April 30: Mothers of the Disappeared

Argentina’s Mothers of the Disappeared held their first rally at Plaza de Mayo, Buenos Aires on this date in 1977. They would continue to rally there every Thursday for three decades, wearing white headscarves and demanding information about their “disappeared” sons, daughters, and grandchildren. Of the 20,000 to 30,000 people murdered or disappeared by the Argentine military junta between 1976 and 1983, nearly 10 percent are thought to have been Jews (out of a Jewish population that was one percent of the general Argentine population). “Jews were subject to particular abuse, frequently accompanied by Nazi slogans,” writes Sandra McGee Deutsch at the Jewish Women’s Archive. “As Jews and women, Jewish women prisoners suffered inordinately.” The Jewish presence within the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo was also disproportionate, writes Deutsch, who notes that during the Argentine junta’s “Dirty War” (1976-83), “mothers of the Jewish disappeared also stood before the Ashkenazi community organization, demanding that it intercede with the regime.”

“[T]here was anti-Semitic violence comparable to Nazi times . . . the organized Jewish community did not react as it should have and, in many cases, closed doors and acted against Jewish ethics.” —Rabbi Daniel Goldman, Buenos Aires