique. There have been 34 antisemitic attacks since 1983, when the strongly anti-Jewish military dictatorship came to an end.

Nestor Ribet, Rector of the Catholic La Salle school – the building opposite the Jewish centre – had, in all innocence, rented out a room to a man presenting himself as the owner of the Huemul Publishing Company.

This man claimed he wanted to hold a congress for historians on August 15 and 16.

However, the Huemul Publishing Company closed down in 1982 and has not produced any more books since then, whereas the Huemul Bookshop, owned by Roberto Rego, was raided in 1996 after the Israeli ambassador reported it having an arsenal of naziphile publications.

The judge on the case stated the location was stuffed with nazi texts and magazines claiming the attacks on the AMIA and Israeli embassies were carried out by the Jews themselves, and even that the Diary of Ann Frank – telling of a young Jewish girl’s suffering under Nazism – is a fraud.

The true nature of the meeting this weekend was only discovered when a school employee discovered leaflets left behind by participants.

When approached by the press Wednesday, Rego refused to comment, merely asking journalists to go away, brandishing a book with a swastika emblazoned on the cover.

“The school was tricked, this was abuse and fraud and we are thinking of taking legal action,” said the headmaster of LaSalle.

He said the school had “fraternal relations” with the AMIA president, who often rented out rooms in the school for Jewish cultural events.

The National Anti-Discrimination Institute, directed by Victor Ramos, said they would be calling for swift legal action against the meeting organisers, who are already being sued for making statements supporting the crime.

Rego, the bookshop owner, funded the meeting himself, and it was organised by the New Social Patriotic Order Party, led by former skinhead, Alejandro Franze.

Participants came from Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Germany, Italy, Spain and Uruguay.

“The outcome of the meeting was very positive,” said Franze. “The old generations recognised in the young revolutionaries the continuation of the war on the enemies of the fatherland: immigrants, prostitutes, narcotraffickers and the partidocracy.”

Meanwhile, a 65 year-old woman – who said she had been in the “nationalist,” and not Nazi, movement since 1945 – said Nazism was not mentioned at any time, even though the parties at the meeting vindicate the name of Adolph Hitler and deny the magnitude of the Holocaust.