Acts of Repair: Justice, Truth, and the Politics of Memory in Argentina 9781978807464

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Acts of Repair

  Genocide, Po­liti­cal Vio­lence, ­Human Rights Series Edited by Alexander Laban Hinton and Nela Navarro Nanci Adler, ed., Understanding the Age of Transitional Justice: Crimes, Courts, Commissions, and Chronicling Alan W. Clarke, Rendition to Torture Alison Crosby and M. Brinton Lykes, Beyond Repair? Mayan W ­ omen’s Protagonism in the Aftermath of Genocidal Harm Lawrence Davidson, Cultural Genocide Daniel Feierstein, Genocide as Social Practice: Reor­ga­niz­ing Society u­ nder the Nazis and Argentina’s Military Juntas Alexander Laban Hinton, ed., Transitional Justice: Global Mechanisms and Local Realities ­after Genocide and Mass Vio­lence Alexander Laban Hinton, Thomas La Pointe, and Douglas Irvin-­Erickson, eds., Hidden Genocides: Power, Knowledge, Memory Douglas A. Kammen, Three Centuries of Conflict in East Timor Eyal Mayroz, Reluctant Interveners: Amer­i­ca’s Failed Responses to Genocide from Bosnia to Darfur Walter Richmond, The Circassian Genocide S. Garnett Russell, Becoming Rwandan: Education, Reconciliation, and the Making of a Post-­G enocide Citizen Victoria Sanford, Katerina Stefatos, and Cecilia M. Salvi, eds., Gender Vio­lence in Peace and War: States of Complicity Irina Silber, Everyday Revolutionaries: Gender, Vio­lence, and Disillusionment in Postwar El Salvador Samuel Totten and Rafiki Ubaldo, eds., We Cannot Forget: Interviews with Survivors of the 1994 Genocide in Rwanda Eva van Roekel, Phenomenal Justice: Vio­lence and Morality in Argentina Anton Weiss-­Wendt, A Rhetorical Crime: Genocide in the Geopo­liti­cal Discourse of the Cold War Timothy Williams, The Complexity of Evil: Perpetration and Genocide Ronnie Yimsut, Facing the Khmer Rouge: A Cambodian Journey Natasha Zaretsky, Acts of Repair: Justice, Truth, and the Politics of Memory in Argentina

Acts of Repair Justice, Truth , and the Politics of Memory in Arge ntina

Nata s h a Z a r e t s k y

Rutg e r s Unive r sity P re s s New Brunswick, Camden, and Newark, New Jersey, and London

 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Zaretsky, Natasha, 1975– author. Title: Acts of repair : justice, truth, and the politics of memory in Argentina / Natasha Zaretsky. Description: New Brunswick : Rutgers University Press, [2020] | Series: Genocide, political violence, human rights | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2020037183 | ISBN 9781978807426 (paperback) | ISBN 9781978807433 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781978807440 (epub) | ISBN 9781978807457 (mobi) | ISBN 9781978807464 (pdf ) Subjects: LCSH: Political violence—Argentina. | Collective memory—Argentina. Classification: LCC HN270.Z9 V598 2020 | DDC 303.60982—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020037183 A British Cataloging-­in-­P ublication rec­ord for this book is available from the British Library. Copyright © 2021 by Natasha Zaretsky All rights reserved No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the publisher. Please contact Rutgers University Press, 106 Somerset Street, New Brunswick, NJ 08901. The only exception to this prohibition is “fair use” as defined by U.S. copyright law. The paper used in this publication meets the requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences—­Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1992. www​.­r utgersuniversitypress​.­org Manufactured in the United States of Amer­i­ca

 Dedicated to the memory of Berta to the memory of David and Roza to the memory of Jack to the memory of Andrea

Conte nt s

Chronology

ix 1



Introduction: Topographies of Vio­lence

1

El Vacío: Trauma, Narrative, and the Bound­aries of Coherence

16

Dialogic Memory and the Uneven Terrain of Justice

40

Disruption and Agency in the Public Sphere

66

Sites of Memory, Erasure, and Belonging

96

2 3 4 5

Nunca Más and the Intersections of Genocide, Loss, and Survival

129

6

On the Limits of Witnessing, On the Bound­aries of Time

158



Conclusion: The Liminality of Repair

181

Acknowl­edgments Notes References Index

189 195 209 229

vii

Ch ronology

1889

First Jews arrive in Argentina on S.S. Weser

1919

Semana Trágica (first antisemitic pogrom in Argentina)

1960

Adolf Eichmann captured in Buenos Aires

1976–1983

Dictatorship, also known as the “Dirty War,” that resulted in an estimated 30,000 killed and tortured; more recently called a genocide

1983

Return to democracy

1983–1989

Raúl Alfonsín presidency

1984

CONADEP truth commission publishes Nunca Más report

1985

Trial of the Juntas

1986

Full Stop Law passed

1987

Law of Due Obedience passed

1989–1999

Carlos Saúl Menem presidency

March 17, 1992 Israeli embassy in Buenos Aires attacked, resulting in twenty-­t wo dead and over two hundred injured July 18, 1994

AMIA building destroyed with a bomb, resulting in eighty-­five ­people dead and more than three hundred injured

1999–2003

Presidencies of Fernando de la Rúa 1999–2001; Ramón Puerta 2001; Eduardo Camaño 2001–2002; Eduardo Duhalde 2002–2003

2001–2004

First AMIA trial; twenty-­t wo men acquitted on charges related to assisting in the AMIA attack

2003–2007

Néstor Kirchner presidency

2005

Amnesty laws overturned; ­human rights ­t rials begin

2005

Inter-­A merican Commission on H ­ uman Rights determines that Argentina failed to provide justice in the AMIA case

ix

x

Chronology

2006

Jorge Julio López, who had been dis­appeared and tortured during the dictatorship, is dis­appeared a­ fter testifying in trial against Miguel Etchecolatz

2006

Chief prosecutor in AMIA case, Alberto Nisman, files charges against the government of Iran related to the bombing

2007–2015

Cristina Fernández de Kirchner presidency

2007

Interpol issues arrest warrants related to the AMIA bombing, including for officials from Iran and members of Hez­bollah

2012–2017

ESMA megatrial, largest in Argentina’s history, focused on crimes against humanity committed at the School of Naval Mechanics (ESMA) torture center during the dictatorship, resulting in forty-­eight convictions

2013

Memorandum of Understanding signed between Argentina and Iran to create truth commission to investigate the bombing (ultimately nullified ­because it was never approved in Iran and determined to be unconstitutional by Argentine courts)

2015

Chief prosecutor Alberto Nisman found dead the night before he was to appear at Congress to pre­sent evidence about the role of Iran and the alleged involvement of President Crístina Fernández de Kirchner in covering up Iran’s involvement

2015–2019

Second AMIA trial focuses on ­t hose accused of obstructing justice in the case, including then-­president Carlos Menem, Judge Juan José Galeano, and Rubén Baraja; trial ends with four convictions, including of Judge Galeano and Hugo Anzorreguy, former chief of the SIDE (Secretaría de Inteligencia del Estado or Secretary of State Intelligence); however, the case did not establish definitive justice

2015–2019

Mauricio Macri presidency

November 2019 Memoria Activa returns to Inter-­A merican Commission on ­Human Rights regarding Argentina’s failure to provide justice in AMIA case

Acts of Repair

Introduction Top o gr a p h i e s of V io­l e nc e On May 10, 2017, thousands of Argentines crowded into the streets of Buenos Aires to protest a recent Supreme Court ruling that they felt threatened justice and accountability. Holding white scarves in their hands, they stood on the same ground where the Madres de Plaza de Mayo (­Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo) first positioned themselves to challenge the systematic disappearance of their ­children during Argentina’s military dictatorship in the 1970s, in what the government had called a “Dirty War.” They, too, wore white headscarves, which they inscribed with their c­ hildren’s names and the dates of their disappearance, affirming their lives and their existence, their very being. Forty years ­later, a field of white scarves transformed this space as ­human rights groups, ­u nions, and ordinary citizens all stood together to protest in Argentina’s central public square. Their protest focused on the Supreme Court’s ruling related to the “2 × 1” law that would make it pos­si­ble for perpetrators of crimes against humanity to receive reduced sentences. This would, they felt, endanger the nation’s historical legacy and the accountability that they hoped would ensure that such crimes would never again take place. Though the government would eventually pass a bill that prohibited the application of the 2 × 1 law to perpetrators of crimes against humanity from the dictatorship, the May 2017 protests revealed the ongoing significance of such protests for democracy in Argentina (Zaretsky 2017a). While demonstrators ­were certainly focused on justice, they ­were also concerned about the disappearance of their history through the secondary vio­lence of impunity—­ the slow erosion of official accounting that inevitably shifts the scope of what has been established as truth. This threat demanded their presence and activism, engaging the memory of past vio­lence as a potent tool for a civil society intent on demanding justice. The Plaza de Mayo has long been a primary site of activism. The Madres de Plaza de Mayo began their marches ­there in 1977, in response to the disappearance of their ­children by the military dictatorship in power. Week ­a fter week, they gathered in a time of state repression, donning their white headscarves 1

2

Ac t s of R e pa i r

to march and demand some form of truth and accountability. Such activism became a central form of opposition at that time, when an estimated 30,000 ­people ­were dis­appeared by the military in power. And during ­those years, and for de­cades ­a fter, Thursday after­noons ­were the time when the Madres entered the plaza to sustain their call for accountability and truth, demanding that their dis­appeared c­ hildren be returned with life. Such demands remained impor­t ant for Argentines even a­ fter the dictatorship ended. In the era of democracy, citizens used their activism to respond to injustice, for the crimes of the so-­called Dirty War, as well as other periods of vio­lence, such as the 1994 AMIA (Asociación Mutual Israelita Argentina, or Argentine Jewish Mutual Aid Society) bombing. This was considered the deadliest antisemitic attack since the Holocaust, and has remained unsolved for over twenty-­five years, sustaining a profound sense of impunity. Yet when the dictatorship ended in 1983, citizens held out the hope that justice and the rule of law would prevail. Argentina created a historic truth commission, the CONADEP (Comisión Nacional sobre la Desaparición de Personas, or National Commission on the Dis­appeared), which published its report Nunca Más (Never Again) in 1984. With that, they established impor­t ant pre­ce­dents in the history of transitional justice worldwide, as it was one of the very first truth commissions in the world (Hayner 2001). Yet despite the significance of having such a commission and issuing a report that would become a bestseller (Crenzel 2009), it did not herald a transition to justice. Amnesty laws (including the Final Point and Due Obedience Laws) w ­ ere instated in the late 1980s, essentially ensuring that the vast majority of perpetrators would remain ­free from prosecution. ­Because of this, despite the return to democracy, the 1990s became an era of impunity. It is during t­ hose years that Argentina also suffered two terrorist attacks—­the 1992 bombing of the Israeli embassy and the 1994 attack on the AMIA, leading to new questions about the rule of law and accountability. In response to the vio­lence and impunity, social movements turned to memory as they advocated for justice. Many such groups engaged embodied forms of public protest that challenged the state, including the Madres de Plaza de Mayo (which became two groups—­Madres de Plaza de Mayo and Madres de Plaza de Mayo-­Línea Fundadora, or Founding Line), the Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo (Grand­mothers of the Plaza de Mayo), the H.I.J.O.S. (Hijos e Hijas por la Identidad y  la Justicia contra el Olvido y el Silencio, or ­Children for Identity and Justice against Forgetting and Silence), and Memoria Activa (Active Memory), which formed ­a fter the 1994 AMIA bombing. When amnesty laws related to the dictatorship w ­ ere fi­nally overturned in 2005, new ­trials could begin (starting in earnest in 2012), heralding a period of increased accountability and retributive justice. Over two hundred ­trials related to crimes of the dictatorship have taken place since the end of the amnesty laws. Yet despite impor­tant advances, impunity

Introduction

3

also persisted in other cases. This characterized the aftermath of the 1990s bombings as well as the unexplained 2015 death of Alberto Nisman, the prosecutor investigating one of ­those bombings, who was found mysteriously dead in his apartment the night before presenting his evidence in the case, in what remains a controversy as of this writing.1 The lack of accountability contributes to the uneven terrain of justice in Argentina, which has prompted a continued need for cultural memory and a truth that might transcend juridical understandings. The call for remembering and “never again” that animated the streets of Buenos Aires in May 2017 is thus part of a broader landscape—­including protests, memorials, and material sites of memory. Through such manifestations of cultural memory, Argentines return to past moments of vio­lence and remember the lives of ­those who have been dis­appeared and killed in an effort to mark time and space in ways that reshape the possibilities of citizenship; through that, they also attempt to repair the fractured nature of their citizenship. This book explores how ordinary p­ eople grapple with po­liti­cal vio­lence and impunity in Argentina, a nation that is home to survivors of multiple genocides, situated within complex intersections of po­liti­cal vio­lence. In the 1930s and 1940s, many Jews emigrated from Eu­rope, fleeing the rise of Nazism and the aftermath of the Holocaust; yet along with Holocaust survivors, Nazis, such as Adolf Eichmann, also turned to Argentina as a refuge. Over the years, additional forms of po­l iti­cal repression continued, as during the 1976–1983 dictatorship when an estimated 30,000 ­people w ­ ere dis­appeared. Survivors often struggled with ­these traumas by turning to memory—­including testimony and narrative, as well as embodied forms of protest and collective memory. Yet what happens when other forms of justice and accountability become more available? Why does memory continue to play such a profound role in con­temporary public life and civil society in Argentina? And what does that tell us about the possibility of recovery and repair? My ethnography examines ­these questions through the lived experience of survivors and f­ amily members of victims of vari­ous periods of genocide and vio­lence in Argentina, specifically the 1994 AMIA bombing, the Holocaust, and the 1976–1983 dictatorship. It explores what their stories tell us about the desire for coherence and repair at the heart of survival, even if such repair may never fully become realized and might always remain on the horizon in a perpetually liminal state.2 Through their weekly marches, their narratives, and other acts, Argentines sustain memory in a way that allows them to perform a disruption of temporal order, to resist the idea of time marching on, without accountability or meaning. Building on years of ethnographic research in Buenos Aires, I argue that the stories of ­these survivors help us understand that even if repair is inevitably liminal, the strug­g le and desire for that repair can also yield spaces of transformation and agency critical to personal and po­liti­cal recovery in the face of vio­lence and loss.

4

Ac t s of R e pa i r

Th e “Dirty War” The significance of memory extends in and through the period of dictatorship, also known as the “Dirty War” and sometimes called a genocide. 3 From 1976 to 1983, Argentines lived ­u nder a military dictatorship, with the state engaged in what it called a “dirty war” against terrorism and subversion of what the military rulers viewed as a Western and Christian order. They called this time the proceso, or Pro­cess of National Reor­g a­n i­z a­t ion. The Argentine military came into power through a coup on March 24, 1976, a takeover that followed a period of extreme po­liti­cal and economic upheaval. To the outside world, Argentina’s military junta framed this as a war against radical left-­w ing terrorism, denying any gross h ­ uman rights violations and affirming that they had to do what was necessary to restore order and combat subversion. Yet it was in that very category of “subversive” in which the entire proceso was rooted—­a category with an entrenched history in the U.S. anti-­ communist National Security Doctrine for the Western hemi­sphere. As a result, in addition to targeting ­those actively involved in the left-­w ing guerrilla groups, the military also pursued anything and anyone it deemed to be subversive or potentially subversive to the national order and to what t­hose in power viewed as Argentine civilization.4 To accomplish their goal of order, the state employed clandestine, extralegal tactics of disappearance, torture, and killing that resulted in an estimated 30,000 ­ people who ­ were systematically tortured, dis­ appeared, and killed ­u nder the leadership of the military junta. Some of ­these disappearances and abductions had begun before the March 1976 coup—­i ndeed, right-­w ing death squads had been operating in Argentina since the early 1970s. But once the military took power in the 1976 coup, they expanded t­hese repressive tactics in systematic and clandestine ways, sowing terror in the population as they sought to eradicate any perceived subversion and, in the pro­cess, violating ­human rights and ruling through terror. Indeed, as anthropologist Antonius Robben argues, the fundamental betrayal and disruption of trust has left lasting legacies in Argentina (Robben 2018). The military began with “disappearing” ­those individuals they found to be a threat, including students, priests, historians, and t­hose associated with anyone they considered to be subversive (also to be found on their lists ­were journalists, l­awyers, trade u ­ nionists, and anyone who was discovered in t­ hose persons’ address books). The repression began with abduction, illegally detaining p­ eople at home, in public streets, and at their places of work and study (at least 8,960 of them not having reappeared) (CONADEP 2003[1984], 11). T ­ hese sudden abductions took place late at night or during early morning hours, at times in the presence of other adults and children, and with complete impunity due to the fear and terror that pervaded society at the time. A ­ fter abducting ­people, the captors would then bring them to a clandestine center for torture.

Introduction

5

Even as they ­were detaining and torturing ­people, officials denied the detentions and their responsibility, effectively attempting to disappear victims through that denial. Altogether, it has now been established that ­there have been over 600 detention centers and concentration camps located throughout the nation, including large cities and regions such as Buenos Aires, Mar del Plata, Córdoba, and Tucumán.5 Officially, the military denied the existence of ­these centers, which ­were confirmed by the CONADEP through multiple witness statements and forensic investigations. Some of the spaces used had already been detention centers, while other centers included the offices of police and military facilities, such as the ESMA (Escuela Mecánica de la Armada, or School of Naval Mechanics) in Buenos Aires. Once victims ­were transferred to a detention center, the perpetrators initiated the pro­cess of dehumanization, severing victims’ ties with the world outside ­t hose centers. But the pro­cess began with their own bodies; they ­were hooded and unable to see anything as they ­were brought in—­a form of psychological torture (CONADEP 2003[1984], 55–57). The extent of state repression was severe—­young ­women who ­were dis­ appeared while they w ­ ere pregnant and gave birth while detained would have their ­children taken from them. ­Those c­ hildren ­were then ­adopted by military families.6 In addition to torture, the Nunca Más report concluded that death was used as a po­liti­cal tool, which included the mass execution of prisoners. Many of t­hose detained ­were killed and thrown into the River Plate from planes, as documented in the groundbreaking text El Vuelo (The Flight), written by journalist Horacio Verbitsky (1996) and based on the confession of Adolfo Scilingo, one of the pi­lots of ­t hese death flights. Euphemistically, ­t hese murders and executions w ­ ere referred to as “transfers.” 7 Yet the purpose of t­hese executions, and this entire system of repression, was not just to kill ­these ­people but also to terrorize the public through the disappearance of neighbors, ­family members, friends, and ­children. Along with the physical abduction, the concealment of documentation related to that disappearance only served to sustain uncertainty for the victims’ relatives, causing many to fear protest in order to preserve the possibility of return. Some relatives filed writs of habeas corpus in attempts to locate their relatives, and or­g a­n ized to demand “appearance with life.” This would become one of the foremost demands of the h ­ uman rights group the Madres de Plaza de Mayo, a power­f ul force of dissent during the dictatorship and in the years that followed.8 Terror pervaded Argentine society during ­those years, blanketing much of the nation in silence, with impor­tant disruptions to that silence, including the work of the Madres and other h ­ uman rights groups, such as CELS (Centro de Estudios Legales y Sociales, or Center of ­L egal and Social Studies). Yet during t­hose years, only a select number of high-­profile cases benefited from

6

Ac t s of R e pa i r

interventions to some degree, including that of the journalist Jacobo Timerman, editor of La Opinión, who was kidnapped in 1977 and subjected to torture (including electric shocks) and interrogation; ultimately, a­fter being recognized, he was placed u ­ nder h ­ ouse arrest and then went into exile in Israel in 1979. He was also one of the first to break the silence—­publishing Prisoner without a Name, Cell without a Number (1981) a­ fter his release in what would become a pivotal account, raising awareness of the repression in ways that helped advance the ­human rights movement. The systematic nature of the military’s practices would be affirmed through the CONADEP truth commission, which was established ­a fter the dictatorship and whose work was then published in its 1984 Nunca Más (Never Again) report based on gathered testimony and evidence. The commission documented that the incidents of torture and repression (approximately 9,000 cases, although it acknowledged that the numbers of victims is estimated to be closer to 30,000) ­were not isolated incidents or representative of moments of excess, but rather “a concerted plan of repression” that included “murder, rape, torture, extortion, looting and other serious crimes” (CONADEP 1984, 10)—­a ll in a state of impunity. Inte r secting Hi stori e s of G e noc i de s and Vio­l e nc e Although what tran­spired in Argentina ­u nder military dictatorship clearly constitutes terrorism and po­l iti­cal repression, the term “genocide” has recently been applied to describe the po­liti­cal vio­lence of that time, given the military’s intention to annihilate a group of p­ eople it had labeled subversive.9 Indeed, the very concept of genocide is a relatively new way of understanding a par­t ic­u ­lar form of vio­lence. Raphael Lemkin, a Polish Jewish jurist, created the term “genocide” in order to have a l­egal framework for conceptualizing, prosecuting, and hopefully preventing, the crime of trying to destroy another group of ­human beings (­whether you define that group by culture, race, ethnicity, or po­liti­cal affiliation). He coined the term in 1944, while the horrors of the Holocaust w ­ ere underway in Eu­rope, to juridically define what was happening in Eu­rope and in past genocides, such as the Armenian case (Lemkin 1946). Lemkin was central to the efforts to create the Genocide Convention, ratified by the UN in 1948, shortly ­after the end of World War II. Though Lemkin had originally proposed that genocide be defined as any intent to destroy in part or ­whole a group based on ethnic, religious, national, or po­l iti­cal reasons, the final version of the Genocide Convention excised the category of “po­liti­ cal” from the ­legal definition. This in turn ­shaped the evolving social understandings of genocide as linked primarily to race or ethnicity (as evidenced during the genocides in Rwanda and during the Holocaust). However, in critical genocide studies, many con­temporary scholars and activists argue that we

Introduction

7

should expand the definition of genocide.10 Indeed, if we understand genocide as the intent to destroy a group in ­whole or in part, this is certainly what took place in Argentina.11 Yet the dictatorship was not the first instance of genocide that left a mark on Argentina. Indeed, it is of note that Adolf Eichmann, along with other Nazis, took refuge in Argentina, living ­u nder assumed names and contributing to the impunity and silence in Argentina. Eichmann’s capture in 1960, and subsequent trial, as chronicled by phi­los­o­pher Hannah Arendt (1994 [1963]), ultimately played an influential role in prompting new questions related to perpetrators of genocide, including the capacity of seemingly ordinary bureaucrats to participate in the systematic extermination of a ­people, and what Arendt described as the “banality of evil.” The Eichmann trial also heralded a newfound recognition for the voices of survivors of genocide, situating them as central to understanding that history in a way that continues to inform genocide studies (Wieviorka 2006). In the first de­cades ­a fter World War II, ­there was a pervasive silence regarding the Holocaust. Of course, such silence also existed in many nations, but it took on a dif­fer­ent valence in Argentina, which in many cases appeared to welcome the immigration of Nazis. Living ­u nder assumed names, the Nazis essentially became public secrets that created a profound sense of impunity, especially for the Jewish community in Argentina. Jewish Life i n Arg e nti na : A Te nuous B e long i ng Argentina is largely considered a nation of immigrants, primarily from Italy and Spain, although the government initially sought immigrants from northern Europe.12 At that time, the state considered the purpose of immigrants was to “civilize”—­populating lands in an effort to conquer and dominate them (Shumway 1991). Even though they ­were not originally desired, Jews did migrate to Argentina, first as refugees fleeing pogroms in Eastern Eu­rope and Rus­sia, and l­ater during the Nazi years (Avni 1991). However, over time, while Italian and Spanish immigrants became an accepted foundation for the new nation, the role of Jews remained ambivalent. During the first major period of Jewish immigration to Argentina (1889– 1914), an estimated 110,000 Eu­ro­pean Jews settled in Argentina (Elkin 2014, 78), the majority of Ashkenazi descent from Rus­sia and Eastern Eu­rope. The earliest periods of migration benefited from the economic support of Baron Hirsch, who helped establish Jewish agricultural colonies in Argentina. While many Jews settled in the colonies, o ­ thers stayed in Buenos Aires, building a range of community institutions, including mutual aid socie­ties, community organ­izations like the Fundación IWO (Instituto Judío por Investigaciones or Jewish Research Institute, also known as YIVO in other nations), a large network of Jewish schools, and places of worship. As a w ­ hole, the first immigrants

8

Ac t s of R e pa i r

and refugees (who worked primarily as agricultural colonists and laborers in the cities) ­were able to provide their ­children with an education that enabled them to join the ­m iddle class and become professionals—­a path similar to that of other immigrants in Argentina.13 A thriving Yiddish press and theater reflected the strength of the community and the ability of its members to freely associate.14 Yet unlike other immigrants that effectively became part of the national fabric, Jews experienced a tenuous belonging. Some of this related to the elite in Argentina, who accepted the l­abor of Eu­ro­pean immigrants (Italian, Spanish, and Jewish) and benefited from the economic prosperity their work produced. That elite, however, was less prepared for the rise of ­labor movements and radicalism in the early 1900s among this new immigrant population, which in turn led to an increase in nationalism and antisemitism in the early twentieth ­century.15 Strikes abounded during the early 1900s as new immigrants strug­g led against the native elite for improved l­abor rights. During that time, the question of immigration was the most pressing issue for Argentina as a nation, and immigrants became known as dangerous, “polluting” o ­ thers who brought foreign ideas—­such as Marxism and communism—­that presented a threat to the “landed elite” protecting their vision of Argentina. While other immigrants also participated in t­hese movements, Jews in par­tic­u ­lar became singled out b­ ecause of their provenance from Rus­sia (they w ­ ere called rusos, meaning “Rus­sian”) and their religion, which further marked their difference in the predominantly Catholic nation.16 Many Eu­ro­pean Jewish immigrants who actively participated in ­labor movements and other movements for workers’ rights ­were also the targets of what is considered the first anti-­Jewish pogrom in Argentine history, the 1919 “Semana Trágica” (Tragic Week) in Buenos Aires. This first began as ­labor unrest, ultimately leading to a series of extremely violent acts directed against Jews in the city.17 Such vio­lence, though, was not the only form of antisemitism. Throughout the twentieth ­century, many state policies would also prove to be unfavorable t­ oward Jews, if not overtly antisemitic, further underscoring the ambivalence of their national belonging. During the years of Juan Perón’s presidency, for instance, Catholic religious instruction became a mandatory element of education in public schools, and Jews ­were asked to leave the classroom during ­those sessions. During the 1940s and 1950s, Catholic religious education was provided in state schools, leading to incidents of Jewish students being effectively excluded from one part of the public sphere (Rein 2005b). In addition, official state policies t­oward Jewish immigration further affirmed their tenuous place in the nation. Many Eu­ro­pean Jews looking for refuge ­a fter World War II ­were forced to enter Argentina using false names and papers, unable to enter legally as Jews.18 This related to Perón’s affinity for the ideologies of fascism and Nazism in Eu­rope, especially Italo-­fascism.19

Introduction

9

During World War II, Jewish Argentines received news of what was happening to their f­amily members in Eu­rope, some of whom emigrated successfully during the war years. However, Argentina remained neutral during this time and l­ater allowed Nazis to enter ­a fter the end of the war. 20 While Perón facilitated the entry of Nazis to Argentina, most Jews attempting to migrate ­were denied ­legal entry during the immediate postwar years. From 1945 to 1949, an estimated maximum of 1,500 Jews entered Argentina legally (Avni 1991, 192). Many more Jews who attempted to enter Argentina as refugees ­after having survived the Holocaust ­were blocked through ­legal channels, even if they w ­ ere close relatives of Argentines (181). As a result, they w ­ ere compelled to enter illegally (through bordering nations) or ­u nder assumed names and religious identities (188–192). Perón ­later pardoned any immigrants who entered illegally, and an estimated 3,300 Jews legalized their status by 1949 (193).21 Yet many who sought t­hose p­ ardons for entering Argentina illegally ­were also Nazis or Nazi collaborators. The tensions surrounding the presence of Nazis for the Jewish community only intensified in 1960, when the Nazi Adolf Eichmann, who had been living in a northern suburb of Buenos Aires ­u nder an alias, was kidnapped by Israeli agents and taken to Israel to stand trial for the crimes he committed during the Holocaust. This abduction challenged Argentina’s sovereignty as a nation, which then led to a spike in antisemitic sentiments, especially among neo-­Nazi groups (Rein 2003). 22 The most significant case was that of a Jewish ­woman, a student on her way to the University of Buenos Aires, who was kidnapped and tortured by such a group. 23 Indeed, this kidnapping heightened the tension surrounding Jewish belonging in Argentina. The very presence of Nazis in Argentina—­a nd the support given by Perón—­u nderscored the precarious position of Jews. While they did become part of the Argentine national fabric in many ways—­r ising into the ­m iddle class and establishing community organ­izations, religious institutions, and schools—­they also remained vulnerable to surges in antisemitism throughout their history, antisemitism stemming from other members of Argentine society and from the state. 24 Perhaps the most extreme instances of antisemitism occurred during the po­liti­cal repression of the dictatorship (1976–1983).25 Although the military did not necessarily target Jews as such, a disproportionately large number ­of Jews were dis­appeared, an estimated twelve ­percent, much greater than their proportion of the population (Elkin 1998, 258). It was not official state policy to target Jews, and the large proportion of Jews among the dis­appeared can be attributed to other f­actors (Kahan 2019), such as their increased participation in activities that w ­ ere considered subversive by the military junta (this included psychoanalysts, teachers, and students, among many other categories). 26 However, even though it was not an official state policy, the CONADEP report affirms

10

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a pervasive antisemitism in the po­liti­cal repression and torture that took place during that period. Further, former dis­appeared who survived the po­liti­cal repression, such as Jacobo Timerman, Nora Strejilevich, and Alicia Partnoy, also attest to the treatment they received as Jews, revealing yet another layer of vio­lence marking this community.27 In this way, vio­lence conditioned the immigration of Jews to Argentina and persisted throughout their history there. Of course, it was not the only defining ­ f actor of their experience. The Jewish community of Argentina would become the largest in Latin Amer­i­ca, numbering between 200,000 to 300,000 (Elkin 2014, 185) and the seventh-­largest in the world, with a dynamic set of community institutions and a vibrant press, theater, and social network. In addition to developing their own cultural spaces, like Yiddish theater (Skura 2019), they also engaged in Argentine national practices, like soccer, as a way to establish belonging (Rein 2014). Their experience in Argentina has been unsettled, however, often resulting in periods when their Jewish difference would become salient, and often in violent ways, such as during the dictatorship and in the time of the 1990s bombings. In recent history, ­these attacks would fundamentally alter the public nature of Jewish life and the relationship of Jews to their state and nation. On March 17, 1992, a bomb exploded in front of the Israeli embassy in Buenos Aires, killing twenty-­n ine ­people and wounding over two hundred. This was the first terrorist attack of this kind in Argentina, yet the Argentine government was not perceived as being primarily responsible for pursuing justice b­ ecause the target was the foreign repre­sen­ta­tion of the state of Israel. Only two years ­later, another terrorist attack took place that would take on a dif­fer­ent meaning for Argentine citizens. On Monday morning, July 18, 1994, a truck bomb exploded in front of the AMIA building, home to the Argentine Jewish Mutual Aid Society. 28 This attack killed eighty-­five p­ eople, wounded over three hundred, and destroyed a principal institution for Jewish life in Argentina. The AMIA was a community space that began as a burial society and then developed into a cultural center where community members turned for every­thing from jobs to ­music. The building also h ­ oused the DAIA (Delegación de Asociaciones Israelitas Argentinas, or Del­e­ga­tion of Jewish Argentine Associations, an umbrella group for Jewish organ­izations located in the same building as the AMIA) and the IWO, the Yiddish-­language archive of Jewish history in Argentina. This bombing profoundly impacted Jewish life in Argentina and throughout Latin Amer ­i­ca.29 In Argentina, it represented a turning point for their sense of being Jewish and being Argentine—­w ith many questioning w ­ hether it was safe for them as Jews in Argentina and wondering ­whether their government would protect them or provide justice. This then prompted a crisis of belonging, along with a wave of social movements which turned to memory

Introduction

11

as a form of activism, in line with h ­ uman rights groups like the Madres de Plaza de Mayo. Since the bombing, ­family members of victims and their supporters have continued demanding justice and a full accounting of what happened and who was responsible. Yet as of this writing, over twenty-­five years ­later and despite two ­trials (2001–2004 and 2015–2019), no one has claimed responsibility for the attack, and a pervasive sense of impunity remains. ­These periods of vio­ lence and impunity would crucially shape the ways in which Jewish Argentine experience and redefine national belonging and citizenship. Laye r s of Vi o­l e nc e and M e mory What makes Argentina’s po­liti­cal history noteworthy is precisely this intersection of vio­lence and genocide, including the repression of the 1976–1983 dictatorship, the 1994 AMIA bombing, and the Holocaust. In each of t­hose cases, the vio­lence became extended through the impunity and silence that followed, resulting in a societal desire for justice and memory. During the years of the dictatorship, ­family members of the victims turned to what they had—­t heir bodies as spaces of protest, which they took to the Plaza de Mayo, the po­liti­cal heart of the nation, to resist the idea that their loved ones ­were simply gone or missing, and to demand to know what happened to them, thus beginning to create a new democracy. Then, even during the years of democracy, the need for cultural memory persisted due to the impunity enjoyed by the perpetrators of the dictatorship repression as well as the lack of justice in the aftermath of the 1994 AMIA bombing. Indeed, throughout such periods of impunity, Argentines turned to memory—­ testimony, narrative, protests, and memorials—to disrupt public space and time and advocate for some form of justice. And yet, even when attaining justice in some cases, my research suggests that Argentines remained in a state of liminality. More specifically, they existed between stages, having left the period of vio­lence but not yet fully arrived into a state of peace, accountability, or complete recovery. The term “liminal” derives from anthropologist Victor Turner’s work on liminality, one of the stages originally described by Arnold van Gennep in his work on ritual and rites of passage (van Gennep 1960). As Turner describes, a rite of passage represents a transformation to a new state (Turner 1967), and the liminal stage in rites of passage represents precisely that ambiguous space, a threshold between stages, where you have left one state and have not yet been incorporated into the next. Perhaps most importantly, while the experience of liminality can be unsettling—­isolating, turning social worlds upside down—it also bears a certain power in its ability to reimagine the way ­things are. Acts of Repair argues that the ongoing significance of memory in Argentina derives precisely from what it offers as a tool for such reimagining during times of po­liti­cal liminality, where memory can help build spaces for agency, citizenship, and repair.

12

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Chapte r Ove rvi ew and M eth odolog y This book is based on long-­term ethnographic fieldwork in Buenos Aires with survivors of vio­lence and ­f amily members of victims that was conducted for twenty-­four months over more than a de­cade, including 122 formal interviews and years of participant observation focusing on social movements and community groups advocating for memory and justice. Additionally, archival consultations ­were conducted at the DAIA Centro de Estudios Sociales (Center of Social Studies), AMIA Centro de Documentación e Información sobre Judaismo Argentino Marc Turkow (Marc Turkow Center of Documentation and Information about Argentine Judaism), and Memoria Abierta (Open Memory). 30 Through the stories of ordinary citizens and survivors, Acts of Repair offers insights into the many responses to po­liti­cal vio­lence, and what their efforts to make sense of that vio­lence and rebuild their lives reveal about the complexities of survival in a nation with multiple histories and intersections of vio­lence and genocide. Vio­lence and trauma have long been understood to destroy the social fabric and challenge the very possibility of repre­sen­ta­tion. Indeed, many studies emphasize the par­tic­u­lar limits t­hese phenomena pose to language, repre­sen­ta­tion, and meaning, as well as their impact on trauma and memory,31 as explored in studies of lit­er­a­ture32 and anthropology, among other fields.33 In the wake of the destructive force of vio­lence and the ineffability of trauma, scholars often note the strug­ gle to articulate and generate some sense of coherence—­a strug­g le that researchers often share with their subjects. Yet it is precisely in the creation of a narrative— of attempting to create some kind of coherent order to that which is chaotic and ineffable—­that many suggest healing and rebuilding begins. This desire for coherence, I argue, is also evident in the attempts at some form of repair, be it through truth, memory, or justice. Justice, however, can mean more than retributive justice, as ­legal scholar Martha Minow (1998) tells us. By looking at restorative models of justice, we see the value of other forms of accounting, including personal testimony, memoir, and truth commissions (Felman 2002; Hayner 2001; Payne 2003, 2008). Further, the question of survival is also critical to understanding citizenship in relation to genocide prevention and the development of civil society (Hinton, Shani, and Alberg 2019). Building on ­these studies of transitional justice, this book argues for the renewed value of memory as a modality of repair, even if the repair may always be inevitably liminal. Indeed, using liminality as a framework allows us to consider how memory can function as a space of potential transformation (Turner 1967), also reaffirming the significance of agency. While contributing to impor­t ant scholarship about memory as a cultural practice, 34 this ethnography suggests new horizons for understanding memory by shifting the frame to thinking critically about what is at stake in this desire for repair, and

Introduction

13

how t­ hese efforts, even if in a perpetual state of liminality, can offer possibilities of belonging and both personal and collective recovery. We see this in the lives of key subjects who engage memory in their efforts to achieve some form of repair, through attempts to establish truth, justice, or recovery. The first chapter, “El Vacío: Trauma, Narrative, and the Bound­a ries of Coherence,” explores the power of liminality as a framework for understanding the lived experience of trauma and vio­lence. It begins with the story of Sofía Guterman, who lost her only ­d aughter, Andrea, in the 1994 AMIA bombing, the worst terrorist attack in Argentina’s history. 35 In the absence of justice in the weeks and months, and now years and de­cades, that have followed, Sofía turned to memory as a way forward, which she engaged through writing, public outreach, and advocacy. Sofía’s story introduces us to the questions of testimony and narrative, understood as critical for ­those moving forward from the ineffability of trauma. Yet while the scholarship often suggests the significance of order and coherence to healing, my research indicates that rather than order, it is agency that is most impor­t ant in ­these moments for recovery. Focusing in par­tic­u ­lar on the aftermath of the 1990s bombings and the Holocaust, this chapter turns to the personal narratives of f­ amily members of victims and survivors of trauma, to explore how ­t hese subjects strug­g le with the losses in their lives as they seek justice or a truth that may never fully cohere. Such testimonies, then, offer insights into the power­ful desire for meaning and repair in the face of vio­lence and loss. Many of t­hese acts generate a form of personal recovery and repair. Yet ­these practices also have po­liti­cal and juridical implications. Chapter 2, “Dialogic Memory and the Uneven Terrain of Justice,” examines the significance of justice and ­trials in relation to ­these challenges of memory. Justice took on vari­ ous forms throughout Argentina’s recent history, including transitional justice (in the CONADEP truth commission), as well as the 1985 Trial of the Juntas (a military trial) and the opening of h ­ uman rights ­trials in the early twenty-­ first ­century; ­there ­were also two ­trials (2001–2004 and 2015–2019) in the AMIA case. This chapter explores how ­trials and more traditional forms of retributive justice have shifted the landscape of memory, offering new spaces of repair and recovery. Testimony and narrative, as discussed in the first chapter, became particularly impor­t ant when other forms of justice ­were not available. And yet even when justice became more accessible, I argue that memory continued to be impor­tant, for instance, in juridical testimonies that became sites of memory impor­tant for personal and collective survival. The t­rials explored include ­those focused on state vio­lence and crimes against humanity (such as the landmark ESMA megatrial) as well as the t­ rials related to the AMIA bombing, offering a dif­fer­ent perspective on justice and impunity. Throughout ­these cases, we see the ongoing salience of cultural memory, even when t­here are opportunities for justice, further reinforcing the liminal nature of recovery and repair.

14

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The third chapter, “Disruption and Agency in the Public Sphere,” focuses on public spaces, exploring what protests and other commemorations on the streets and plazas of Buenos Aires expose about the continuous strug­g le for coherence in the wake of vio­lence and trauma. This chapter emphasizes key protagonists in social movements, including Memoria Activa and also Ciudadanos de la Plaza (Citizens of the Plaza), who staged weekly protests at the plaza facing the high courts of Argentina, in addition to the ongoing activism of Madres de Plaza de Mayo and H.I.J.O.S. Such public activism disrupts the continuities of time—­something we ­w ill also see through memorials and other public sites of memory, examined in chapter 4. T ­ hese actos (protests or commemorations) represent an impor­tant form of agency, critical to citizenship and democracy. 36 By continuously disrupting time and space, they generate a pervasive liminality, refusing to allow ­things to just “move forward” without first establishing some kind of accountability. In this way, ­t hese actos sustain a space of possibility and discovery, just as impor­tant in the wake of vio­lence. As we ­w ill see, disruption sustains liminality as an opening—as a space of agency and also pos­si­ble transformation, an act of repair. Chapter 4, “Sites of Memory, Erasure, and Belonging,” builds on the previous chapter to examine the significance of monuments and memorials in public spaces, as sites of memory in the landscape of survival. Certainly, as monuments, they have been constructed to reinforce memory and help society remember. Yet I also explore t­ hese sites within a framework of transitional justice and the politics of repair. If we challenge normative understandings of pro­g ress and temporality (see chapter 1), then t­ hese memorials cannot be simply understood within the framework of moving forward. Instead, they become ways in which citizens can intervene in the public sphere, in and through cultural practices generated at t­hese sites of memory, such as the regularly occurring actos in public plazas that disrupt the flow of ordinary life in the streets. Through ­these sites, Argentines perform their citizenship and agency and reconfigure public space and their community, creating spaces of recovery in the face of past vio­lence and loss, even if meaning, justice, and truth may hover perpetually on the horizon. The protests and social movements documented in chapter  3 and the memorials and monuments in chapter 4 intervene in public spaces. Yet they also reshape time and the temporality of daily life through their weekly and monthly gatherings. Such moments of disjuncture in temporalities have also become significant to understanding survival in Argentina, with variable points of connection and silence in relation to the vio­lence of the Holocaust, the dictatorship, and the 1990s bombings. Chapter  5, “Nunca Más and the Intersections of Genocide, Loss, and Survival,” examines the tensions between private and public histories of vio­lence, focusing on the life stories of Holocaust survivors and their ­children in Argentina, including Diana Wang (a child of survivors who has become a memory advocate) and Jack Fuchs (a prominent

Introduction

15

Holocaust survivor). It also turns to the intersections among the Holocaust, the dictatorship, and the AMIA bombing in the narratives of survivors, f­ amily members of victims, and ordinary citizens. In the frictions generated through ­t hese articulations and tensions, we see the power of disrupting time (Green­ house 1996; Huyssen 1995) to generate social o ­ rders, offering insights into the temporality of citizenship and survival when justice remains elusive. Drawing on narratives and the experience of the group Niños de la Shoá (­Children of the Shoah), ­which later expanded into Generations of the Shoah, I explore the limits and possibilities of the framing of “Never again” for survivors across borders and bound­aries of vio­lence and trauma, as they strug­g le to find some form of repair in response to profound loss. Chapter 6, “On the Limits of Witnessing, On the Bound­a ries of Time,” expands on the themes of vio­lence and temporality by exploring what happens when such disjunctures situate the subject on the bound­a ries of witnessing, reaching the limits of repre­sen­ta­tion originally explored in chapter  1. Drawing on multiple narratives of survival, this chapter examines how subjects grapple with their specific traumas in ways that articulate them with other periods of vio­lence and also position them on the edges of repre­sen­ta­tion and time. While they may reach the limits of language through their memorial practices, they also find possibilities for connection across periods of vio­lence, forging new links between surviving the genocide of the dictatorship and the genocide of the Holocaust. The limits persist, though: as they engage in t­ hese acts of remembering, the liminality of their existence also endures, only amplified by the kind of indifference and even denial that can exist in society. Even so, they continue striving for the repair that is at the heart of their survival. The conclusion, “The Liminality of Repair,” begins with the insights from ­these narratives of survival and recovery—accounts that also tell the broader story of the implications of memory’s ongoing significance in private and public lives in Argentina. I further consider what this memory work reveals about liminality as a framework for understanding the desires for repair in the wake of vio­lence. While traditionally liminality has been considered the transitional state in rites of passage (Turner 1967), h ­ ere liminality helps us explore how ordinary ­people rebuild their lives when justice and meaning may always remain elusive. While it is defined as an ambiguous state, liminality suggests ­t hese pro­cesses of memory might yield something ­else of value—­n amely, the insights it offers in reimagining their world, their communities, and their own role as citizens. In this way, ­these practices and acts may always be liminal, but such liminality also allows for a transformation and agency I suggest are just as critical for personal and social recovery and repair.

C hap te r 1

El Vacío T r au m a , Na r r at i v e , a n d t h e B ou n d­a r i e s of C oh e r e nc e In the years ­a fter the 1994 AMIA bombing, like many other ­family members of the victims, Sofía Kaplinsky de Guterman returned to the site of the bombing ­every month to mourn for her ­d aughter, who had been killed on the morning of the attack. We first met at one such monthly commemoration, in 2002, when Argentina was in the midst of economic and po­liti­cal upheaval. The economy had collapsed in December 2001, leading to a currency crisis that resulted in large-­scale protests, such as the cacerolazos, so called for the participants’ use of pots and pans to protest the economic precarity in which ordinary citizens found themselves.1 The fraying of a sense of economic stability could also be seen in the streets themselves, with p­ eople often referred to as cartoneros searching through the bags of trash in front of buildings in the eve­n ings for pieces of cardboard and paper they could collect. It felt, in ­t hose years, like the seams of society ­were being made vis­i­ble, and at once coming apart. And yet in the midst of that economic and po­l iti­cal uncertainty, Sofía was still grappling with the loss of her only child in the worst terrorist attack in Argentina, which at that point had been unsolved for eight years. (As of this writing, it has now been over twenty-­five.) In 2002, the AMIA building that had been destroyed in 1994 had already been reconstructed, a large cement wall installed to protect it from the street. On that same wall, the first name of each victim of the attack, eighty-­five in all, was spray-­painted in white, a wall that first went up in the months immediately after the attack. ­T here one can still find her d­ aughter Andrea’s name, a name that, together with eighty-­ four o ­ thers, could be encountered throughout the city, engraved into walls, ­etched into plaques, inscribed in monuments and memorials. Andrea Guterman, Sofía’s ­d aughter, had gone to the building that morning to search for a new job as a nursery schoolteacher. Eight years ­a fter the bombing, Sofía sat across from me at that same kitchen t­ able where she told me she had shared her last meal with her d­ aughter. She wore a gold necklace with a pendant of Andrea’s image, her face smiling broadly, engraved permanently 16



Trauma, Narrative, Coherence

17

1. ​Archival photo of the wall of names, at the site of the destroyed building, 1994. Courtesy of the AMIA Centro de Documentación e Información sobre Judaismo Argentino Marc Turkow/Marc Turkow Center for Documentation and Information about Argentine Judaism.

on that thin surface, resting on Sofía’s skin. This was the same image of Andrea that appeared in the books Sofía had published about her experiences, similar to the one on the large poster Sofía sometimes carried to the protests. Facing me, Sofía held her body quite still on the other side of the ­table and told me she had just known that something was wrong the night before the bombing. Andrea had been over, and Sofía knew that she wanted to go to the AMIA to look for a job. But a­ fter Andrea had left that eve­n ing, Sofía felt something was wrong. She c­ ouldn’t sleep all night, kept awake by nightmares and by a constant pain in her chest and in her stomach. As she described: There was something that w ­ asn’t normal in my h ­ ouse. I felt that t­here was something that just w ­ asn’t right, and I c­ ouldn’t define what it was. When I got up the next morning, I still ­didn’t feel well, so I took some medicine, but the bad feeling d­ idn’t pass. And I thought, I’m g­ oing to call her at home and tell her not to leave. But [it was] not b­ ecause I thought something was ­going to happen. I [ just] wanted her to stay home. And when I called, which was very early, her answering machine was on. Andrea had already left.2 In the hours that followed, Sofía told me she and her husband, Alberto, waited and waited to hear something about their ­d aughter. By the end of that first day, she knew Andrea was missing, if not worse. In the days ­a fter the

18

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bombing, Sofía and Alberto, joining other families searching for their relatives, passed their d­ aughter’s photo around and hoped they would hear something. ­A fter seven days, the police fi­nally called and told them that they had found her. As Sofía described, “The body of Andrea was cut through. A [very heavy] beam had fallen on top of her that destroyed, that destroyed her entire abdominal area. Andrea was whole—we could recognize her—­but she had many injuries and many, many burns. She had a lot of wounds, a lot of black and blues. And every­thing was broken on the part of her body [that was crushed]—­her diaphragm, every­thing.” Although Sofía told me she felt relief upon f inding Andrea’s body, it did not bring her peace. A ­ fter they buried her, what Sofía described as her “nightmare” truly began—­when, as she put it, “Se da cuenta que empieza el vacío,” she realized that the void, the emptiness was only beginning. This vacío, this void, is at the heart of the challenge that trauma poses to repre­sen­ta­tion. Vio­lence and terror are experiences that fundamentally resist the fabric of order and meaning that organizes ­human life. Anthropologists have described vio­lence as diffuse and evanescent, ­either exceeding the limits of repre­sen­ta­tion or significantly challenging the possibility of articulation. 3 A central consideration involves how to narrate an event that resists and often evades the act of witnessing, especially when such witnessing and narration may be necessary for personal and collective survival.4 The challenge, shared with the subjects we engage in our ethnographies,5 is how to represent or narrate that which evades meaning. Another concern relates to the implications of transforming vio­lence as a lived experience—­that may be intangible, chaotic, incoherent, senseless—­into something that resembles a narrative order, implying a coherence that does not align with the realities of our subjects.6 Despite t­ hese challenges, many scholars of trauma and vio­lence argue that some form of narration is in fact essential for socie­t ies and individuals attempting to rebuild. By generating a narrative, through telling one’s story for personal healing or in the context of transitional justice pro­cesses, one can begin to “move forward,” again suggesting that order and coherence are considered necessary for healing. The strug­g le ­a fter living through vio­lence is thus often framed as a form of fracture seeming to necessitate the kind of repair offered by narration. Is there more, though, to understanding the strug­g les for repair? And what can such attention to these challenges tell us about the role of testimony and narrative in survival? My research suggests that rather than order, it is agency that may be more impor­tant in ­these moments for recovery. Such agency can also yield insights into the power of inhabiting liminal spaces for survivors, who find themselves seeking a justice and truth that may never arrive. In this chapter, I explore how Argentines grapple with their traumas and engage narrative in their attempts to negotiate the liminality in their lives, focusing primarily on the experiences of survivors and f­amily members



Trauma, Narrative, Coherence

19

of victims of the 1994 AMIA bombing and the Holocaust (although t­ here is a power­ful resonance with ­those struggling with the losses of the dictatorship, which w ­ ill be pursued in the next chapter). While testimonial practices are indeed central to the fabric of their survival, I argue that they hinge on modalities of agency and disruption, rather than order. Their experiences further reveal the ongoing salience of liminality to understanding this process— as a space for further insight and discovery. Their narratives, then, can become acts of repair, even as they strive to achieve an order and coherence that may not be pos­si­ble in the wake of vio­lence and trauma. Narrative, Te sti mony, and Trauma A trauma, by definition, evades our understanding. Trauma, like vio­lence, is an experience that resists articulation and coherence. By definition, trauma does not register immediately but only in its narration ­a fter the fact, resisting immediate comprehension; a traumatic “memory,” then, can only appear in a belated form (Caruth 1996, 6).7 Mieke Bal also describes the subject of trauma as lacking a “narrative mastery over it that turns her or him into a proper subject,” and also as lacking an “addressee” (Bal 1999, x). In other words, survivors may find themselves in an uncompromisingly solitary position. However, precisely b­ ecause of this inaccessibility, a traumatic event both defies and “claims” our understanding (Caruth 1996, 6, 9). The strug­g le to find one’s voice when reaching the edge of experience, and the paradoxical necessity of finding that voice for survival, as noted above, are well established in the lit­er­a­ture on psychological trauma, vio­lence, and war.8 The challenge for traumatic experiences, as described by anthropologist Antonius Robben, is “the inability [for such experiences] to be ­either completely recalled or completely forgotten,” leading to “the unending search for comprehensive understanding” (Robben 2005a, 122).9 Such comprehension, though, has also been considered essential to moving forward, for which survivors also need an interlocutor.10 Though difficult, articulation can thus be critical to survival. As Freud suggests, to move on from trauma, one must work through it in analy­sis, which fosters the surfacing of the event (Freud 1960, 289), and can also be viewed as a social move, representing a departure from isolation. This model for working through trauma through therapy has been extended to dialogic spaces beyond that of the psychoanalyst and patient, though, of course, we should consider the limitations of extending psychoanalytical frameworks to other contexts. Yet ­these dynamics are evident in periods that follow vio­lence, where socie­t ies and individuals trying to rebuild turn to memory, bearing witness, and narration. Importantly, such modalities related to memory and testimony also become sites of contestation between civil society and the state, a relationship that is also in need of repair ­a fter a period of vio­lence.11 The value of narration following vio­lence can then be seen as both: an attempt to find meaning and give order

20

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to the experience of vio­lence, and a fundamentally social act requiring dialogue with a listener that allows one to begin reconstructing personal ties, the self, and the social sphere.12 Listeners have often been viewed as vital to the pro­cess of recovery for survivors. Primo Levi, for instance, points to the importance of listeners when he describes the fear he and other Holocaust survivors had upon their return from the camps: “They had returned home and with passion and relief w ­ ere describing their past sufferings, addressing themselves to a loved one, and w ­ ere not believed, indeed ­were not even listened to” (Levi 1988, 12). In this way, he reaffirms the critical significance and the obligation of t­hose who w ­ ere not ­there to bear witness, t­ hose who ­were not survivors—of ­those who can listen. Cathy Caruth also credits listening as necessary for survival, literally living on, a­ fter trauma, suggesting that “the history of a trauma, in its inherent belatedness, can only take place through the listening of another” (Caruth 1995, 10–11). Dori Laub further describes the listener as a blank screen the survivor needs in order to know the event, in a way, mediating and facilitating its remembering and its re-­experience (Laub 1992b, 57). It is in telling one’s story that the healing necessary for survival can begin, leading to knowledge of the self gained in the pro­cess of dialogue with a listener (1995, 63). While listening to the trauma survivor enables a narrative to emerge, this act of listening also becomes one of recognition—­just as impor­t ant to the survivor.13 The audience and their recognition become the necessary criteria for moving forward from other periods of vio­lence as well.14 In effect, the construction of a narrative through a dialogue with a listener in all of the above cases represents a move away from isolation t­oward the social group once again. As such, narration becomes central to recovering from personal trauma and reconstructing personal ties, and the listener (the addressee) plays a key role in that pro­cess. In ­these ways, we see the centrality of narration to how many scholars conceive of moving forward from personal trauma and redeveloping social ties and communities (Leys 1996; Kirmayer 1996; Brison 1999; Herman 1992), also reinforcing Maurice Halbwachs’s classic definition of the fundamentally collective nature of memory (1980 [1950]).15 Narration and testimony have thus become almost paradigmatic in understanding how survivors of vio­lence should begin to rebuild their lives, and at a broader level, their socie­t ies.16 In the case of Guatemala, for instance, survivors of a thirty-­six-­year civil war that resulted in 200,000 deaths strug­g led with the ability to specifically articulate their experience for many years—­initially calling it simply “la violencia” (Warren 1993) or “la situación” (Green 1994; 1999). Despite the difficulty of articulating and narrating the experience, testimonies of the genocide in Guatemala critically impacted the h ­ uman rights efforts, including the testimonial account of Rigoberta Menchú and the truth commission that



Trauma, Narrative, Coherence

21

l­ater published the 1999 report Memoria del Silencio (Memory of Silence), as well as the power of testimony evidenced in Victoria Sanford’s ethnographies of vio­lence (2003).17 Throughout Argentina’s con­temporary history, during the years of the dictatorship and thereafter, such testimonies have been critical for survival, and vari­ous listeners played a critical role in the production of such testimonies. The CONADEP truth commission, one of the very first such truth commissions used as a form of transitional justice (Hayner 2001), required interlocutors, including the commission itself as well as the anticipated readers of the final report, who would ultimately number in the hundreds of thousands.18 This report would become the foundation for establishing the history and pattern of what tran­spired during t­hose years—­a systematic accounting integral to the democracy that was developing in the wake of repression. ­A fter the 1994 AMIA bombing, listeners also played a pivotal role in the pro­cess of narration following the trauma and vio­lence of the attack, while also generating spaces of witnessing and agency to respond to the trauma of loss and impunity (Zaretsky 2015b). In summary, while narration and memory have come to be understood as essential to rebuilding socie­t ies and selves, it is also clear that in order for the emergence of narrative, one needs someone who can be a listener, an interlocutor, an addressee. Such an empathetic listener shares and becomes implicated in the narration and constitutive of the narrative that emerges. This is vital for the emerging networks of reciprocity and accountability that reshape the fabric of belonging endangered by the trauma.19 In what follows, I explore ways in which subjects grapple with loss and trauma in their narratives. Through their testimonies and attempts to narrate their experiences, what becomes clear is that their trauma—what Sofía has called the vacío—may always remain ineffable and beyond the reach of language and meaning. Yet the narratives of Sofía and other survivors of loss reveal the power such narrative offers as a moment of testimonial agency, also essential to healing, recovery, and repair. Such “acts of memory” (following Bal, Crewe, and Spitzer 1999) represent what I would call a strug­g le for coherence, thereby becoming acts of repair as well. They reflect the desire to find a sense of order and meaning in the world ­a fter suffering trauma, vio­lence, and loss. While many such strug­g les may unfold in the public sphere, I explore the more personal dimensions of trauma for what they reveal about the possibility of agency as well as the profound tensions inherent to living with loss, a tension that proves formative of the liminal nature of that repair.

El Vacío Sofía’s parents emigrated from Eu­rope, her f­ ather from Bialystok, Poland, and her ­mother from Odessa, Ukraine. Her ­father left Bialystok at eigh­teen

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years of age, his ­mother, s­ ister, and ­brother staying ­behind, though he had hoped to bring them to Argentina once he had settled into his new life and had saved some money. World War II changed every­thing—­communication was difficult, and he did not have the money to bring them over. He never heard from them again. Sofía told me that her f­ather died from cancer when he was fifty-­two years old. But as she has grown older, she said she believes he died from the pain of not being able to see his f­amily again. It seemed that the inability to reach out, to r­eally know what happened to them, to communicate in any way—­a ll of this left a big impression on her ­father, and on Sofía. In Argentina, her f­ ather dedicated himself to working the fields. He married her ­mother, and the two lived in La Pampa before being relocated by the “Jewish,” as Sofía called it (the Jewish Colonization Association, which settled Jewish immigrants in agricultural colonies). They then moved to Santa Fe (Las Palmeras) and eventually settled in Moisés Ville (Mosesville), one of the most iconic Jewish agricultural colonies in Argentina’s history. 20 Growing up, she heard three languages in her house—­Polish, Rus­sian, and Yiddish. A lot of Yiddish was spoken at her home and in her town. Indeed, Yiddish was one of the main languages of Moisés Ville, also home to a dynamic Yiddish theater and press. Her parents worked in the fields in a time before ­there was a lot of technology, or even tractors. The life of farming ­shaped much of her childhood: “I remember how we looked up at the sky, b­ ecause we ­were afraid when ­there was a hail storm, that it would ruin the crops. When locusts would come and eat the crops. And well, to lose a harvest in a small plot meant not having enough food to feed the five of us ­children.”21 Despite the challenges of growing up in a farming f­amily and living in a “­humble home,” Sofía also felt that this childhood left her wonderful legacies, including “dignity, honor, and knowing that without working, you w ­ ill get nothing in life.” All of t­hese “moral values” she learned from her f­amily. She added: Now that I am getting older, and a­ fter all of the ugly t­ hings that happened in my life, I am grateful, and more than anything have a feeling of nostalgia ­towards ­those times, ­because we ­were a big ­family and despite every­thing, we ­were a happy ­family. It made us happy to be together and to have our parents with us. And while I knew the grandparents on my m ­ other’s side, I always held onto a ­great re­spect for my grandparents on my ­father’s side, whom I never met. Throughout my life, I always wished I had enough money to be able to travel to Rus­sia and find something of them. Yet while wishing to be able to know more about the f­amily left b­ ehind, she also felt grateful to Argentina, saying, “I profoundly love this country, not only ­because I was born ­here, but also ­because it opened its arms to my ­f amily when they w ­ ere suffering persecution.” This sense of offering a refuge, however,



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was disrupted for her when she learned that along with allowing immigrants like her parents to “escape discrimination and persecution, General Perón also allowed many Nazis to enter who left him the gold they brought, gold stolen from Jewish victims.” As an adult, she left the small town of Moisés Ville and eventually moved to Buenos Aires, where she pursued a ­career as a teacher and met her husband, Alberto. When they got married, they moved to Pasteur Street—­“exactly one block,” she said, from where the AMIA building stood. They eventually would relocate to another neighborhood, but spent twenty years living t­here on Pasteur. She said, “Andrea was born on a Monday—­Monday, October 25, 1965—­when we ­were living on Pasteur Street.” I knew that it was also on a Monday, twenty-­eight years ­later, that her daughter would be killed. In 1994, Sofía told me that Andrea was starting to look for a new job ­because the nursery school where she had been working had been privatized and so she needed to find a new place to work. She had also been in a relationship with her boyfriend for four years, and they w ­ ere thinking of getting married at the end of that year, since, Sofía said, “she was twenty-­eight years old and thought that was already the age to become a ­mother.” Sofía suggested that Andrea go to the AMIA to look for work through their job listings, and she went t­here that morning: “Usually, I accompanied her everywhere—­rarely did she go somewhere without me. But that morning, July 18, 1994, I c­ ouldn’t go with her . . . ​a nd so she left on her own.” At that point in her narrative, Sofía connected that morning with a series of dreams Andrea had been having: “Andrea, actually, had already for months been dreaming that someone wanted to kill her, but she could not see their face. It was a place with stones, with blood. She ­couldn’t see weapons in this dream. She d­ idn’t know what they wanted to kill her with—­only that they wanted to kill her. And this dream would recur for her, again and again. This started months before the AMIA attack. And the night before the bombing, I had a terrible night.” We ­were sitting in her kitchen as she was telling me this history, and the phone rang, interrupting this moment with the dull ring that brought us back to the pre­sent. Sofía took the call, excusing herself, before continuing: “The night before, I had a terrible night b­ ecause Andrea was h ­ ere with her boyfriend and told me she would be g­ oing to the AMIA the following day to look for another nursery school job. She wanted to buy some clothes and ­things for her friends, too, b­ ecause it would soon be Friendship Day [a holiday celebrated in Argentina on July 20]. That’s why she chose to go on that Monday, so she could get together with her friends a­ fter that.” H ­ ere Sofía points to the many decisions that led to Andrea finding herself in that building on the day of the bombing. But as she continued to try to make sense of that day, she also turned to her own body as a part of this narrative, and an overwhelming feeling she had that something was not right. She described a pain in her chest and her

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stomach that seemed to connect to what she felt was a sense that t­ hings ­weren’t “normal in [her] ­house.” Despite taking medicine the next day, her “feeling of unrest” continued. That is when she tried calling Andrea, but her d­ aughter had already left to go to the AMIA, which was destroyed by a bomb that exploded at 9:53 a.m. Soon Sofía would start finding out more about what happened. At 10:30, Andrea’s boyfriend called Sofía, desperate to find out if Andrea was at home but refraining from explaining why. Soon ­a fter that, Alberto, Sofía’s husband, called to tell her that the AMIA had been destroyed. While Alberto and Andrea’s boyfriend went to the AMIA to look for her, Sofía stayed at home, in case Andrea would call. By the ­m iddle of the day, Andrea had still not returned. That is when Sofía realized that her daughter must have entered the building. Their search continued: “We looked for her for seven days and seven nights. It was a horrible nightmare.” During ­those first days ­a fter the bombing, Israel sent a rescue team to Argentina to help with the efforts to rescue survivors and find victims, and by that point, Sofía said that the Israeli team was finishing their work, already preparing to leave. But Sofía said that Andrea’s body and that of ­others ­were still missing—­a ll of ­t hose who ­were on the fourth floor, in the job center of the AMIA. They had wondered if Andrea might still be out t­here: “Some said that ­t here ­were ­people who survived but who had lost their memory and w ­ ere walking the streets. And we thought that she could be one of ­those ­people, so we started searching the city. We went to hospitals to see if she was in intensive care. Maybe she was in a coma or without consciousness. And then the dawn of the seventh night, the police called to say that they had found the body.” Sofía was calm as she spoke of this moment, using a level of detail to describe her ­d aughter’s body in a way that felt like she was rendering that body as if it ­were before us, the last physical traces of her d­ aughter she would witness with her own eyes: “On the seventh night, when they lifted a wall that they c­ ouldn’t lift before, all of the bodies appeared that w ­ ere on the fourth floor. The w ­ oman who checked every­one in, Susy Kreiman—­she was seated on a chair, in an office chair, dead.” That is when they found Andrea’s body, crushed ­u nder a beam. Sofía said, “Andrea was w ­ hole, you could recognize her, but she also had many bruises and many burns—­bruises that w ­ ere turning blue. All of the front part of her body was broken—­her diaphragm, her sternum, every­t hing.” Finding the body gave a mea­sure of closure, if small, to their search. In that moment, she said, “the desperation to find her body was such that despite the pain and that [feeling like] you were like a robot, I almost felt happiness, a relief, that they found the body. B ­ ecause I thought, if they d­ on’t find the body, what do I do? [Without that,] I d­ on’t know if she is alive. I d­ on’t know if she is dead. I d­ on’t know where to find her. I ­don’t know what to do.”



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Not all ­family members of victims ­were able to find the bodies of their loved ones, Sofía told me. But finding her body did not bring Sofía closure. It was at this point, ­after finding the body, when she said the “nightmare” for her ­really began. ­A fter she buried Andrea, she said, “You realize that this is when the loss, the vacío, ­really begins.” Lifting the Pe r sianas During my first weeks walking through Buenos Aires, I was impressed by the prevalence of wooden blinds built into the very infrastructure of apartment buildings and ­houses. In a city where one’s life intersects with ­others’ so closely, residents of ­these buildings can use ­these persianas to completely block out the outside world, making sure that no light or sound disturb their inner space. Inside apartments, one can open and close t­ hese heavy wooden blinds by pulling on textured ropes, raising or lowering the long slats of wood that when closed, collapse together to appear impermeable. When open, they pull up, almost magically disappearing into the walls, and when down, they shut out all available light from the outside, completely enclosing ­those on the inside. As in many other apartment buildings throughout the city, Sofía’s apartment also had ­these heavy blinds. Sofía had been living in this apartment for years, off of a main thoroughfare in the neighborhood of Villa Crespo, the place where she built her life with her husband and their only child, Andrea. When I visited her apartment, she would often spend time with me in her kitchen—­ perfectly preserved, it seemed, through many years of use. A worn granite countertop in the kitchen stood next to a classic brown stove, and a kitchen ­table covered with a table­cloth had enough room to comfortably seat six p­ eople. Andrea’s room was not far from the kitchen and dining area, a bedroom set with frame matching desk, shelves lined with rows of photos—­images of Sofía and her husband, Alberto, smiling out of a car upon getting married, photos of o ­ thers who have since passed, photos of Andrea at dif­fer­ent ages. The wall­paper, soft grey flowers, was still perfectly intact. Sofía told me that a­ fter discovering her d­ aughter’s body and then burying her ­d aughter, she had spent months inside, not able to lift the persianas, ­t hose blinds on her win­dows. She told me it took several months to have the strength to return to the site of the bombing. She did eventually go to stand at the location of her ­d aughter’s death and mourn her together with the other familiares (­f amily members of the victims of this bombing) and their supporters. She also went on to give interviews to many news outlets, give talks at schools, and write about her experience. But her attempts to create an ongoing narrative about her experience of trauma and survival did not necessarily alleviate Sofía’s vacío—­t he sense of profound loss—or provide the type of coherence she desired. Still, she continued to write and is one of the only f­amily members of victims who has published poetry and nonfiction about her experience, a narrative that returns to

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the theme of her vacío. From her poem “Mataron a mi hija” (“They Killed My Daughter”): My ­d aughter was dead! She no longer existed, And I, desperate, was left in half. Since that time, I die in strange ways. Death ­doesn’t kill me, nor does life. I die from a constant and mute wound That tears through my insides like a vicious tooth. In vain, day ­a fter day, my arms always open, Wanting to touch her face. 22 She published several other poems about her ­d aughter in her first book, entitled Más allá de la bomba (Beyond the Bomb) (Guterman 1995), which she wrote in the second person (addressing Andrea as the “you”). She described writing as a way to be able to keep a connection to her d­ aughter and keep her alive, in circulation in the social sphere, through the collective memory of ­others. Though I first met Sofía and sat down in her kitchen in 2002, many years a­ fter that meeting, in 2018, almost twenty-­five years ­a fter the bombing, she reflected on the significance of writing for her pro­cess of recovery: “I started writing b­ ecause I had the need to talk to Andrea . . . ​a way to talk to her. And I understood that asking for justice was not enough—­that we needed to work on memory, that what we could do is resist with this, and [let] p­ eople [know] that this was a grave attack on Argentina and that it happened to all of us.”23 Her attention to the power of remembering, and the power her words can have to potentially impact society, resonated closely with what she described about her writing in our first interview. In 2002 she reflected that her writing helped her transcend the limits of time and space and remain connected to her ­d aughter while also reaching ­others. I had asked her why she had started to write, and she told me, The need to communicate with Andrea was so ­g reat, ­because we had always been together. So I started to write in order to communicate with her, and from ­there, I wrote books and other t­hings. . . . ​I wrote what I felt, so that other ­people can know. I always say, since we do not know who was responsible for the bombing, I hope that my books fall into their hands so that they see what a m ­ other feels whose ­d aughter they killed, what it feels like to not know why. All of ­those who died in the attack ­were p­ eople, with dreams, with a life, with hopes. They cried, they laughed, they loved. And more than anything, I also do it ­because Andrea is my only ­d aughter, and before I die, I want Andrea to be in the heart of the ­people, so that when I am no longer h ­ ere, when my husband is no longer h ­ ere, at least Andrea w ­ ill continue living.



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Sofía published several books, including her poetry as well as nonfiction about her experience of the trial (Guterman 1997; 1998; 1999; 2004), which did enable her to reach out to o ­ thers and, importantly, to reach out to her d­ aughter. In some ways, this helped her “lift the persianas,” but the vacío, as she put it, remained in her life. The Limit s of U nde r standi ng Sofía was not the only one who strug­g led with that sense of a void, a void in meaning and understanding. Daniel 24 worked in the AMIA building when the attack happened. Born in 1932, he had grown up in Buenos Aires, his parents having migrated ­there from Rus­sia and Eastern Eu­rope. He felt he had a relatively normal life ­until the dictatorship (1976–1983). During ­those years, though, since his d­ aughters ­were adolescents, he feared what could happen to them. “With the ­things that ­were ­going on,“ he told me, “­these ­things ­were taking place very close to us, close to where I lived then. They kidnapped a boy from my neighborhood, a thirteen-­year-­old Jewish boy who never again returned.” When democracy arrived in 1983, he described it “as a time of a lot of happiness. No, r­ eally, ­there was a lot of joy. We w ­ ere able to vote and elect our government. I remember, I lived in [a suburb of Buenos Aires] at that point, and when [Raúl] Alfonsín came into power, I went with my ­d aughters to the plaza, to the Plaza de Mayo, in a bus with the two girls. And, of course, the girls ­were overwhelmingly happy to be t­ here—­contentísimas.” Just nine years l­ater, in 1992, the Israeli embassy was attacked, the first significant terrorist attack in the city. At the time, he was working at the AMIA. “I ­couldn’t believe it,” he said. “It was as if I was in denial. I ­don’t know why. Someone said, ‘They put a bomb in the embassy,’ and I said, ‘­They’re exaggerating. That c­ ouldn’t have happened.’ But yes, it happened. I found out it happened, and then I followed the news in the papers, on tele­v i­sion, and I went to the actos that w ­ ere repudiating it.” While at first he described the community as feeling indignation at what happened at the embassy, he said that over time the response became “diluted.” He thought it might have something to do with other t­ hings ­going on, or perhaps in t­ hose first years, not every­one mobilized into or­ga­n ized groups right away. Two years l­ater, Daniel was at work at the AMIA when the 1994 attack happened. With vivid details, he told me, “I was on the second floor, and the explosion happened. I realized t­here was a bomb and I yelled, ‘It’s a bomb!’ And well, luckily, the floor where we w ­ ere standing did not crumble, and we ­were able to leave, guided by a person who maintained their calm, who was amazing in that moment.” He remembered the details of that passage—­that an Israeli who had been working at the AMIA had helped them find a way out, and they passed through “a win­dow that let out onto rooftops. . . . ​T his is how we saved ourselves.”

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­ fter crossing a small bridge, he described walking over a roof: “By luck, A I did not see anyone who was wounded or who died or anything like that around me. Yes, t­ here ­were t­ hose who w ­ ere wounded, some, but who ­were able to walk.” From t­here, neighbors passing by helped put up a ladder to allow them to get down from where they w ­ ere. But other than that, “at that time,” he said, “no one had come to save us. But we w ­ ere able to get out on our own.” Yet even though he had survived the bombing, it took some time for him to make sense of what had taken place: I wanted to know what had happened. I d­ idn’t hear screams or anything from above, but all the same, I thought that [the o ­ thers] may have left a dif­ fer­ent way. I was on top of the roof with my other colleagues, and we knew nothing about who was able to leave. We ­were on the roof and one of my friends who also had a b­ rother who died, who he found out had died on the same floor as one of my wife’s work colleagues, he tells me, “Look.” I h ­ adn’t realized up ­until that point, and he tells me, “­Don’t you realize what happened? They destroyed every­thing. Look, you can see the street in front.” At that point, Daniel described turning to r­ eally look: “You could see all of the buildings of Pasteur Street in front. The building was not t­here anymore. Our building was no longer t­ here. And only then did I realize what had happened, the destruction.”

2. ​Image of destruction, July 18, 1994, “Salvamento.” Photo by Eduardo Frías. Courtesy of the AMIA Centro de Documentación e Información sobre Judaismo Argentino Marc Turkow/Marc Turkow Center for Documentation and Information about Argentine Judaism.



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­ fter that, he left to look for his wife, ­going to Pasteur Street to see if ­others A had been able to leave the building. And he went to the buildings nearby, to the ­temple. That is where he also found other ­people looking for ­family members. This is where he reached the limit of his memory: “That is all I can tell you about that day. That is all I remember.” Unlike the experience of Sofía, who wrote books and gave public talks and felt a profound need to have other ­people remember her ­daughter, Daniel’s pro­cess of recovery was dif­fer­ent. Though he witnessed the bombing and the immediate destruction, he did not often give interviews or talk about his experience with ­others. Even as he reached the limits of his own memory and understanding, he knew t­here ­were ­others sharing their stories. Still, he also felt the need for companionship, and chose to work with other ­family members of the victims and their supporters to help advocate for memory. Pe r sonal Me mory, P ubl i c Forg et ting Even as Daniel and Sofía responded to the destruction of the bombing and its aftermath in dif­fer­ent ways, their personal memories unfolded in a context of public acknowl­edgment of the AMIA bombing, an event which was remembered through commemorative actos, protests, and monuments. What happens, though, when one’s trauma is met with public silence, or even a form of forgetting? This is some of what Carlos Susevich experienced, who lost his d­ aughter in the March 17, 1992, bombing of the Israeli embassy. More than ten years a­ fter the attack, I met Carlos in a quiet coffee shop in the neighborhood of Recoleta to talk more about his experience as the ­father of a victim of the 1992 Israeli embassy attack.25 Since the Israeli embassy attack was seen as targeting the state of Israel, it did not generate the same groundswell of social movements that formed in response to the 1994 AMIA bombing. Carlos, however, became one of the primary advocates for memory and justice in relation to that attack. His ­d aughter, Liliana, worked in the embassy, which is why she was t­ here that day. Just as Sofía suffered in the months a­ fter her ­d aughter’s loss, Carlos did as well: “­A fter she died, March 17, 1992, I fell into a ­g reat depression. I was treated by a psychologist for two years. I recognize that I was r­ eally absent from life. And then a­ fter two years, the psychologist told me that I should try to continue my life.” ­A fter ­those two years, he began turning to other ­family members of the victims and helped or­g a­n ize them to demand justice. He also would be the voice of the f­amily members on anniversaries. He credits his advocacy work for “allowing me to survive this blow. It i­sn’t easy, b­ ecause in life . . . ​a ll of us know that for biological reasons, parents ­w ill die before [­children]. Who would think that their ­children would go before them?” Years l­ater Carlos continued to have his depressions, with acute moments of loss felt in the midst of mundane daily activities. For instance, he told me,

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“in the morning I finish showering, I’m shaving and I start remembering my ­d aughter and all of the ­things. . . . ​But then I finish, go out onto the street, and I just face life as I do e­ very day.” The per­ sis­ tent real­ ity of that loss left Carlos with the kind of void described by Sofía. As Carlos put it, “Nobody, nobody can imagine that they ­w ill kill your child in such a way. . . . ​A nd t­here is no way to fill the place of the person, b­ ecause as much as one can be with other c­ hildren, with grandchildren, with great-­g randchildren, t­here is always an empty space—­un lugar vacío—­t hat is pending, that is floating in the air and that does not allow you to forget.” It is striking that he used the same term as Sofía—­a nother vacío—an absence, just as Sofía described, but one that is a power­ful presence in their lives.26 While Carlos spoke publicly about his experience and felt an obligation to sustain the memory of his d­ aughter and the other victims of that attack, silences remained in his personal life, exposing a fault line between the personal and the public. In f­amily gatherings, he said, No one ever talks about this a­fter what happened, never. I never talk about it with my c­ hildren. Maybe with my [other] d­ aughter when we go to the cemetery and no one ­else is with us. But for my son, [it’s dif­fer­ent]. My ­d aughter who died was so tied to him. That son went to the cemetery the day we buried her, and he never again wanted to return, never. He says that he wants to remember her alive, not in a stone. He has such a power­ful love for her, and memory. His love cannot be erased. And the smaller kids in the ­f amily, they have her picture everywhere, and they ask him what happened to her, and he tells them that she is in the sky, that she is a star. And they know she was their aunt, but they do not know how she died. They remembered his ­d aughter, their ­sister, their aunt, but they did not talk about what happened to her. For Carlos, then, he turned to advocacy as a way to respond to his loss and that vacío with which Sofía also strug­g led. He felt he carried the responsibility in the face of the kind of forgetting and oblivion that he saw surrounding the attack that killed his ­d aughter, since the Israeli embassy attack did not figure as prominently in the po­liti­cal challenges to impunity in Argentina. In November 2018, Carlos Susevich passed away, without having found the justice and truth he was seeking in relation to the Israeli embassy bombing.27 Throughout all of t­ hose years, he continued g­ oing to commemorations and advocating for justice and truth. As Diana Wassner Malamud, whose husband was killed in the 1994 AMIA bombing, wrote on his passing, “[Carlos] died without the peace that justice would have given him, but with the honor of having walked the path of calling for justice and seeking to make the world a ­l ittle better.” She continued, saying that she felt she often went to the actos commemorating the embassy “ just to give a hug to Carlos,” and that on



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the next March 17, on the next anniversary, she felt that the street would have “one more empty space”—­“un nuevo lugar vacío.” She ended what she wrote hoping that ­others would continue his voice (Malamud 2018; translation by author). Yet throughout his years of advocacy, despite feeling that justice may never arrive, he continued remembering and d­ oing what he could to grapple with the vacío that would still, nevertheless, persist. S i le nce and Survival Survivors of other forms of vio­lence and genocide also strug­g led with that void of meaning, often responding with silence, even as that past continued to return to them, often in embodied ways. This was a common experience for many survivors of the Holocaust, who found it challenging to speak to their own c­ hildren about what they had experienced. This phenomenon, of course, is not ­limited to Argentina, and many Holocaust scholars address the silence of survivors and the par­tic­u ­lar difficulties this caused for their c­ hildren, the second generation.28 Indeed, Marianne Hirsch suggests that what she has termed “postmemory” describes the power of the past to shape the experience of ­f uture generations, even if they themselves have not lived through an event. As Hirsch notes, that past is so power­ful “that the [descendants] need to call that connection memory and thus . . . ​i n certain extreme circumstances, memory can be transmitted to ­t hose who ­were not actually ­t here to live an event” (Hirsch 2008,106; emphasis original). This notion of the impact of past loss on ­f uture generations, who strug­g le with that loss as they strive for some kind of personal coherence, often takes place through memory practices. The force of such past experiences was evident in the life of Diana Wang, whom I met on my first trip to Buenos Aires, introduced through someone who worked for an American organ­ization as an expert on the Holocaust. We agreed to get together at a small coffee shop near the Plaza Italia subway stop in the neighborhood of Palermo, and that is when she first told me her story and the profound impact the AMIA bombing had on her sense of Jewish identity, in par­t ic­u ­lar, as the child of Holocaust survivors. Growing up, Diana said she did not have a clear sense of being Jewish.29 Her parents, both survivors of the Holocaust, left Poland in 1947, two years ­a fter Diana was born (which was shortly after World War II ended). To protect her, Diana thought, they chose to simply not talk about being Jewish, and even remarked on features that allowed her to pass as not Jewish. She told me that her mom would say, “You are so white, you are so blonde, you are like a ­little Polish girl!” Since many of Diana’s friends w ­ ere Catholic, Diana would sometimes go with them to church, and since her parents did not talk about being Jewish, she did not see what was wrong with ­going to church. This all changed, though, when she came home and asked her mom for a Communion dress. Diana vividly told me, “Imagine what this must have been like for my mom. From that day on, she told me we are Jews and you cannot take Communion. I then asked her, ‘And what does it mean to be Jewish?’ My

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mom said, ‘The Catholics hate us, the Catholics want to kill us, they believe we killed Christ.’ ” Not only was this when she first learned about being Jewish. This is also when she first learned about the Shoah:30 “In this moment, my mom also started telling me about the Shoah, of what [the Nazis] did, all of it all at once. And the next ­thing I remember is that I was sitting on the balcony of my ­house, hidden, crying, looking at all of the girls dressed up like brides on the street, and I ­wasn’t allowed to do that. I remember that this was the first time I felt dif­fer­ent, and I was ­dying to be equal to them, to be the same.” Much of this difference stemmed from her ­family’s experience of the Shoah, rooted in the persecution and suffering they experienced as Jews in Poland. When I asked Diana if her parents ever thought about visiting Poland, she said, “Never, never, never. When I went with my ­brother, my dad was no longer alive, but my mom was. And when I went with my ­brother in 1995, my ­mother could not understand why we wanted to go. She did not want to.” ­A fter a pause, Diana repeated that again: “She did not want to. She did not want to.” Diana’s trip to Poland took place ­a fter the 1994 AMIA bombing, which created a major shift in her life. The attack inspired her to attend the weekly actos of Memoria Activa, to study Yiddish and join the Coro Guebirtig (a Yiddish choir formed in response to the bombing) (Zaretsky 2008b); l­ater, she would also plan a trip to visit Poland with her ­brother. They traveled with the group Marcha por la Vida (March of the Living), an international Holocaust memory program started in 1988; typically, they bring groups of young ­people first to Poland to visit concentration camps, like Auschwitz, and then conclude the trip in Israel. 31 But instead of ­going on to Israel, which is the final stop of the or­g a­n ized trip, Diana and her ­brother de­cided to travel to Ukraine, “­because we wanted to know the places where our parents had been, and also ­because we had the secret hope of finding some information about our ­brother.” Diana had another ­brother who was a small child during the war. Her parents had hidden him with a non-­Jewish ­f amily but never w ­ ere able to find him again. For Diana, that represented a painful site of loss. She chose to return to Poland in the hope, partially, of being able to find out something about that lost b­ rother: We ­d idn’t know much, but we knew something. I met with my parents’ friends to get more information, addresses, asking them to tell me stories, every­t hing they remembered, so we would know where to go and where to look. And when I asked my mom, Mamá never remembered anything—­ meaning, she did not want to say anything. She had high blood pressure which would go up a lot, and one day, I had a talk with her and said, “Look, Mamá, something is happening to you about our trip. What is bother­ing you? We ­don’t want to hurt you.”



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At that point, Diana’s m ­ other was almost eighty-­t wo. And what emerged from that conversation was the overwhelming fear Diana’s ­mother felt in the face of her ­children’s trip: She had so much fear about us returning to Poland. She remembered the ­people who went back and they w ­ ere killed b­ ecause o ­ thers thought they would try to reclaim what had been theirs. And so, one t­hing she told me was that I swear that when I am ­there, I ­won’t tell anyone who I am, that we are Jews. “You have to swear to me,” she said. I swore to her and I kept that promise. No, we ­d idn’t tell anyone anything. And my ­mother, she did not remember anything, not the name of the ­family [to whom they had given my ­brother], not the city, nothing, nothing, nothing. Diana then described her returning from that trip, and how a few months ­later, her ­mother died. She told me, “I always ask myself how much of our trip had to do with the death of Mamá.” ­There is a form of vacío ­here for Diana, too—­the inability to find her ­brother or to know what ­really led to her ­mother’s death. And indeed, her ­mother’s inability to remember was perhaps another way to grapple with the loss. For Diana, though, she felt a pressing need to return and to find more. Even though she did not arrive at that information, that pro­cess of searching became her effort at repair, a form of agency in the face of loss. The Powe r of Return Although narrative proved to be crucial for many who sought ways to return through travel and testimonies, ­others w ­ ere not able to speak as easily about their experiences. Even then, they still needed listeners to help accompany them as they strug­g led with this loss, seeking to approach this moment as well as find a way to come back from it. Indeed, in this way, listeners can create a social context for repair as survivors grapple with their loss, even if they might not be able to articulate their experience or arrive at a narrative. One such survivor was Jack Fuchs, who grew up in Lodz, Poland. I met Jack during my first trip to Buenos Aires in 2001. I was immediately surprised and happy to find someone with whom I could speak En­g lish at a time when my Spanish, which I thought I had perfected during my previous studies in Mexico, still required some adjustments to the ways of speaking in Argentina. Even before we ­really talked, I felt I knew Jack’s story; he had written a book, Tiempo de recordar (Time to Remember) (1995), which I read carefully, annotating key quotes and passages before I went to his home for the first time. I knew he was from Lodz; I knew he had survived the Lodz ghetto and Auschwitz before making his way to New York and ultimately Buenos Aires. I knew he wrote in the newspaper Página/12 about his experience, sharing his reflections on World War II and the Holocaust as they related to ongoing questions of vio­lence and loss.

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For our first meeting, he invited me for coffee in his apartment in Barrio Norte. Jack lived in a high-­r ise building with a balcony overlooking the city, filled with plants. Inside, his books lined his living room, along with photo­graphs of his f­ amily—­h is ­d aughter, son-­in-­law, three grand­d aughters prominently featured on the walls. And then t­here was also the photo of his f­amily from Lodz, ­t hose who had been killed, a photo he was able to recover ­a fter the war, framed in black and white. Over my years in Buenos Aires, I would spend many after­noons t­here in conversation with Jack. We would talk about current events and history, about the vibrant Jewish life that used to exist in Lodz, about my own ­family’s history in the former Soviet Union. Yet over the many times he would invite me for coffee, or dinner, or lunch, he rarely spoke about what happened to him in the war, what he lived through. On one of my visits, in June 2010, Jack invited me to have dinner. As I walked in and he greeted me, he joked that he had been reading newspapers all day and that the more he read, the less he understood. That eve­n ing, Jack made what he called “lushen,” spaghetti with meat sauce, which he prepared in his kitchen, adorned with his grand­d aughter’s drawings that surrounded the kitchen ­t able. ­A fter dinner, we went into his office, where he liked to sit at his large desktop computer, navigating websites with his mouse, as I sat nearby. He scrolled through dif­fer­ent stories, reading, scanning, and then asking me what I thought about vari­ous events in the world, and we would go back and forth, discussing them. He told me that I was more optimistic than him ­because I was so young. Between discussing current events, he also asked me about my ­family, about my work, about my writing. And though we sat t­ here many times, reflecting on the Holocaust in general, I always felt a certain absence as palpable—of the silence surrounding his experience. He rarely talked to me about what he lived through. And I respected that silence, of course, but also wondered about his memories. That eve­n ing, sitting ­there in his office, our conversation turned to how he felt during those years. He told me about the ghetto, about the concentration camp—­not about what he had experienced, but what he had felt and continued to feel long in the years that followed. Sometimes, he said, he would wake up with the same feeling he used to have t­here. He also talked about one recurring nightmare, the nightmare of finding himself outside of the ghetto gates; it seems that he felt more secure inside of them. He talked about what he described as a shadow always pre­sent for him. But usually, he said he could get up and shake himself out of it. For most of that conversation, I just sat and listened, letting him talk. He then turned to his time in New York. That was the first place he went a­ fter leaving the displaced persons (DP) camps set up for survivors in Eu­rope. Naturally, since I lived in New York and grew up ­there, Jack would often talk to me about the city and how it used to be when he was t­here and how it



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had changed. He loved talking about New York, of his life ­there in the early postwar years, and of the friends he had made. His eyes would light up as he described t­ hose years. And yet he never wanted to go back ­t here, he told me. It was too painful for him, he said, to be back in a place where so many of the ­people who ­were young in ­those years of his memories, had now aged or passed away. But that eve­n ing he turned to another part of his experience of that time in the city right after the war. He arrived in New York in April. He told me he was outside and suddenly looked down and noticed that he was not wearing a star on his shirt, the yellow star used in the ghetto. His first reaction in that instant was to worry, before he remembered where he was. That feeling, I thought. Of his instant reaction, his body responding and holding on to the memory of what he had experienced, time and distance collapsing, and then opening again, settling back into itself. ­A fter our conversation, he insisted on walking me home. It was 9:30 and already dark outside, but he said not to worry, the p­ eople h ­ ere ­were only beginning their eve­n ings out. As we walked along, the streets felt dif­fer­ent to me, reflecting the economic strug­g les many ­were facing in ­those years in Argentina. The p­ eople who some called cartoneros ­were carefully working through the bags of garbage left out in front, searching for materials, paper, cardboard, that they could salvage and turn in for some kind of value somewhere. We continued walking, then said good night ­u ntil our next meal, our next conversation, our next return to the past. I was left wondering about the bound­a ries of repair. I wondered how much of Jack’s pro­cess of survival hinged on his telling his story (which he did many times, again and again, to schools, in tele­v i­sion interviews, and in writing), and how much of it also required spaces outside of that story, where he could laugh and remember other dimensions of his life, where he could inhabit other parts of his past, which also seemed so impor­t ant to his strug­g le for repair. What Remai ns Over the years, the ways in which subjects negotiated the trauma and loss in their lives may have transformed, but this strug­g le continued. In Sofía’s case, over twenty-­five years ­a fter that first moment she felt the vacío beginning, it persisted in many ways, as did her desire to sustain the memory of her d­ aughter, an act of pos­si­ble repair. Part of her preservation of Andrea’s memory was through her belongings. For many years I did not ask to go into Andrea’s bedroom when I visited Sofía. We mostly sat in the kitchen, drinking coffee out of small cups, sometimes eating elaborate dinners Sofía would prepare for me and her husband, Alberto, and talking about my own studies, my work, my f­amily. In 2018, though, on my most recent return, she brought me into her daughter’s room, a room with sheets and furniture so clean and or­g a­n ized, seeming

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as if they could not be in regular use. In the year that Andrea was killed, 1994, she had been living on her own, so at the time of the attack, this was already the childhood room of an adult who had left her parents’ home. The room, then, preserved an even younger version of Andrea than at the time of her death. The only signs of time leaving a mark on this space ­were a modern printer and computer on the desk. Other­w ise, it seemed to be as it had been in 1994. Entering Andrea’s room felt like disrupting something sacred. And yet Sofía also wanted me to witness this space—it is through this witnessing that I could also become a part of this re­sis­t ance to forgetting and oblivion. Along with the o ­ thers who read Sofía’s books and poems, who remembered Andrea with her, I would help Sofía in her desire for Andrea to not be forgotten. On the shelves w ­ ere photos of Andrea from other times—­f rom her childhood: a trip somewhere warm, sitting with a smile and wearing shorts, holding a mate in her hand (the traditional gourd for drinking yerba mate tea); all dressed up with her parents. ­These framed photos preserved a past—­a time when a ­future version of Andrea was still pos­si­ble. Sofía went through many of ­these images with me, explaining them, and s­topped, looking at one in par­t ic­u ­lar that showed Andrea all dressed up at a big party. The image is one that I actually knew well; it is the same one engraved on a necklace Sofía wears around her neck. She also told me, “This is on her tombstone.” It turns out that this image was from the last birthday Andrea would celebrate. Sofía added, “That is the photo that was from her birthday, actually, her last birthday.” Sofía reflected on why they made it such a big cele­bration, not knowing what the ­future would hold: “I d­ on’t know why this last birthday we celebrated so much—­there was an organ, a performer came. And [Andrea] said, ‘Why are t­ here so many t­ hings on this birthday?’ ” That question—­a question reaching this bedroom from so many years ago, from a time when the ­future was still ahead of her, filled the space between us, u ­ ntil Sofía answered it: “It was her farewell. It was her farewell.” ­These images and artifacts of loss are sometimes the only ­things left as tangible connections to loved ones lost.32 Yet in considering Marianne Hirsch’s concept of “postmemory” (Hirsch 2012), where a past event profoundly shapes a new generation as if they had experienced it, we can also contemplate the power of a pos­si­ble ­future that never was. ­There is a loss ­there that can also shape a sense of oneself, as we see in Sofía looking at her d­ aughter’s photo­g raphs, capturing a moment with a dif­fer­ent intended ­f uture. Indeed, t­hese photo­g raphs continued to sustain Sofía almost twenty-­five years a­ fter the attack. She told me, “All that is left are the photos, with small stories. And it is what I trea­sure most ­because I have her image, I have her permanently pre­sent in my heart. At least, I can see her. And this is what life has turned into.”



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Sofía’s acts of repair involved looking back, for as she told me, “They tell me to look ahead. I am looking ahead, but on the other hand, I also have to look b­ ehind ­because it is only in the past that I can see her. I can never find her in the f­uture, or in the pre­sent.” Even as she turned to this memory as an act of pos­si­ble repair, the vacío she initially faced remained. Conclusion In her ­d aughter’s room in 2018, Sofía told me that she started writing poetry as a way to reach out to her, to push beyond the border between them created by Andrea’s untimely death. The subtle shift from talking about her ­d aughter to addressing her ­d aughter directly represents what can make narrative so transcendent: It’s been a while that I am walking alone That I walk through the streets with no smiles and no happiness. Full of pain, anguish, and suffering. ­Because my d­ aughter is not walking by my side, my best friend. I heard her laughter . . . ​how sad to pass through life without my d­ aughter, without my friend Even if it seems that my eyes . . . ​ I always look inside, ­ because my silence . . . ​w ith my ­d aughter, with my friend . . . Many springs and winters have passed, and I continue walking alone, in my life Her tears and her smiles mix in my mind Your hand with mine. Your f­ather is sad, accompanying me We walk together, as if we are pushing (forward) ­Every night when I go to sleep, your happy face looks at me . . . ​a nd kissing your cheek, I whisper, softly, I miss you, ­d aughter and friend. She read t­hese words to me from her poem, “Mi hija, mi amiga” (My ­ aughter, My Friend) as we sat together in her d­ aughter’s bedroom in 2018, D twenty four years ­a fter Andrea had been killed. 33 ­These are the words Sofía formed that allowed her to return to the moment of trauma, as Cathy Caruth suggested (1995; 1996), and then to be able to leave again. We see this in her poetry and also in her own testimony during my interviews with her. ­These dynamics are also evident in Sofía’s public speeches (chapter  4) and in the juridical testimonies of survivors and ­f amily members of victims of the dictatorship, given during the mega-­ESMA ­t rials (chapter 2). We also see them in survivors’ accounts of the intersections of the dictatorship and the Holocaust in their lives (chapters 5 and 6). Like so many other survivors, Sofía’s narrative ­here represents a desire for some kind of coherence in the space of a void, a vacío, a profound loss which may never be pos­si­ble to repair.

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The challenge, of course, involves the inability to find closure for such loss. In the case of the disappearances during the dictatorship, the Madres de Plaza de Mayo strug­g led with the inability to know what happened to their ­children, having no body to bury or to mourn. This all contributed to the persistence of the trauma in their lives.34 Yet Sofía, who initially thought finding Andrea’s body would bring her some closure, discovered that it only marked the beginning of the void in her life—­t he vacío that she would try to grapple with through language but could never fully make cohere. The void continued for her; the words she found did not resolve her strug­g le for personal coherence, her strug­g le with loss. While narrative has certainly been heralded as a way to move forward from trauma, it is not always pos­si­ble to express one’s experience through language. In the ensuing weeks and months, f­amily members of the victims of the 1994 bombing provided their oral testimonies and received psychological help from grief counselors, but they found that was not enough in many cases. For some, like Daniel, they turned to such memory only rarely, and often encountered the limits of that experience. Carlos, too, encountered the limits of a society that did not provide him with justice in his lifetime. For o ­ thers, like Diana, the act of searching for her lost ­brother became another impor­t ant ave­nue for repair, even if unresolved. And for Jack, as we w ­ ill see in the chapters that follow, his strug­g les focused on his unyielding questions about the ­f uture implications of his experience and how to understand what happened to him so it did not lose meaning. ­These more personal dimensions of struggling with trauma may not always be vis­i­ble in the public sphere and public sites of memory, which we ­w ill examine more closely in the next chapters. In addition to writing and sharing her story, Sofía returned, month ­after month, to the site of the bombing. She continued over the years g­ oing to the main commemorative protests on July 18, where she was often called on to make a speech on behalf of other f­ amily members of the victims, on behalf of the other m ­ others and f­athers and other relatives, on behalf of the victims. And she would go, to call Andrea’s name, to say “Presente”—­ “­Here”—­like the Madres de Plaza de Mayo have done for more than forty years on behalf of their c­ hildren. She returned to t­ hese spaces, in her case, not necessarily in the hopes of memory becoming a vehicle for justice, no longer ­really believing in the possibility of justice ­a fter so many years, but to remember. She did this resist her ­d aughter’s disappearance from public and collective consciousness, to perhaps resist the very passage of time, if for a moment, together with ­others, before then returning to the less public spaces of her vacío. 35 ­There are limits to the possibilities that narrative offers, as t­hese stories show again and again. Even with narration, or with the acts of listening, one might not “move on,” but instead, remain with that same desire for some form of coherence or repair. Even as we turn to the more public dimensions of acts of repair in the next chapters—­t rials, protests, memorials—­a pervasive liminality



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persists for many ­family members of victims and survivors, who find themselves seeking a justice that may never arrive. In the absence of justice, memory can be a power­f ul space for recovery and repair. It has now been de­cades since the initial traumas and losses, since Sofía first felt her vacío. And ­every year she returns, trying to establish a sense of meaning to what may never cohere. For her, meaning derives from sustaining and sharing the memory of her d­ aughter, “so she d­ oesn’t die completely,” as she told me. But the vacío remains, even as she engages in acts of repair for a coherence that may never come.

C hap te r 2

Dialogic Memory and the Uneven Terrain of Justice

The wall in front of the rebuilt AMIA building is painted black, with the first name of each victim spray-­painted in white on the surface. That is where ­every month, on the eigh­teenth, ­family members of victims and their supporters have returned for actos to commemorate their losses from that first July 18 in 1994 when the trauma for them began. On that wall, you can also find the words justicia y memoria—­justice and memory—­t wo terms that have become intertwined in Argentina’s po­liti­cal history. Memory has been integral to civil society since the activism of the Madres de Plaza de Mayo linked the remembering of their c­ hildren with the calls for justice and punishment of the perpetrators of the dictatorship. In the wake of the 1994 AMIA attack, citizens gathered weekly in the Plaza Lavalle to remember the victims and demand justice, the word justicia ringing out ­every Monday morning—­the same day of the week and time at which the bombing took place. The group Memoria Activa situated this memory directly in front of the high courts—­the Palace of Justice in downtown Buenos Aires. Justice and memory became further solidified in the h ­ uman rights policies developed during the presidency of Néstor Kirchner (2003–2007). The words memoria, verdad, and justicia—­memory, truth, and justice—­were literally engraved onto pillars that w ­ ere placed at impor­tant ­human rights sites, such as the ESMA, where thousands of kidnapped victims ­were tortured, in an area located within the periphery of Buenos Aires. Throughout the nation’s recent history, memory has served as a foundation for democracy and civil society, beginning as a space of dissent during the years of state vio­lence in 1976–1983, when f­amily members of the dis­ appeared used the memory of victims to challenge the attempts to silence their experience and to “dis­appear” the very effects of state vio­lence. This continued during the years of democracy. Although the historic 1984 CONADEP truth commission established the systematic nature of state repression and abuse, amnesty laws enacted in the late 1980s freed the perpetrators from punishment or juridical responsibility. In response, ­human rights groups and ­family members of the victims more urgently turned to advocacy to demand 40



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some form of justice, while still seeking to sustain the memory of the victims and the crimes of the state in the national imaginary. It is during ­those years of impunity that Argentina became what I might call a land of memory—­a nation of memory-­based protests and ­human rights challenges that, as sociologist Elizabeth Jelin argues (2003; 2017), established the memory of repression as an impor­tant site of contestation between civil society and the state, thereby becoming fundamental ground for democracy. The cultural memory of the vio­lence of the dictatorship would also become linked to other moments of vio­lence, such as the AMIA bombing, and ­later the Holocaust, or Shoah. Of course, understanding the intersections of cultural memories of vio­lence in Argentina does not mean equating ­these periods, or suggesting that they are commemorated in an equivalent fashion. Taking a more dialogic view of ­these memories would be more appropriate. Indeed, as argued by Michael Rothberg, if we look at memories as “multidirectional,” this suggests a heterogeneous landscape. Further, by focusing on this multidirectionality, we can also consider more fully how groups “actually come into being through their dialogic interactions” (Rothberg 2009, 5). Within such a framework, memory has become a power­ful tool for recovery and repair in many social contexts and nations, including Argentina. ­Human rights protests ultimately helped bring in an era of reform. During Néstor Kirchner’s presidency, the amnesty laws w ­ ere fi­n ally overturned in 2003, allowing t­rials to begin and justice to return to the land of memory. Through ­these ­trials, the state has held perpetrators accountable for past crimes against humanity through a pro­cess of retributive justice that many had been waiting for and demanding since the dictatorship ended in 1983. Beginning in the early 2000s, t­here have been over two hundred such t­rials and other reforms representing impor­ t ant steps forward in accounting for the past through retributive justice (­Human Rights Watch 2019). Yet in some ways, po­liti­cal changes u ­ nder the Mauricio Macri administration (2015–2019) have presented new strug­g les over memory, accountability, and justice, as we w ­ ill see in chapter 3. Overall, however, the dramatic pro­g ress in efforts for retributive justice over the last two de­cades has been notable. Such justice has often been viewed as the desired goal for activists who lost their ­family members to vio­lence, including the state repression of the dictatorship and the AMIA bombing. This pro­g ress, though, raises new questions about the relationship between memory and justice. If memory has traditionally been used as a strategy for achieving retributive justice, when such justice is achieved, what then happens to memory? Further, even with new ­trials, impunity in many cases remains; what, then, does this reveal about the complexities of collective recovery and repair, and the temporalities of survival? In this chapter, I consider ­these questions by examining justice in two ways. I first explore trial spaces to understand how memory functions as a social pro­cess within the context of retributive

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justice, including the 1985 Trial of the Juntas and the 2012–2017 ESMA megatrial. I then turn to the uneven terrain of justice, where in the case of the AMIA bombing, the ongoing impunity exists in tension with a power­ful desire for truth and justice, thereby conditioning a need for memory. ­These cases suggest that even a­ fter some justice has arrived, cultural memory remains necessary as a modality of repair for a society seeking a truth that might transcend juridical understandings. The Land of M e mory During years of repressive state vio­lence during a dictatorship (1976–1983) that some scholars call genocide,1 many Argentines turned to memory for protest and dissent. Groups such as the Madres de Plaza de Mayo, whose ­children ­were dis­appeared, took to Buenos Aires’s central plaza to protest the repression of the state, marching e­ very week. Some wore white headscarves stitched with their ­children’s names and the dates of disappearance, many also holding images of their c­ hildren. By marching in the plaza, they demanded to know what happened with their ­children, disrupting the flow of collective time and space, reor­g a­n iz­i ng it e­ very Thursday after­noon with their bodies and their presence. Through such embodied disruption, t­ hese ­mothers resisted the idea that their ­children had simply “dis­appeared,” inspiring a modality of protest formative of the civil society that would take shape ­a fter the dictatorship ended in 1983.2 Such “acts of memory” (following Bal, Crewe, and Spitzer, 1999), took on a performative power, as explored by Diana Taylor in her pioneering work Disappearing Acts (1997). T ­ hese acts became particularly significant for what they represented in response to the overwhelming silence of the dictatorship. The detentions, tortures, and disappearances w ­ ere waged in a clandestine way, with the military in power attempting to dis­appear not just h ­ uman beings but also the truth of that time. Indeed, in many ways, the power of the state’s repressive apparatus depended on the terror and fear of the populace—­a silence disrupted by the protests of the Madres de Plaza de Mayo and the work of other ­human rights organ­izations, such as the Asamblea Permanente de Derechos Humanos (Permanent Assembly for ­Human Rights). T ­ hese social movements actively resisted the official narratives denying ­human rights abuses and crimes against humanity. The Madres, for instance, used protests in public spaces such as the Plaza de Mayo to challenge the notion that their ­children had simply dis­ appeared and to defend their right to know the truth of what happened. And through their protests and advocacy, they also inscribed memory into public spaces and into the po­liti­cal ethos of demo­cratic Argentina. Some form of accounting, however, became critical to the transition from vio­lence to democracy. After the dictatorship ended, one of the first acts of newly elected President Alfonsín was to create the CONADEP—­t he



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National Commission on the Dis­appeared—to investigate and document the systematic abuses committed by the state from 1976 to 1983. 3 The CONADEP served as an impor­t ant model for transitional justice, seeking to address the patterns of h ­ uman rights abuses without rendering Argentina vulnerable to another military coup. It thus offered a pos­si­ble model for national repair and a  sustainable transition into democracy. Yet for many of the ­human rights groups, actively remembering their c­ hildren and the victims of the dictatorship remained imperative, as did the possibility for justice and greater accountability, especially pressing with the amnesty laws that heralded an era of impunity in the 1990s. In the 1980s and 1990s, without justice, memory took on an even more prominent role in Argentine politics. In addition to the Madres de Plaza de Mayo (which would divide into two groups, Madres de Plaza de Mayo-­Línea Fundadora and Madres de Plaza de Mayo), other h ­ uman rights groups w ­ ere also active in ­t hose years, such as the Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo, whose members’ mission was to search for their grandchildren, kidnapped by the state or born while their parents w ­ ere detained. Many of t­hose c­ hildren ­were then ­adopted by military families, although some have since been re­u nited with their biological families through DNA matches (Gandsman 2012). H.I.J.O.S. (Children for Identity and Justice against Forgetting and Silence) formed in 1995 to demand justice for the perpetrators of the crimes against its members’ parents. This organ­ization also turned to the streets for their protests. However, instead of marching in the central plaza of Buenos Aires, H.I.J.O.S. or­g a­n ized escraches, which brought them to the homes of the perpetrators. As Diana Taylor suggests, through t­ hese protests, citizens “make vis­i­ble the crimes” of the dictatorship, also engaging “trauma to animate their po­liti­cal activism” (2002, 152).4 Through such protests, they noisily marched down the streets where perpetrators lived to call out their presence and to render vis­i­ble that which other­w ise may have vanished u ­ nder the surface of everyday life. The significance of memory as a form of po­liti­cal protest and demo­cratic action in Argentina continued for other ­causes that remained in impunity as well. In the case of the 1994 bombing of the AMIA building, ­f amily members of the victims and their supporters also formed social movements that engaged the memory of the attack and the victims in their protests. They staged them in public plazas on anniversaries in the modality of the Madres de Plaza de Mayo and other ­human rights groups in Argentina, thereby reinforcing memory as protest, disrupting time and space in their efforts to draw attention to their strug­g le against impunity (see chapter 3). Memory thus came to shape civil society in power­ful ways that would eventually lead to po­liti­cal changes, especially during the presidencies of Néstor Kirchner and, ­later, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner (2007–2015). During the first de­cade of the twenty-­fi rst ­century, the state incorporated the memory of

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repression into its h ­ uman rights platform. In 2002, for instance, March  24 became a national holiday, the Día de la Memoria por la Verdad y la Justicia (Day of Remembrance for Truth and Justice). The ESMA itself (a clandestine torture center during the dictatorship) was officially renamed as the “ex-­ESMA,” also called the Space of Memory; the vari­ous buildings in the ex-­ESMA ­were then reassigned as the offices of the ­human rights groups noted above, as well as an archive, Memoria Abierta (Open Memory), that has gathered a significant collection of testimonies related to the state vio­lence.5 This effort to inscribe memory in the social landscape developed throughout Argentina, with vari­ous official sites of memory installed, signaling the ongoing salience of such memory to Argentine politics and citizenship.6 ­ rials and Tran siti onal Justi c e T The continued prominence of memory in po­liti­cal culture helps us see how justice operates through other social pro­cesses and practices. A ­ fter years of impunity, the h ­ uman rights t­ rials of the early 21st ­century certainly represent a significant step forward in the path t­oward retributive justice and accountability, for the perpetrators and the state. As such, they are part of a broader context of transitional justice pro­cesses, including global efforts underway in vari­ous nations trying to move forward following periods of state vio­lence and genocide (Hayner 2001; Hinton 2010). Yet t­hese pro­cesses all have specific contingencies, with par­tic­u ­lar local contexts and cultures shaping the experience of justice, as suggested by anthropologists Alexander Hinton (2010; 2018) and Sally Engle Merry (2006).7 An ethnographic approach can help redefine categories like justice and truth, which can other­w ise be universalizing and flatten lived experiences. Regionally, the significance of “truth” has a par­t ic­u ­lar resonance in Latin Amer­i­ca. Truth commissions or pro­cesses have become a potent po­liti­cal and social force in Latin Amer­i­ca over the last thirty years. The 1983 CONADEP was one of the first truth commissions in the world, and the first to generate a report that became a bestseller (Robben 2010). Since then, truth commissions have proliferated in Latin Amer­i­ca, taking on particularly significant weight in the aftermath of authoritarian rule and state vio­lence. From Argentina to Brazil, Chile, Guatemala, and Peru, truth has emerged as a way for socie­ties to collectively account for past vio­lence. In response to state terror, torture, disappearances, and genocide, communities of survivors and victims, as well as concerned citizens, have turned to truth as a grassroots response in their advocacy for justice and push against the official erasure of their experience. States have also engaged truth as a form of transitional justice, using truth commissions and other modalities of truth (such as the opening of state archives) to transition from conflict or vio­lence into democracy (Hayner 2001). During times when justice and prosecution of perpetrators of abuse may not appear pos­si­ble,



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truth commissions have developed as official paths forward (noting, of course, the teleological assumptions this implies, following Hinton 2018). Such truth commissions and pro­cesses also create opportunities to achieve restorative justice, a way to restore the order disrupted by po­liti­cal vio­lence. Moreover, some scholars, such as Martha Minow (1998), argue that truth commissions may offer a more effective way of acknowledging past vio­lence and helping victims heal—­more effective, perhaps, than t­rials would be on their own. In Argentina, however, as Robben has argued (2010), the desire for retributive ­trials has animated the transitional justice efforts and ­human rights advocacy (in contrast to the experience of Chile, for instance, where an emphasis on reconciliation predominated). However, more than spaces of retribution, as evidenced above, in this chapter, I suggest t­ hese ­trials also serve as dialogic spaces of memory that help renew communities and sustain the fabric of a society in repair. The social dimensions of ­these juridical spaces become even more critical ­because of ongoing impunity in some cases and some setbacks in adjudicating the crimes related to the dictatorship. More specifically, within the framework of ­trials, witnesses’ testimonies have become central to pro­cesses of repair and recovery. We have seen the value of testimony as an act of repair in the experiences of personal loss and survival in cases such as Sofía’s (chapter  1). Yet testimony can also have a reparative role during ­t rials and as a part of other forms of retributive justice. In what follows, I w ­ ill examine testimonies in the context of h ­ uman rights ­trials to explore what they reveal about such juridical spaces as sites of what I argue is dialogic memory.8 By “dialogic,” I refer to the work of Mikhail Bakhtin, suggesting that any meaning is always in an evolving state of becoming, anticipating pos­si­ble responses as it is in a state of dialectical tension with past utterances (Bakhtin 1981). Such efforts to find meaning become complicated in situations of genocide, state repression, and other forms of po­liti­cal vio­lence, which fundamentally disrupt the fabric of the social order and challenge repre­sen­ta­tion and meaning.9 Scholars of trauma and po­liti­cal vio­lence understand testimony and narrative to play an important role in survival and reconciliation—­a llowing individuals10 and nations to heal and move forward.11 Despite the challenges associated with generating a narrative in the aftermath of trauma, finding a way to articulate one’s experience has often been integral to survival.12 This necessity for a listener, and for recognition, can also extend beyond the psychoanalytic encounter to apply to other instances like truth commissions, such as the CONADEP.13 Indeed, the value of transitional justice, as Martha Minow (1998) reminds us, is that it offers a space for collective healing and a path forward when traditional forms of retributive justice may not be available. In ­t hese moments of offering testimony, the listener is the critical interlocutor of the narrative needed to move forward from trauma. This further

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reinforces the dialogic nature of post-­trauma narratives and survival itself, something also evidenced in the experiences of Sofía, Jack, and Diana (chapter 1).14 While the significance of such testimony can clearly be seen in the contexts of truth commissions, I suggest ­here that testimony also operates this way within juridical spaces—­w ith ­trials revealing new openings for a collective, public memory. I begin with an analy­sis of the testimony of Miriam Lewin, offered at the 1985 Trial of the Juntas, which can be considered an example of such an act of repair based in testimony that seeks to establish evidence and proof of the torture that took place at the ESMA. I then turn to the testimonies at the ESMA megatrial (2012–2017), which provided evidence that established the crimes that ­were committed at this site of torture and repression. Yet the testimonies that emerged during the recent ­trials also demonstrate a more plural, contingent accounting, a witnessing to both the vio­lence that took place and the aftermath of that vio­lence—to the memories of ­those crimes as they have impacted ­people’s lives. Th e Fir st At te m p t at Justi c e While memory and truth became significant parts of civil society ­a fter the end of the dictatorship, they have always existed in a state of constitutive tension with justice—or the lack of justice—in the de­cades that immediately followed state vio­lence. In 1985, the Trial of the Juntas prosecuted just nine high-­r anking military officers, with five ultimately sentenced and four acquitted. Yet even ­those ­trials lost their meaning shortly thereafter because of two amnesty laws—­the Full Stop Law in 1986 (limiting prosecution to lawsuits initiated within sixty days of the law’s enactment and effectively silencing the six hundred pending charges), and the Due Obedience Law in 1987 (essentially giving a blanket amnesty to every­one involved). Then in 1989–1990, President Menem pardoned t­ hose officers who had been sentenced or court-­m artialed.15 On July 18, 1985, Miriam Lewin publicly gave her testimony at this trial, which was televised, thereby helping make this history public and include it in the national imaginary.16 Following Benedict Anderson’s understanding of an “­i magined community” (1991), a nation needs to be actively i­ magined into being through practices its members share. In this case, such ­trials and testimonies also help the nation come into being as an i­magined community. In addition to the trial, Lewin also gave her testimony at the CONADEP truth commission and would ­later write about her experiences through her own publications.17 Yet her testimony in the 1985 trial was the first attempt at some form of retributive justice, even if it was limited at that time. It is still pos­si­ble to watch Lewin give her testimony in a grainy video, which is publicly accessible and shows only the back of her head, in which she is seated below a raised bench with several judges listening and asking questions.18 She was nineteen years old when she was kidnapped on May 17, 1977, and at the time, she was a member of the Peronist Youth and the Montoneros. She



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was tortured and held at the ESMA clandestine torture center for ten months. In her testimony, she describes the kidnapping: I was kidnapped on May 17, 1977, at 5:30 in the after­noon, at the intersection of Avenida del Trabajo and General Paz. I noticed someone was following me, and I went to the stop of the #28 bus, as if I w ­ ere ­going ­towards Liniers; in the moment in which I was about to get on the bus, I heard someone scream, ‘Police!’ Someone ­behind me held me strongly, and turning my head, I saw armed men getting out of their cars, with short and long weapons, who w ­ ere helping the person who was detaining me. In her account, she then turned to the pro­cess of her kidnapping itself, which began with her captors “put[ting] a hood over my head, handcuff[ing] me ­behind my back, and put[ting] me on the floor of the back of the car. As some of the men in the car put their feet on my back, the car took off.” A ­ fter what did not seem like a very long ­ride, she describes arriving “at a room, apparently on an upper floor, where they tie[d] me with a rope and to a ­t able with wires on my limbs, and they cover[ed] my eyes with a piece of rubber that seemed like something from a tire.” She was then asked about someone who was her friend when she attended the Colegio Nacional de Buenos Aires, but Lewin told them she did not know anything about what that friend may have done: “I told them that I ­d idn’t know, that it had been days since I saw her, and that I d­ idn’t know where she was, and I repeated this. ‘You have to tell us where is Patricia, you must know.’ I denied knowing anything.” Yet this denial did not grant her a reprieve from the torture that would unfold, which she also detailed in her testimony: They untied my legs and lifted the elastic band a l­ ittle again, and I could see that a man was exposing his genitals near me, and told me, “We’re ­going to pass you around one by one, hija de puta.” Then while they ­were making obscene observations and screaming, t­here w ­ ere a lot of p­ eople in this place, I think around eight to ten ­people, I heard all masculine voices, they ­were insulting me, some ­were hitting me, and one always stayed by my side and said, “­Don’t worry—­nothing w ­ ill happen to you if you collaborate with us.” The threats of torture then materialized into physical torture as she detailed in her narrative: The next t­hing was that they started to apply what they called the “dry submarine”—­which is a plastic bag, tightly closed over the nose and mouth, ­until the point of asphyxiation. They kept at this for a time that I c­ an’t estimate, and ­after, they started to torture me with electric shocks; they shocked me in my genitals, breast, legs, arms, gums . . . ​and repeated to me, “You must know where Patricia is. Tell us where she is.” I again told them that I ­d idn’t know anything, and as I was screaming, they covered my mouth. In that

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moment, the electricity goes out. . . . ​They made me sit up and took me to a room on a lower floor where they tied me to a bed by the arms and legs. They left me ­there for an hour and then came back to torture me. This time they threw w ­ ater on me to increase the effect of the electricity. When I spoke to Miriam in 2018 about her experience giving her testimony at this trial, of making public such terribly private moments of violation and torture, she understood this act of testifying was very significant to the nation at the time.19 Yet this moment of giving testimony did not necessarily resolve her trauma, even as it served as a gesture toward repair. In a public interview she gave on the occasion of the thirtieth anniversary of the trial, she described what the experience was like for her outside of the testimony she provided. At first, her m ­ other feared the repercussions of her giving testimony, to which she said, “We are Jews. And if I w ­ ere a survivor of Auschwitz, not for one moment would you have ­stopped me from testifying in the Nuremberg ­Trials.”20 She had a clear sense of the historical significance of her testimony in order to establish the truth of what took place and hold the perpetrators accountable. Yet her very truth was also contested. She talked about the imposing room, with six judges seated on a platform raised above her. B ­ ehind, what the camera had not shown as clearly, ­were the nine members of the junta, which she described as “an ominous presence.” Their attorneys then cross-­ examined her, a pro­cess that reveals the limits of juridical testimony especially in this context of transition from dictatorship to democracy. The pro­cess lasted two and a half hours, leaving her exhausted, she said. Yet she was also relieved, b­ ecause she felt this was a “new era of justice.” What also stood out in her reflections on that testimony, despite the imposing and ominous dimensions to that space, is that she found a connection with another witness. She described sitting in the waiting room with another w ­ oman, also waiting her turn to testify. Miriam felt the other witness, the wife of a diplomat who had been persecuted, was in a dif­fer­ent class and was someone with whom she had nothing in common—­except they both experienced the repression; and so, despite their differences, they found a space of connection and comfort, as fellow citizens who both survived this period. Overall, the 1985 Trial of the Juntas only involved ­t hose at the top of the dictatorship, including General Jorge Videla, Admiral Emilio Massera, General Roberto Viola, Admiral Armando Lambruschini, and General Orlando Agosti. The remaining accused w ­ ere acquitted. However, even this justice would be very ­limited in scope. Shortly thereafter, amnesty laws ­were put into effect—­ the 1986 Full Stop Law, which placed a time limit on when suits could be filed, and the 1987 Law of Due Obedience, which protected the military from ­legal consequences for following ­ orders. ­ These two laws effectively prevented



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further prosecutions. Then when Carlos Menem was elected president (1989), he pardoned ­those junta leaders who had been convicted in the 1985 trial. And yet despite the profound impunity of ­these actions, this trial still served to publicly chronicle the crimes of the dictatorship, thereby representing an impor­tant step in social repair and recovery. Even so, it existed in tension with the silences and erasures stemming from the dictatorship (1976–1983) and from the period of impunity that resulted from the amnesty laws. Truth and Justi c e i n Tran siti on During this post-amnesty period of impunity in the 1990s, memory and truth became even more significant in the place of a delayed justice. Other forms of testimony would take on a new significance, including the 1996 publication of The Flight by journalist Horacio Verbitsky, which detailed the account of Adolfo Scilingo, a retired naval officer who had admitted to personally pushing thirty ­people to their deaths from the death flights he operated. In this account, Scilingo unsparingly described what he witnessed in ­those flights. As Leigh Payne notes (2008), this was a confession without remorse—­a dif­fer­ent form of testimony than that provided by victims, and one that was predicated on the expectation that he would not suffer any consequences for sharing it. Less than ten years thereafter, such a confession would be less likely due to changes in the judicial sphere that would hold perpetrators accountable for such crimes. In 2003, the Argentine government overturned the amnesty laws, consequently making it less probable that someone would simply confess without being compelled to testify.21 Additionally, that year the Supreme Court permitted extraditions for crimes against humanity. This opened the door for ­trials of ­those perpetrators who had been living without accountability for de­cades. The first such trial took place in 2006, focusing on Miguel Etchecolatz. Since then, ­there have been over two hundred ­trials related to crimes against humanity and over five hundred convictions, with t­rials taking place throughout the nation, including in Tucumán, Córdoba, and Buenos Aires (­Human Rights Watch 2019). Perhaps one of the most significant t­ rials focused on the crimes that took place at the notorious ESMA, where an estimated five thousand p­ eople w ­ ere tortured, dis­appeared, and repressed. This clandestine torture center and concentration camp operated inside the bound­a ries of the city of Buenos Aires and became a site of extensive repression. ­A fter de­cades of advocacy, what was called the ESMA megatrial began in 2012, with fifty-­four former officials facing charges that included kidnapping, torture, and murder. This was a historic trial ­because of its scope and its duration; unfolding over five years, it was the longest trial in Argentina’s history. Some of the most notable of the accused included Alfredo Astiz and eight death-­fl ight pi­lots, who had flown planes that then dropped ­those detained into the River Plate, disappearing them into the ­water. The prosecution of ­t hose responsible for ­t hese flights was

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significant for being the first juridical pro­cess establishing the use of this as a strategy of extermination. On November 29, 2017, the ESMA megatrial came to a close, with twenty-­ nine perpetrators sentenced to life in prison, and nineteen receiving sentences of eight to twenty-­five years for their role in the brutal repression during the military dictatorship (six ­were acquitted). In the end, two of ­those convicted ­were pi­lots of the death flights, Mario Daniel Arru and Alejandro Domingo D’Agostino. In this way, justice arrived in the land where memory predominated, along with a strong affirmation of what is known as the “right to truth”; this pre­ce­dent developed in response to the phenomenon of forced disappearance, and is supported by the American Convention on ­Human Rights and further reaffirmed through transitional justice mechanisms (such as the CONADEP truth commission), and now the juridical sphere through t­hese ­t rials.22 In many ways, though, this pro­cess of justice started long before the trial. It began with the calls for truth and accountability during the dictatorship years and was l­ater sustained by a ­human rights movement during the periods of impunity and amnesty in the 1980s and 1990s. When the dictatorship ended in 1983, Argentina began a national reckoning with the CONADEP truth commission as a first step in establishing the truth of what took place. That reckoning was disrupted by the amnesty laws and p­ ardons of the 1990s. Recent changes in the early 2000s fi­n ally allowed the retributive justice pro­cess to unfold. More than justice, however, I argue that ­these l­ater ­t rials also offered the survivors and f­ amily members of the victims to have their stories heard in a public forum and officially acknowledged—a powerful vehicle for social repair, just as impor­t ant to ­t hese juridical pro­cesses. Dialog ic M e mory at the E SM A M e gatri al The possibilities for repair within juridical spaces greatly expanded in the early 2000s, when cases like the ESMA megatrial unfolded in a social and po­liti­cal context that advocated for full accountability for perpetrators, allowing witnesses to feel encouraged in their testimony. Even so, danger arose, as in the case of ( Jorge) Julio López, a survivor of the dictatorship who was then dis­appeared in 2006 before he was to testify in the ESMA trial. Despite the advances in ­human rights, this disappearance demonstrated the fragility of justice and democracy. Such trials, though, in addition to justice, have a further social function. The testimonies offered in ­t hese spaces are indeed juridical evidence serving to establish the responsibility of the accused. Yet ­these narratives also become moments of dialogic memory, representing a desire for coherence in the face of ongoing uncertainty, resonant with the vacío noted by Sofía and Carlos noted in chapter 1. I turn now to patterns that developed in the ESMA testimonies that reflect the complex articulations of memory and justice in the juridical space of this



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trial, offering evidence and traces of history as well as memory. ­These accounts derive from the Argentina Trial Monitor (ATM) proceedings, 23 which chronicle the testimonies in the third person, adding another layer of witnessing and instance of dialogic memory. Many of the ­these testimonies offer evidence of the systematic nature of the abuses that took place at the ESMA. For instance, in Andrés Ramón Castillo’s October  3, 2013, testimony, the ATM proceedings capture how he described the role of doctors during torture sessions: He [Castillo] stated that ­there was at least one doctor pre­sent at his kidnapping. The doctors, he clarified, w ­ ere ­there to make sure that the person kidnapped made it out alive to the clandestine center of detention, torture, and extermination. Once at the center, the doctors took part in the torture sessions, so that the kidnapped could be tortured without ­dying as long as the torturers wanted. One of the doctors he saw at the ESMA was Magnacco. He also stated that the ESMA doctors participated in the systematic appropriation of babies. The Marines spoke about their “sarda” (in relation to maternity). As this room was close to the bathroom, they could see what happened inside when they walked by. Some time ­later, the guards began to show them the newborn babies. He remembers seeing around fifteen [babies]. El Gordo Selva (“Fat Selva”) was in charge of finding clothes for the bab[ies] and also of ­l ater [kidnapping] ­t hose same babies. At the ESMA they said that the babies would be given to someone, but they never said to whom. This appears to be a straightforward witness statement—­describing what Castillo observed at the ESMA, including specific details of names of t­hose involved, and describing how doctors and military participated in appropriating babies born to detained w ­ omen. ­These babies w ­ ere then given to military families (the Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo focuses their advocacy on finding ­these missing babies, their grandchildren). However, in addition to ­those who directly observed the vio­lence in the ESMA, witnesses also came forward to testify about ­others who ­were implicated in the ESMA crimes. For instance, on October  15, 2014, Geronimus Wiedenhoff, a pi­lot for a Dutch airline who gave his witness statement from the Netherlands, was interviewed about a cockpit conversation he had had with Julio Poch, who had been a fighter pi­lot in Argentina during the dictatorship years. As captured in the ATM Trial Monitor, Wiedenhoff ’s account demonstrates the unexpected ways in which vio­lence from the past can manifest, and the tensions that inform new spaces of witnessing: The prosecutor asked [Wiedenhoff ] to relate the conversation he had with Julio Poch in an airplane cockpit on April 15, 2005. The witness stated

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that the conversation took place in the cockpit, in an Amsterdam–­Tenerife flight, which was the first flight he shared with Poch. They had to return to Amsterdam ­because t­here was a prob­lem with the aircraft. The plane was repaired in Amsterdam and they w ­ ere able to complete their flight. Wiedenhoff commented that in flights like this one, ­t here is time to talk, so they talked about Argentina and about Julio Poch’s time as a fighter pi ­lot. Wiedenhoff asked Julio about the Madres de Plaza de Mayo. Julio looked at him directly and said, in En­g lish, “They should have killed them all. They should have buried [them].” ­A fter having stated this in En­g lish, he was asked to translate into Dutch, so that the interpreter could legally offer a translation in Spanish. Wiedenhoff continued with his statement and said that he was astonished and frightened by Poch’s reaction. . . . ​They did not talk about that subject for the rest of the flight. They might have spoken about something ­else, but that subject was closed. They landed and then returned to Amsterdam, in a normal flight. This account certainly offers testimony about one of the accused perpetrators—­Julio Poch. Yet it also demonstrates how vio­lence creates new forms of witnessing in unexpected places, just as the pro­cess of testimony reveals its dialogic and negotiated nature. 24 This pro­cess becomes more complex, however, for survivors. Even as the official acknowl­edgment of their traumas may help society move forward, it can also prompt a renewed form of trauma in some cases. In t­hese moments, we see how individual and national healing may also be in tension. One witness, María Elena Monti, testified in June 2015 about the challenges of survival. She described leaving Buenos Aires ­a fter seeing her ­brother kidnapped by the state and then returned tortured. Fleeing from place to place to avoid such detention, she eventually left the city altogether. Yet her f­amily continued to experience constant “surveillance,” and she described her f­amily suffering, and worse: “They received constant threatening telephone calls, telling them that they would ‘dis­appear them all.’ ” She thus lived in a state of internal exile in vari­ous cities, only coming to see her ­family again in the late 1980s. She would discover the story of how her m ­ other died through a newspaper account, as represented in the ATM Trial Monitor h ­ ere: “On June 22, 1983, ­there was an article in the newspaper Clarín with the title ‘No Irregularities at the Morgue.’ The article offered explanations of 106 cases of ‘subversives’ killed in ‘shoot-­outs’; her ­mother was one of the cases. María Elena had been told that her ­mother died of cardiac arrest; she was seen lying on the street around her h ­ ouse. She would ­later learn that the heart attack was caused ­a fter her ­mother was kidnapped and tortured.”



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In addition to describing her own experience of living in hiding, she described the impact of not being able to know about the whereabouts of her ­family—­part of the lived experience of that trauma to which this testimony also attests. An account from Isabel Teresa Cerruti, on October 3, 2013, also details the ways in which her understanding of what is happening as a first-­person survivor occludes certain possibilities of knowing. Her partner, Ernesto Berner, was kidnapped, and she testified to her experiences. The proceedings chronicled in the ATM summarize Cerruti’s testimony as follows: At the time of Ernesto’s kidnapping, Isabel was three months pregnant. That is why she was kept a­ fter her son was born. During that time, she had l­ittle contact with her f­ amily. The few times they saw each other, they met in dif­fer­ent places. Once her son was born, she reestablished contact with her mother-­ i n-­ l aw. . . . . Isabel went first to “El Banco” (“The Bank”) and then to “El Olimpo” (“The Olimpo”). A ­ fter Isabel was freed, she learned that her mother-­in-­law had been kidnapped one week before her own kidnapping. At the time of Ernesto’s disappearance, Isabel thought that he had been taken to “El Atlético,” since it was known to be a clandestine center of detention, torture, and extermination. Only ­a fter the amnesty laws ­were rescinded she learned that he had not been to El Atlético. The Argentinian Forensic Anthropology Team told her that, and her only reaction was to become mute and pale; she could not ask anything. Some time l­ater, she was able to talk to survivors who told her that they had seen Ernesto on January 11, in the basement, sitting in a chair located close to an “operating room,” as if waiting for his turn. Her perspective as a witness is situated in a par­t ic­u ­lar way, and part of the trauma appears in the way she realizes the shifting and evolving nature of her own knowledge about what happened to her. Yet this also demonstrates how she relies on ­others to shape her own sense of the past, signaling another way of framing collective memory. What is of note in ­t hese testimonies is that they are plural and contingent—­ exposing multiple contours of the vio­lence and its aftermath, as well as the ongoing trauma of uncertainty. While this evidence may be used for prosecuting the perpetrators accused of the crimes at the ESMA, it also offers a vision of testimony as a dialogic and collective pro­cess, thereby expanding the bound­a ries of witnessing. This then has implications for how we understand the reshaping of the collective, which is so critical to establishing accountability and repair in the wake of state vio­lence. This additional role of juridical spaces may be especially impor­tant since no single pro­cess can fully resolve the loss at the heart of this vio­lence. This is

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not to diminish the significant advances, which must be acknowledged: in addition to the t­ rials and the public memory proj­ects underway, other notable developments include the recovery of 130 grandchildren (as of 2019) abducted during the time of the dictatorship. But this is a pro­cess of recovery that must continue, as a full resolution may never be pos­si­ble. Further, the juridical pro­cesses that have developed are not perfect; t­ here are trial delays and other challenges, some more notable, like the disappearance of Julio López, a torture victim and witness whose vanis­h ing is still unresolved. In November 2017, the historic ESMA trial came to a close, with forty-­ eight convictions ranging from eight years to life in prison (six defendants ­were acquitted). This represented a historic step forward in the strug­g le for justice and accountability, something which cannot be understated, especially given other challenges related to impunity. Given the fractured nature of survival, memory continues to play an impor­tant role in ­these juridical spaces, with ­trials affording new opportunities for collective accounting and a dialogic pro­cess of recovery. While testimony has certainly been pivotal to transitional justice, we can thus see how crucial such spaces of testimony can be to sustaining the social repair so vital to civil society, even many years a­ fter the vio­lence.25 Citiz e nship and Wit ne s si ng in Juridical S pac e s Despite many advances in ­trials related to the dictatorship, the terrain of justice has been uneven. This stems from impunity in other cases, such as the 1994 AMIA bombing, one of the most significant terrorist attacks in Argentina’s history, which remains unsolved as of this writing despite numerous investigatory efforts. The first trial in the case (2001–2004) focused on twenty-­ two men accused in some form of assisting with the AMIA attack; in the end, no one was convicted, and that investigation was not successful. This trial was considered so problematic that the Inter-­A merican Commission on ­Human Rights of the Organ­ization of American States ruled in 2005 that Argentina had failed to provide justice. In 2015, ten years l­ater, a new trial began, focusing on the obstruction of justice in the case. This second trial concluded in 2019 with ­limited convictions. 26 Several of ­those standing trial ­were found guilty—­including former prosecuting judge Juan José Galeano (sentenced to six years) and former chief of the SIDE—­ A rgentina’s intelligence service—­ Hugo Anzorreguy (sentenced to four and a half years). More notable than who was sentenced was who walked away uncharged: Rubén Beraja, former president of the DAIA (a community organ­ization); and Carlos Menem, the former Argentine president. The ruling affirmed for many Argentines a pattern of impunity in this case, again calling into question the possibility of true justice and accountability.



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In November 2019, the group Memoria Activa returned to the Inter-­A merican Commission on ­Human Rights, asserting that Argentina failed to provide justice. Amidst the ongoing desire for justice, these setbacks reinforce the lack of accountability that has plagued this case for over twenty-­five years; beyond the implications for the AMIA bombing in par­ t ic­ u­ l ar, this also exposes impor­t ant questions about the rule of law in Argentina. ­T here is a pervasive uncertainty that hovers, as no one has taken responsibility for the 1994 act of terror. The investigation and pro­cess of justice have been marred by significant irregularities and corruption, including the 2015 mysterious death of the investigating prosecutor, Alberto Nisman.27 The most recent AMIA trial, focusing on the obstruction of justice in the case, represented a chance to establish some idea of what had happened, at least in the immediate years ­a fter the bombing. ­Those on trial w ­ ere alleged to be involved in vari­ous ways in the problematic investigation of the attack and obstructing justice. F ­ amily members of the victims, including the groups Memoria Activa and A.P.E.M.I.A. (Agrupación para el Esclarecimiento de la Masacre Impune de la AMIA, or Association for the Clarification of the Unpunished AMIA Massacre), w ­ ere a part of the trial pro­cess, both officially and as spectators, dutifully watching the proceedings in the Federal Oral Tribunal Number 2 and hoping for a verdict that would shed some light and offer the promise of justice. Historically, A.P.E.M.I.A. has also sought an investigatory commission as a central mechanism for clarifying the truth of the bombing and its cover-up. A ­ fter four years, the trial concluded with four convictions, including of Judge Galeano and former chief of SIDE Hugo Anzorreguy, but did not establish definitive justice. Now that it is over, it feels as if t­hese groups ­were standing vigil for a justice that may never come. Yet even so, for many of the survivors and f­ amily members of victims, the ongoing strug­g le for justice still played a significant role in helping them establish a sense of po­liti­cal agency. The power of justice resides precisely in its affirmation, and in the per­for­m ance of citizenship (following Diana Taylor). For many activists and survivors, even if the idea of ­actual justice may seem far removed, even as they may lose hope, their vari­ous acts to advocate for justice continue to be a foundation for their activism and citizenship. This happened in the very space of the ­trials themselves, even for citizens who were t­ here as witnesses. In the recent AMIA trial, for instance, in addition to the plaintiffs, representing vari­ous groups of f­amily members such as Memoria Activa, A.P.E.M.I.A., and Familiares y Amigos de las Víctimas del Atentado a la AMIA (­Family Members and Friends of the Victims of the AMIA Attack), the courtroom functioned as a public space, with a gallery available for anyone presenting their document to observe the proceedings. In March 2018, I met Eugenia Bekeris ­there, a visual artist who is a part of an artists’ collective called Dibujos

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3. ​Image of Sara Rus at the ESMA megatrial, 2013. Drawing by Eugenia Bekeris for ­Dibujos Urgentes.

Urgentes (Urgent Drawings). This group was initially founded to chronicle the ­t rials related to crimes against humanity underway in the federal courts, ­later also turning their work to the AMIA trial. Since photography was prohibited, their mission was to use their drawings as a visual register of the proceedings. Eugenia and a team of other illustrators would sit in the audience, b­ ehind the glass, and sketch what they observed in the courtroom. They used ordinary notebooks one can find anywhere and s­ imple pencils to chronicle the dimensions that may not other­w ise appear in the transcripts—­the expression on a face, the moments of humanity and vulnerability that are a part of t­ hese stories as well.28 Eugenia felt connected to multiple genocides. Her f­amily had suffered losses in the Shoah, which informed her interest in the history and some of her creative work, such as drawing portraits of Holocaust survivors. She also felt the story of the dictatorship was her story. She explained that she had lost many companions and felt “part of this generation. So when they started the t­ rials for crimes against humanity, a­ fter [I drew] the portraits of survivors of the Shoah, they invited me to make illustrations of the t­ rials of crimes against humanity. This is b­ ecause you ­were not allowed to film or take photo­g raphs in 2010. So I began drawing.” Part of the reason they prohibited filming or recording was to protect witnesses. “­There was a desaparecido, Julio López,” she told me. “He was a witness and giving his testimony of the torture he had suffered when he was dis­appeared



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and detained. And he was giving his testimony, and the milico, the military officer who was his perpetrator, who is now f­ ree with the 2 × 1 [ruling], he has ­house arrest—­this man threated Julio López, and he dis­appeared again. We never found out what happened to him. Never again.” The “2 × 1” she mentions refers to a 2017 Supreme Court ruling that granted a defendant early release for time served, applying a law used for common crimes to crimes against humanity; though ultimately, the public outcry resulted in a prohibition of using this 2 × 1 law for h ­ uman rights crimes, this exposed the fragility of justice for society, as did Julio López’s disappearance (Zaretsky 2017a). In our interview, Eugenia then continued to reflect on what such a disappearance suggested in the years ­after dictatorship: “The disappearance of a person in democracy—­after having lived through a dictatorship with thousands of dis­appeared—­the disappearance of a person in democracy is overwhelming.” ­Because of this, she said, for the protection of victims as well as genocidaires (genocidas), they prohibited filming and photography during the t­rials, “so [the witnesses] are not vis­i­ble, so they d­ on’t suffer danger in the streets.” Eugenia then brought the same form of witnessing through her visual chronicles to the most recent AMIA trial. Along with other artists, such as María Paula Doberti, Eugenia illustrated the witnesses through hand-­d rawn images and selected excerpts from the testimonies she inscribed in ­those drawings. This is something Eugenia saw as her ongoing obligation as a citizen. Indeed, this AMIA trial, in some ways, represented an impor­tant milestone in the long history of advocacy for justice on the part of the social movements. For another Eugenia (Szejer),29 who was involved in the group Memoria Activa, which formed ­after the 1994 AMIA bombing, she felt they ­were demanding what she called “real justice.” When asked what that meant, she told me, “Justice was finding out who put the dynamite in and who was it that put the bomb ­there. That was the main ­thing [to find out] in order to be able to prosecute them. We did not want vengeance. We wanted justice and we continue demanding justice, even ­after all ­these years.” Yet while Eugenia and ­others believed fiercely in their demands for justice, ­a fter years and years, some also questioned the possibility for achieving that justice, or even arriving at any kind of certainty. In some cases, the possibilities seemed quite remote. Carlos Susevich, who lost his d­ aughter in the 1992 Israeli embassy bombing, in 2003 seemed pessimistic about the possibility of any justice at that point, ­a fter eleven years had passed.30 Carlos unfortunately passed away in 2018, without any justice or accountability in that case. He seemed to know this even in 2003, when in an interview, he responded to my question about justice quite frankly: “Even if apparently ­there may be a trial, all of us know at the foundation that they w ­ ill not discover anything. T ­ here are very high levels of politicians, military, and police who ­w ill block arriving at the truth. But we have an obligation, as I say in all of my speeches, to continue fighting for them to truly clarify what happened.”

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4. ​I mage of Graciela Linial de Furman at the AMIA trial, 2015. Drawing by María Paula Doberti for Dibujos Urgentes.

De siring Truth and Clarity In the case of the dictatorship and the AMIA bombing, in addition to desiring justice, f­ amily members like Carlos wanted to know the truth of what had happened to their f­ amily members and fellow citizens. In many narratives, the idea of clarification arises—­wanting for ­those in power to escalerecer (clarify) what happened, a word that comes up again and again, as if t­here is a fog or some ambiguities that need to be cleared away so that they can see what happened, so that they can know and find the truth, which is being hidden or obstructed by ­those in power. Adriana Reisfeld, a founding member of Memoria Activa, lost her ­sister, Noemí Reisfeld, in the AMIA bombing. Noemí worked in the building as a social worker, and Adriana and her f­amily searched for six days before fi­n ally finding her. When we spoke in 2003 about her hopes for the case, she described how powerfully she felt “the need to find out the truth” of what happened, for her s­ ister’s ­d aughters and all of the ­family members of the victims. 31 The concept of truth and clarification also inspired the work of Laura Ginsberg, who lost her husband, José Enrique “Kuky” Ginsberg, in the bombing. Laura, a founding member of Memoria Activa, included the concept of clarification in the name of the new group she formed ­a fter splitting from Memoria Activa: A.P.E.M.I.A. (Association for the Clarification of the Unpunished Bombing of the AMIA). For years, she has advocated for a truth commission



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related to the AMIA and an opening of the SIDE government archives. 32 This desire for truth exists b­ ecause for many, when they say justice, they mean retributive justice but also an accounting—­e stablishing what actually happened and who was responsible. ­T hese questions remain unanswered over twenty-­five years ­l ater. The lack of certainty, then, represented another kind of void—an absence of the state and an absence of justice. This po­liti­cal void yielded a profound desire for justice and truth that s­haped civil society in the aftermath of the dictatorship and the AMIA bombing, a desire that was palpable for the citizens who joined ­t hese movements. José Blumenfeld was a supporter and active member of Memoria Activa for many years, though he would l­ater leave the organ­ization. I first met José with Diana Wang, a­ fter a Monday morning acto in front of the high courts, but I had seen him often during my time ­t here. He was on their board at the time, and ­a fter some more introductions, he invited me to his home on what happened to be his birthday. For our first interview, José and his wife, Sarita, welcomed me into their enormous apartment near the Plaza del Congreso, offering me food and coffee and treating me with the warmth of a long-­lost relative. I would eventually have more chances to talk to José about his feeling of disappointment vis-­à-­v is his nation of Argentina, and why t­hose actos in Memoria Activa and the advocacy for justice mattered to him. During one of t­hose conversations, he described his feelings about the dictatorship years from his perspective as a parent. His ­children studied at the Colegio Nacional de Buenos Aires, one of the top public secondary schools in Buenos Aires, which also suffered many losses during the dictatorship. The photographer Marcelo Brodsky has produced a power­ful visual work about his own ­brother, Fernando Brodsky, who had been a student at the Colegio and who was dis­appeared. This work, Buena memoria (Good Memory, 1997), focuses on a class photo from 1967, inscribing over it what happened to each of the students in that photo and offering them a “social subjectivity,” as described by David William Foster (2007, 17). The significance of that subjectivity hinged on its response to their disappearances ­u nder the dictatorship, which w ­ ere times of terror for many of the students at the Colegio Nacional de Buenos Aires, as well as their families, as in the case of José: “Our older son started [­there] in the year 1973. And we passed ­t hose years, in relation to them, with a lot of fear, if not terror. We had an attitude, let’s say, [of being] protective, with a lot of attention given to trying to prevent certain kinds of prob­lems, and we ­were u ­ nder the illusion that if [our c­ hildren] had no contact with anyone who was involved in politics, nothing would happen to them. This, however, was an illusion.”33 Of course, many students w ­ ere targeted by the military regime for vari­ous reasons—­ whether they ­were involved or not; as we have seen, it was enough to be considered potentially “subversive” to the national order. 34

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His ­children, however, felt differently about how to respond. They w ­ ere nineteen years old in 1983 when the dictatorship ended: “They always critiqued the way in which we tried to take care of them and protect them—­that we did not have a sufficiently combative attitude against the dictatorship and that we ­didn’t allow them to participate in t­hings. And we tell them, ‘­You’re right. But it ­doesn’t ­matter to us, ­because you are alive. You can reproach us all that you want; we accept it. You are right, but you are also alive.’ ” That tense line between personal safety and one’s sense of citizenship persisted, especially so for a minority; as Jews, their difference has historically exposed them to vio­lence in Argentina. Throughout our interview, José expressed a strong sense of obligation to push Argentina to fulfill its demo­cratic promise and to have a country where one can trust in the rule of law. In 1992, when the Israeli embassy was bombed, José said it affected him greatly b­ ecause he had just been ­t here for a meeting. At the time, he said, “No one thought such an attack would happen.” Two years ­later, when the AMIA bombing took place, it had a profound impact on him: “The AMIA attack produced a tremendous shock, tremendous, very strong, in me. . . . ​I d­ on’t know why I was so affected at the time, but I went ­there, where ­there was a team from Israel to help in the recovery and posttraumatic ele­ment, with psychologists and other specialists. And I went to them and I told them, even though I was not ­t here and I did not know anyone who was killed or wounded, I was in a very bad state.” ­A fter ­going to some sessions with a counselor, in 1996, José ultimately began attending the actos that Memoria Activa had been organ­izing. He told me he “started g­ oing ­because of the g­ reat shock it produced in me. This bombing, which was so terrible, [was] worse than the previous one [the Israeli embassy attack]. B ­ ecause the AMIA attack I perceived as an attack against Judaism that also involved Argentine society itself.” While some attributed it to foreign actors, many questioned why this antisemitic attack happened in Argentina and what role Argentines, locally, had in the bombing, and then subsequently in the botched investigation that has now contributed to over twenty-­five years of impunity. For José at the time, joining Memoria Activa “in front of the Palace of Justice, demanding justice, not having a passive attitude” was vital. “So I started ­going e­ very Monday. It ­wasn’t just to add myself to the movement. This was an internal need of mine. I needed to be in an environment where we demand justice and are also investigating the local connection.” The local connection he referred to was the pos­si­ble involvement of Argentines in carry­ing out and covering up the bombing. Outside of that, ­there are also vari­ous ways in which Iran has been accused of involvement. A controversial Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) was signed with Iran in 2013 (which would l­ater be vacated in 2015). Yet, in ­t hose years, José ultimately left the board of Memoria Activa, partially ­because of its stance on the MOU.



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But before that memorandum, he told me, “Natasha, this is central. If they get the Ira­n i­a ns, or if they ­don’t get the Ira­n i­a ns, that interests me, of course, for humanity and what­ever e­ lse you want. But what ­m atters to me more is how Argentine society behaves ­towards the Jews. This is central for me.” For José, then, justice was not just defined by holding external actors accountable, but also by changing local dynamics in Argentine society. Though he approached this sense of justice as a Jew, it was also interwoven with his sense of citizenship as an Argentine: “As a Jew, I cannot accept impunity, not just in relation to the bombing, but impunity in general.” This re­sis­t ance to impunity, however, did not mean that he had tremendous hope: “I know that the probability that they clarify what happened, when the bombing is now very remote, with so much time having passed—­I am speaking of juridical esclarecimiento (“clarification”) now, and the condemnation from a po­liti­cal perspective—we know that this may not happen. But even though they may have eliminated proof related to clarifying what happened in the bombing, they have not eliminated proof about the cover-up.” And indeed, that cover-up was the subject of the most recent AMIA trial (2015–2019), which has since ended with partial convictions and the ­family members of the victims left not necessarily closer to any kind of truth or clarity about what happened. O n the Li m it s of H ope and Im p unity One may won­der, Why continue advocating for justice if it d­ oesn’t seem pos­si­ble to achieve? Carlos Susevich, whose ­d aughter died in the 1992 Israeli embassy attack, did not have a lot of hope in the possibility of justice when we spoke in 2003. “Deep down,” he told me, “I have no hope. So many years have passed, so much evidence has been lost.”35 As he went on, he wove in the history of the Nazis. Even forty years ­a fter the Holocaust, he said, they [referring to scholars and investigators] w ­ ere able to find material that could help them reconstruct what happened. “But ­here [in Argentina],” he continued, “they ­don’t have the possibility to do that.” And yet, he was firm in his advocacy, telling me, “I continue maintaining the strug­g le b­ ecause I understand that this is the obligation that we have: to continue maintaining the memory alive, no? But at the bottom of my heart, deep down, I know that we w ­ ill never find the truth. We w ­ ill never know for sure, have the security, the certainty, that we have found t­ hose who committed this act.” ­There was a resigned despair in Carlos’s voice as he described this obligation to remember, which he felt was so vital to his life, while understanding the futility of his efforts. Indeed, this only highlighted the liminal nature of such acts of repair in which he and o ­ thers engaged. Living with such uncertainty is a strug­g le that Sofía shared. In 2018, I sat down with her again in her home, asking her many of the same questions that originally anchored our discussions about justice and memory. She told me

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she wants to believe that “good ­people want to live in peace, that they want justice, that they ­don’t want to lose ­f amily members to terrorism, and for that, we have to appeal to memory. And as long as t­here is memory,” she continued, “I believe the AMIA case w ­ ill remain alive.”36 Yet while she believed t­here was a way to keep the AMIA case alive, she was more skeptical about the possibilities for justice, questioning ­whether the trial underway at that point (which would conclude in 2019) would go anywhere. “We already had a trial several years ago,” she said, “that lasted three years and also did not lead to anything. It ­really takes a lot to achieve justice. ­Because ­here, ­there was obstruction from the start. ­There was complicity, ­t here w ­ ere lies, ­t here was lost evidence. . . . ​You c­ an’t get to the truth.” She also felt that the case as a w ­ hole had an almost systematic prob­lem with corruption and impunity. Turning to the death of the prosecutor Alberto Nisman in 2015, she said, “[The investigation] cost Nisman his life. And it is another case that ­w ill march into impunity. ­Because ­after three years, they ­can’t even confirm the precise hour when he was killed.” Justice, for her, was also linked to the possibility of truth. ­There was significant controversy related to the Nisman case, especially surrounding ­whether he was killed or committed suicide, and what his investigation revealed about the truth of the bombing and the pos­si­ble role of Cristina Fernández de Kirchner (president from 2007 to 2015) in relation to justice in the case. In Sofía’s mind, “­there is no doubt that Nisman was killed for the work he was d­ oing.” But more than that, she was concerned by what it represented about the AMIA case and investigation over all: “[The AMIA case] is a cursed case b­ ecause of the obstruction, b­ ecause of its impunity, b­ ecause it led to the death of the prosecutor who was working on the case. And b­ ecause the perpetrators . . . ​­will never come to be held accountable in Argentine justice.” For Sofía, then, while she wants justice, that is not the only t­hing motivating her work. Looking at me across her dining room t­ able, her eyes just as vivid so many years a­ fter our first meeting, she lowered her voice a bit, telling me quietly but firmly, “I have to be honest. If I want to continue fighting it’s ­because that is my way of life, my survival. Since the bombing, I have to carry a light of hope. ­Because if I don’t have hope, I ­don’t have a reason to keep fighting. But I also have to say my truth. The hopes are smaller all the time.” She looked down as she said ­those words. She then continued, lamenting, “I believe I ­w ill die with that uncomfortable feeling that despite all of the strug­g le, we w ­ ill achieve nothing.” Her feeling of despair in the face of the lack of justice may not be resolved. The palpable impact of impunity on the lives of Sofía and other f­amily members of victims and survivors remains. And of course, the AMIA bombing is not the only case of impunity in Argentina. T ­ here are o ­thers that have assumed pivotal roles in the national imaginary, such as the disappearance of



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Julio López in 2006, as well as the 2017 disappearance of the activist Santiago Maldonado during a protest related to indigenous land rights. 37 ­These cases exposed impor­t ant questions about the rule of law in Argentina and revealed a sense that justice was not guaranteed, that one’s trust in the state—as also suggested by Antonius Robben (2018)—­would continue to be precarious, perhaps as a legacy of the dictatorship. C onclusion The ESMA megatrial and the ongoing impunity in the AMIA case represent two symbolic moments that frame what I term an uneven terrain of justice. In the case of the ESMA, the 2012–2017 megatrial established the systematic pattern of crimes against humanity that hundreds of victims suffered during Argentina’s dictatorship. Hundreds of witnesses offered their testimonies, demonstrating the radical plurality of the experience of repression at the ESMA and underscoring the dialogic potential of memory, even within contexts of retributive justice. Certainly this monumental trial ­w ill help establish the history of vio­lence t­here and represent the kind of accountability crucial to the rule of law, as so desired in the original 1985 Trial of the Juntas. On the other hand, the lack of sufficient clarity in the AMIA case demonstrates a deep desire for justice and truth that creates a liminal state of tension as Argentines strug­g le with profound uncertainty. Both the ESMA megatrial and the AMIA cases also affirm the ongoing power of testimony and memory as dialogic pro­cesses that offer spaces of repair for survivors and ­family members of victims, as well as other citizens. The testimonies and proceedings emerging through such ­t rials reflect the plural nature of memory as an evolving social pro­cess that offers a contingent, dialogic sense of the past. In some cases, t­hese t­ rials can offer a tangible form of accounting and justice, as in the ESMA megatrial. Yet this chapter suggests that ­these ­trials have also become another site of memory, along with the monuments, memorials, and national days of remembrance, which Argentines traverse as they move through time. Such pro­cesses, however, are uneven. Even forty years a­ fter the dictatorship, fissures remain, with certain tensions emerging between memory and justice. The ­human rights landscape shifted in Argentina with the presidency of Mauricio Macri (2015–2019). In May 2017, for instance, a Supreme Court ruling (known as the “2 × 1 ruling”) seemed to open the door for lessening the sentences of perpetrators and, from a symbolic perspective, for treating crimes against humanity as ordinary crimes. 38 This ruling prompted fears that the significant reforms of the early twenty-­fi rst ­century could become eroded as the perpetrators convicted of crimes ­were able to seek reduced sentences. Activists also worried that this ruling reflected a shift in the cultural significance of the dictatorship. In response, significant protests that cut across a

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range of groups in civil society brought thousands of citizens to the streets of Buenos Aires. T ­ hese protests ultimately led to the government’s declaration that the 2 × 1 ruling cannot be applied to ­those convicted of crimes against humanity (as we saw in the introduction). And yet what is of interest to my work ­here is how the 2017 protests responding to this 2 × 1 ruling—­t he protests that called “Never again” to impunity—­ involved an active disruption of time, suturing the pre­sent to the past and solidifying the link between memory and pro­cesses of retributive justice and societal repair. T ­ hese embodied disruptions can tell us something about how vio­lence operates through time, challenging temporal coherence and order both during the period of repression and in the aftermath. Indeed, even as t­ hese pro­cesses of justice unfold, some more unevenly than ­others, they display the precarious nature of memory and perhaps the precarity of time itself. This raises questions, then, about the value of testimony and the desire for some kind of coherence in the wake of vio­lence. These processes for Sofía and other ­f amily members of victims of po­liti­cal vio­lence perhaps was another kind of passage, a passage that may appear liminal. In the midst of uncertainties and questions, Sofía and other f­ amily members of victims would return to the certainties of dates and sites of memory. It is as if they w ­ ere approaching a threshold—­the possibility of moving on to another state of justice (for ­those with the hopes of attaining that kind of justice) or moving on to a state of narrative order or coherence (within the framework of trauma). Indeed, this notion of a par­tic­u ­lar kind of passage is implicit in normative understandings of transitional justice, as argued by Alexander Hinton (2010, 5). Yet we see ­here that perhaps these citizens and survivors are in a state of perpetual transition, into a justice or truth that may never come. The question, then, becomes what such juridical accounting may accomplish in relation to the question of repair at the heart of survival. What emerges when looking closely at t­ hese ­t rials and the testimonies is an understanding of vio­lence and its aftermath as a lived experience that does not unfold in a linear way. ­These fractured temporalities then invite us to consider the possibilities of restoration and repair within retributive models of justice, to consider the value of juridical spaces as sites where memory and narrative are produced and a certain rendering of the collective becomes manifest. Such opportunities for actively engaging with the past become even more significant for a society that remains in a state of perhaps perpetual transition from po­l iti­cal repression and vio­lence, demonstrating the ongoing salience of memory for sustaining democracy. ­These movements and memorial practices might generate a certain form of retributive justice and accounting in the f­ uture, a pro­cess certainly valuable for some forms of closure. Yet within this new landscape of justice, which includes both ­human rights ­trials and ongoing impunity, memory becomes dialogic, reflecting a pro­cess of making meaning as an evolving state of becoming



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(following Bakhtin). I won­der, then, can we look at t­ hese narrative and commemorative returns as acts of repair? If we consider Victor Turner’s notions of liminality (1967) as also offering transformation and insight, some version of a sustained liminality can perhaps have a value in its own right. Can liminality play an important role in repair, even if it is not a transition to something else? And what power might it hold for those who may never be able to find the justice, the coherence, or the truth so desired?

C hap te r 3

Disruption and Agency in the Public Sphere

It was late after­noon on a Saturday in March 2018, with fewer p­ eople than usual in the other­w ise busy downtown courts area in Buenos Aires. I knew this area well, since the Plaza Lavalle was the same space where Memoria Activa used to hold its regular weekly protests a­ fter the AMIA bombing. I spent many such Mondays with them during t­ hese actos, when the group would demand both memory for the victims and justice on their behalf. In the pro­cess, they also established a collective space for public testimony. They even called this the Plaza de la Memoria, their Plaza of Memory, on the Monday mornings they would gather ­there, to mark the day of the week and time at which the bombing occurred—­Monday, July 18, 1994 at 9:53 a.m. But on that March day, in 2018, the plaza was filled with something else—­ the sounds and sights of an escrache. This is the name given to the protests that have been taking place in Argentina since the 1990s to demand accountability and justice for the perpetrators of dictatorship abuses. They have been largely or­ga­n ized by the group H.I.J.O.S., comprised of activists whose parents ­were dis­appeared during the 1976–1983 dictatorship, when they themselves w ­ ere just ­children. ­These escraches w ­ ere not ordinary protests—­people would loudly dance and shout in front of the homes of the perpetrators. In this way, activists sought to disrupt their lives, challenging their ability to live, walk around, and just enjoy life as if they had never committed the acts of torture and repression in the past. Yet escraches also disrupted the calm of a society that could live with such vio­lence and impunity in its midst. Indeed, they also hoped to raise awareness so that the perpetrators could be punished and never again would the state be able to perpetuate such vio­lence. Such disruption, then, became an impor­t ant way to sustain memory. When H.I.J.O.S. first formed in the 1990s and began using escraches as its form of protest, Argentina was in a period of impunity, where perpetrators walked freely in the streets ­because of the amnesty laws that protected them from prosecution. In response, h ­ uman rights groups like the Madres de Plaza de Mayo actively maintained their presence in the public sphere. The ­children 66



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of the dis­appeared also took to the streets, choosing to focus their protests on exposing the perpetrators by playing loud ­music and marching to their homes, advising their neighbors that a perpetrator lived near them. They thus challenged the notion that life could ever be normal for them again—in the way that their own lives, as ­children of ­those dis­appeared, had also been forever disrupted (see D. Taylor 2006). As we have seen, in the early 2000s, the landscape of justice shifted, with amnesty laws overturned and new prosecutions of perpetrators underway. By 2018, the climate of impunity was not as pervasive as when the escraches first started in the 1990s. Yet this modality of protest remained in Argentina as a cultural and po­l iti­cal practice citizens engaged to express their dissent at times when impunity returned, hovering again on the horizon. On March  17, 2018, days before the March  24 commemoration of the coup on the official Day of Remembrance for Truth and Justice, I stood with hundreds of Argentines in front of the high courts in the Plaza Lavalle preparing to march together to the home of one of the perpetrators, a man named Jorge Luis Magnacco, whom they knew as the “ladrón de bebés”—­the baby thief. This was the same Magnacco described in the ESMA megatrial by Andrés Ramón Castillo as one of the doctors who ­were involved in the appropriation of babies (see chapter 2). Magnacco was the obstetrician at the ESMA torture center, responsible for overseeing the ­labor of pregnant detainees. The babies ­were then taken away and given to military families, who raised them without ever telling them their history, though some would discover their true background through the advocacy of the Abuelas. As we walked down the streets, the m ­ usic began, the drums beating consistently. Soon, ­people started singing and shouting one of the traditional chants from ­t hese protests: Olé, olé. Olé, olá. Olé, olé. Olé, olá. Como a los Nazis, les va a pasar. A donde vayan, los iremos a buscar. A common song, with a rhythm that often pulses in other popu­lar events, like soccer games, it ends with a return to the past: “Just like the Nazis, it ­will happen to them. Wherever they go, we w ­ ill search for them.” ­These same words I remembered from a protest in 2004, on the tenth anniversary of the AMIA attack. On the night before that anniversary, in the darkness and cold of the Argentine winter, Memoria Activa convened a march from the Plaza Lavalle—­their Plaza of Memory—to the site of the bombing on Pasteur Street, with the many marchers all singing the same song about finding the perpetrators. “Just like the Nazis . . . ,” they sang, as we marched down the darkened streets. “Olé, olé. Olé, olá.”

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During the Magnacco escrache in 2018, ­these words, this language, tapped into the deeper stakes at play in that moment for the ­human rights movement. ­T hese words invoked questions of historical justice and accountability and underscored the role of citizens on the ground in sustaining the call and pursuit of justice: “los iremos”—­the use of the collective “we” is significant h ­ ere. It is through ­t hese acts that the normal continuity of time-­space was disrupted, and a sense of a collective “we” inscribed into public space again. Such activism helped generate and build a nation premised on the idea of Nunca más—­ “Never again.” At the heart of this was the idea of a nation whose democracy had been founded on a po­liti­cal culture of activism. Such a robust civil society would ideally ensure that never again would the society endure the brutal repression, torture, killings, and disappearances that characterized the dictatorship. That same desire to disrupt the public sphere, to call attention to the ongoing lack of justice, also s­ haped the responses to the 1994 AMIA bombing, which brought citizens to the plazas and streets of Buenos Aires in their pursuit of justice. T ­ hese post-­A MIA movements also sought to disrupt the flow of time and space, traversing the same pathways as the Madres de Plaza de Mayo and the H.I.J.O.S. Such acts of disruption, I argue, served as sites of agency, becoming opportunities for Argentines to reassert their citizenship at a time of juridical and po­liti­cal precarity. As forms of agency, then, they also disrupt the everyday and a certain normative temporality. Indeed, when viewed together, ­t hese protests, which have brought thousands of citizens to the streets of Buenos Aires, suggest an urgency over how to understand the past, an urgency that situates memory, and perhaps time itself, as both power­f ul and si­mul­t a­neously precarious. This notion of a precarious memory and temporality challenge the flattening of the past embedded in the premises of what Alexander Hinton describes as “transitional justice time” where “violent pasts are delimited and narrowed” (2013, 87). The dynamic nature of that past as it moves in and out of the scope and visions of con­temporary needs posits a temporality that resists any ­simple teleologies. This also challenges normative assumptions that may exist in transitional justice about pro­g ress and time, assumptions which often inform truth commissions and retributive justice pro­cesses. And yet even as ­these practices may disrupt normative temporalities, and ways in which we understand time, they also have become impor­tant modalities of repair that reveal the ways in which cultural practices inform concepts of transition and survival. In this chapter, the questions of liminality and repair I have been exploring in narrative testimony and the juridical sphere are now examined through protests in public spaces. More specifically, I examine what the use of the public sphere can tell us about the desire for and possibilities of repair. The emphasis is on key protagonists in social movements, including Memoria Activa and the group Ciudadanos de la Plaza (Citizens of the Plaza), which staged weekly protests



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at the plaza facing the high courts of Argentina, in addition to the ongoing activism of Madres de Plaza de Mayo and H.I.J.O.S. I begin with an overview of memory-­based social movements in Argentina, then turning to the movements that formed in response to the 1994 AMIA Bombing. This follows with an exploration of testimony and agency in ­these public actos, which help gesture ­toward repair while also disrupting the continuities of time—­ something we ­w ill also see through memorials and public sites of memory in chapter 4. In this way, I argue that disruption has become critical to citizenship and democracy—­a disruption that operates through time and space. And yet, as in other acts of repair, we see how such disruptions also sustain liminality as a space of possibility and discovery, as well as representing a kind of agency and possible transformation. ­ ase d Soc i al M ove m e nt s M emory- B in Arge nti na The movement of the Madres de Plaza de Mayo arose in 1977, a year a­ fter the beginning of the military dictatorship that ruled Argentina u ­ ntil 1983, a brutal period of terror that resulted in the death and disappearance of an estimated 30,000 victims. The w ­ omen who formed this group originally met in hallways of government offices (Navarro 1989; Robben 2010 and 2018) and de­cided to publicly protest the government at a time when few o ­ thers would venture to criticize the dictatorship in any way (Schirmer 1994). Other ­human rights groups existed, such as the Movimiento Judío por los Derechos Humanos ( Jewish Movement for H ­ uman Rights) and CELS (Centro de Estudios Legales y Sociales or Center for L ­ egal and Social Studies); a select number of newspapers also published critiques of the dictatorship (Brysk 1994). Yet at the time, few dared to challenge the ruling junta publicly as the Madres did, who put their individual bodies at risk in a public way. Most of t­hese ­mothers lacked prior po­liti­cal experience but chose to challenge—to transgress—­the bound­a ries of their lives that ­limited their positions, be it as ­house­w ives or citizens who sat in ­silent ac­cep­tance and submission to the military rulers who told them that their ­children must have just “dis­appeared.” When they had few other resources available to them u ­ nder the military dictatorship, they turned to their bodies—­g athering in the Plaza de Mayo to march ­every week in the central plaza of Buenos Aires, facing the Casa Rosada, the presidential palace. They wore ­simple white headscarves, stitching their ­children’s names and the date they ­were dis­appeared into the cloth, making it their own. Some also took images of their ­children, photo­g raphs they wore as pins or placed on larger posters they wore on their bodies, thereby affirming the lives of their c­ hildren. They held their protests in the Plaza de Mayo to not only demand the truth about what happened to their ­children but also to disrupt the illusion of normalcy that surrounded them during the dictatorship, a disruption they felt they needed to perform with

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their bodies in what Diana Taylor described as “disappearing acts” (1997), with spectacle becoming a central modality of ­t hese protests. As explored in ­earlier chapters, during ­these years of state repression, 1976–1983, the junta leaders undertook a war against what they perceived to be subversion. They perceived this war as necessary to preserve their vision of order. To achieve that order, they kidnapped, detained, tortured and killed citizens, committing crimes against humanity and what some consider genocide (D. Feierstein 2014). Their campaign of terror ultimately left a profound impact on Argentina as a nation, both in terms of the estimated 30,000 killed and in the way it would shape the development of civil society and democracy in the aftermath. Although several ­factors ultimately led to the collapse of the dictatorship (including defeat in the Falkland Islands War and the economic collapse; Brysk 1995), the Madres played an impor­tant role in raising international awareness and eventual critique, thereby redefining the face of civil society, the ­human rights movement, and the nature of public citizenship ­after democracy. Of course, other ­human rights groups (as noted above) ­were also pivotal to raising awareness, along with international organ­izations, such as Amnesty International; to some extent, the diplomacy of the United States and other nations helped advocate for change (see Zaretsky 2017b). Yet ­here I want to emphasize the significance of the Madres and their regular, weekly protests in symbolically central public spaces as a modality for both protest and citizenship. Such protests w ­ ere an impor­t ant backdrop to other pro­cesses of justice. As already noted, despite advances in transitional justice (like the CONADEP), the amnesty laws heralded an era of impunity in the 1990s that only reinforced the significance of memory and advocacy for h ­ uman rights groups ( Jelin 2003). A ­ fter the dictatorship ended, the Madres de Plaza de Mayo continued to march on Thursdays. Other groups, such as the Abuelas, dedicated their advocacy to searching for their missing grandchildren, born to parents who w ­ ere dis­appeared and detained and then placed, usually, with military families (as of 2019, 130 grandchildren had been found and re­u nited with their biological families).1 It was in the 1990s that the H.I.J.O.S. also formed,, engaging in escraches as a form of activism to expose perpetrators in their daily lives, something seen again in 2018 with the escrache against Magnacco. The 1990s, then, w ­ ere a time of pronounced impunity for perpetrators of ­human rights crimes that also galvanized ­human rights activism. During ­t hose years of impunity, two terrorist attacks took place: the 1992 bombing of the Israeli embassy in Buenos Aires and the 1994 bombing of the AMIA. The 1992 attack resulted in twenty nine dead, and was largely considered a ­m atter for the state of Israel to investigate. The AMIA attack, however, targeted an Argentine mutual aid society. With eighty five dead and hundreds wounded, this was considered the worst act of terrorism in Argentina’s history and one of the most significant antisemitic attacks since World War II. What



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has been striking over the last twenty-­five years is that although international actors have been accused, no one has come forward, as of this writing, to claim responsibility for the 1994 bombing. While the international perpetrators are of interest, many of the activists find what they call the “local connection” even more impor­tant, as it exposes impor­tant fissures in the rule of law in Argentina. Further, they also blame the overall climate of impunity for creating the conditions that made a bombing pos­si­ble, especially given what they perceive to be a lack of response to the 1992 attack in the form of investigation and justice. As described in chapter 2, the investigations of the AMIA bombing ­were so problematic, they resulted in condemnations from the Inter-­A merican Commission on H ­ uman Rights (2005), and despite two t­ rials (2001–2004 and 2015–2019), many activists do not feel they resulted in a full accounting or prosecution of t­ hose responsible. What followed immediately ­a fter the bombing for Jewish Argentines was a sense of profound precarity—­a physical vulnerability that hinged on their po­liti­cal vulnerability. The failure of the state to provide justice left a power­ ful mark, making citizens feel quite vulnerable and exposed. In response to the 1994 attack, following the modalities of the Madres de Plaza de Mayo and other memory-­based ­human rights movements, Jewish Argentines took to the streets to protest the lack of justice and remember the victims. T ­ hese movements, I argue, transformed the public sphere through embodied practices that located agency and memory in the presence of citizens in symbolically central public spaces, becoming sites for their efforts to reshape time and the po­liti­cal imagining of their nation in the wake of vio­lence. Transformi ng the P ubl i c Sph e re Since the Madres first started marching in the Plaza de Mayo in 1977, ­t here have been impor­t ant changes to their movement, including a division in their group that split them into the Madres de Plaza de Mayo and the Madres de Plaza de Mayo–­Linea Fundadora (Founding Line).2 Despite t­ hese changes, they have sustained the central Plaza de Mayo as a key site for protest and disruption, continuing to march ­every Thursday after­noon for over forty years and generating this protest itself as central to the subjectivity of citizenship and civil society in Argentina. Such modalities of protest would also inspire the social movements that formed ­a fter the July 18, 1994, AMIA bombing. The After­noon of the Umbrellas The first major protest took place just three days ­after the July  18, 1994 AMIA attack, on July  21, 1994, with thousands of p­ eople convening in the Plaza del Congreso—­a very short distance from the Plaza de Mayo. That protest would ­later come to be called the Tarde de los Paraguas, the After­noon of the Umbrellas, ­because of the rain that after­noon. I first saw images of this in the archives of the Centro de Documentación e Información sobre Judaísmo

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5. ​“Tarde de los Paraguas”/“After­noon of the Umbrellas”—­Acto in the Plaza del Congreso (Congressional Plaza), July 21, 1994. Photo by M. Eugenia Romero. Courtesy of the AMIA Centro de Documentación e Información sobre Judaismo Argentino Marc Turkow/Marc Turkow Center for Documentation and Information about Argentine Judaism.

Argentino Marc Turkow (the Marc Turkow Center for Documentation and Information about Argentine Judaism), located in the reconstructed AMIA building, where grainy black-­and-­white images displayed a sea of umbrellas, with ­people holding large signs and banners that read, “Hoy todos somos judíos”—­We are all Jews. In the days a­ fter suffering mass vio­lence and destruction, this protest reflected the need many found to be physically pre­sent in public spaces as citizens, to grieve together and demand a way forward. Just as Daniel described in chapter 1 his need to go to the Plaza de Mayo with his ­d aughters when the dictatorship ended, that same urgency to be pre­sent led many to go to the Plaza del Congreso ­after the bombing. One such person was Elena Pavlotzky, 3 a dentist who, though born in Uruguay, had been living with her c­ hildren for several years in Buenos Aires. In 1992, when the Israeli embassy was bombed, Elena was still in Uruguay. But when the AMIA building was destroyed in 1994, she was already residing in Buenos Aires. She remembered that day quite well ­because she told me July 18 is a holiday in Uruguay and that it was a Monday. Elena’s dad and her friends w ­ ere planning to visit her in Buenos Aires, and a friend’s d­ aughter was



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t­here for a week b­ ecause the winter vacations ­were underway: “That morning, I was taking [my friend’s d­ aughter] to the port [to return to Uruguay], and I remember that we d­ idn’t know why—­today we can know why—­they closed the entry to the center. . . . ​A nd I remember that the ­whole r­ide we ­were talking, and I d­ idn’t turn the radio on, and I dropped them off at the port, and I d­ idn’t get out [of the car].” She then turned back home, and only then, she said, “did I turn on the radio and I started to hear what happened.” At this moment in her account, t­here was a shift in tense—­she moved from using the past tense to being suddenly immersed in the pre­sent. She said it was about 10:30 or 11:00, so about an hour ­a fter the bombing happened: “I turn on the radio and I ­don’t understand anything of what they are saying. ­They’re talking about the attack, about the wounded, and I think [to myself ], ‘It ­isn’t the anniversary of the embassy [attack]—­I ­don’t understand what is ­going on!’ And only when I get home and turn on the tele­v i­sion, that is when I found out [about the bombing].” When she got home, the person in her apartment told her that even the “win­dows ­were vibrating,” though the attack was thirty blocks away. She described the aftermath as follows: [It was] horrible, ­because it was an overwhelming pain. I d­ idn’t know many ­people at the time h ­ ere in Argentina, except for a friend ­here and ­there. And I started to find out about ­people who had died who ­were friends of my friends; p­ eople from Montevideo called me to tell me someone’s son died. Norma Lew [one of the victims] was a friend of a friend, and [my friend] asked me to find out [what may have happened], but you ­couldn’t find anything out at that time b­ ecause no one knew anything. I spent the time calling everywhere—­sanitoriums, hospitals—it was horrible. It was horrible, horrible. I remember this t­oday and my hair still stands on end. Horrible. In the midst of that search for information and the horror of ­those days, Elena went to the protest at the Plaza del Congreso, what came to be known as the After­noon of the Umbrellas: A few days ­later, it was ­really power­f ul; it was raining so much, and in the Plaza del Congreso, it was filled with p­ eople. We w ­ ere all t­here. We all went, with the kids, every­one went to this acto, and it was r­ eally power­ ful. A horrible pain. I remember I just had the urge to cry. It was all horrible. It seemed that every­one went to the acto that day. And ­a fter that, in general, I go to the AMIA actos on July 18 ­every year. This acto generated an opening for Elena to engage publicly with the loss she felt that day, one shared by many other Jews in Argentina who sought to find a way forward through such activism, which became one of the pos­si­ble acts of repair as they faced the pain and loss of that day.

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Memory at Pasteur Street, the Site of Destruction In the same period that Elena was trying to make sense of the bombing, many ­others ­were struggling with the loss of their ­children, their husbands, their wives, their ­sisters and ­brothers in the attack. ­T hese ­family members ­were grappling with a personal tragedy that would also then become a po­liti­ cal tragedy for them as citizens whom their state failed. In the weeks that immediately followed the bombing, as she described to me in chapter 1, Sofía told me that she could barely leave her apartment. But she did go to the site of the bombing, to mourn the loss of her d­ aughter, accompanied by other f­ amily members of the victims. The photos in the archives show what this space looked like for t­ hese men and w ­ omen, a site of destruction and emptiness lined by just one makeshift wall, black, bearing the names of the victims spray-­painted in white. ­These ­family members eventually formed the group Familiares y Amigos de las Víctimas del Atentado a la AMIA that for the first years ­after the bombing or­ga­n ized commemorative actos ­every month on the eigh­teenth; they also came to be more associated with the official community leaders than Memoria Activa whose members would meet on Mondays and position themselves outside of the institutional community structures. Both of the groups, however, sought memory and justice, and their supporters ­were many—­convoking f­amily members and other citizens who may not have lost anybody in the attack but who saw this as part of the greater strug­g le against impunity in Argentina. In t­ hose years, impunity remained an urgent question in Argentina, with amnesty laws for dictatorship crimes reinforcing the importance of h ­ uman rights advocacy. Like the Madres de Plaza de Mayo, ­these post-­A MIA movements felt a desire for repair in response to such collective trauma and loss. The Familiares y Amigos de las Víctimas convened an acto e­ very month on the eigh­teenth to commemorate the July 18 bombing. They would typically begin by voicing the name of each victim (followed by “Presente” from ­those gathered), and then someone would place a flower in a stand engraved with the words justice and memory and light a candle in memory of ­those who died. ­A fter a speech usually given by a f­amily member, they would end the acto with the Kaddish, the Jewish mourner’s prayer, thus incorporating Jewishness into the public sphere in new ways; they thereby also responded to the crisis of belonging prompted by the bombing, which forced many Jewish Argentines to question their place in the nation given the failure of the state to investigate the attack and a sense that society at large did not necessarily consider the lack of justice to be their issue as well (Zaretsky 2008a). When we first met in 2002, Sofía introduced me to several other f­amily members of victims from the group, including Luis Czyzewski.4 Luis, a dynamic middle-­aged man, was a certified public accountant with his own firm but also worked for the AMIA, together with his wife. On the morning of the bombing



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he was in the building with his wife, and one of their ­d aughters, Paula, who had been ­t here to help them. They had sent her to pick up an order of coffee when the bomb exploded. Luis described ­those first days as a “shock,” and at first, he could not bring himself to participate in the actos or other instances of collective mourning. His wife, however, did participate, and a­ fter several months, he too started to attend the monthly actos, even speaking at the one-­year anniversary of the bombing. ­O thers who had survived the bombing found it more diff icult to return. Daniel, who survived the bombing, as we saw in chapter 1, did not immediately go to actos. It was only two or three months l­ater that he started connecting with o ­ thers and learning that they w ­ ere ­family members of victims. He told me, “And we said, okay, we have to do something, b­ ecause we have to do something to demand clarif ication, to ask for justice” So they started getting together, and they created the group of ­family members and friends of the victims. He continued: “We resolved to have an acto ­e very eigh­teenth. We ­were the ­l ittle group that started it, that resolved that on e­ very eigh­teenth ­there would be an acto. And on November 18, 1994, we convened the f irst acto.” 5 Even if t­hese actos, occurring in public space, w ­ ere part of broader challenges to impunity by h ­ uman rights movements, for many of t­hese survivors and f­amily members, they ­were also anchored in their personal desire for remembering and justice. Daniel told me that they de­cided to make their actos public, with p­ eople speaking. They ­later start incorporating candles into their actos, which eventually became an impor­tant part of the ritual: “And ­little by ­little, we went on, ­u ntil this became an institution. This acto of the eigh­teenth ­really is an institution, and we had a lot of p­ eople coming, including media and tele­v i­sion, and it became well-­k nown.” Yet even as they created this institution, with more and more p­ eople interested, they also defined the limits of what it would become. From the beginning, they wanted to preserve this as a place for f­amily members and friends of the victims, as well as survivors. Daniel told me, “They had to be on the same level as the p­ eople. B ­ ecause, well, we had our reasons. We thought that this was ours, no? That it s­houldn’t be used by po­liti­cal institutions or po­liti­cal parties. And every­one respected that, and this is how it went.” And from that point forward, on July 18, Daniel told me that even when deputies and senators and ministers came, they would not go up on the platform. The only exception was Néstor Kirchner, ­because he was the first president who came to an acto, Daniel said. Of course, this does not mean that t­hese actos did not become politicized. Yet ­here, what stands out is how family members of victims and survivors perceived them as spaces of memory that also reinscribed the place of Jewish Argentines as citizens in the public sphere; this can also be considered as an act of po­l iti­cal repair in response to the crisis of belonging generated by the bombing.

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6. ​Familiares y Amigos de las Víctimas del Atentado a la AMIA—­n ineteenth anniversary of AMIA bombing, July 18, 2013. Photo by Natasha Zaretsky.

Reclaiming the Space of Justice Memoria Activa represented another group of f­ amily members of the victims and their supporters that formed a­ fter the AMIA bombing to demand justice. They convened weekly actos, situating them precisely in front of the high courts, emphasizing even further that this case was not just about memory, but fundamentally about justice. The group was initially comprised of ­family members of victims and concerned members of the community who felt they could not wait for the authorities to provide them with the justice and truth that they needed. At first they gathered in silence in front of the courts, ­later moving across the street to the Plaza Lavalle. This plaza was a symbolic choice, according to Enrique Burbinski, one of the founding members, reflecting what he called the need for an in­de­pen­dent judiciary for the investigation into the bombing.6 They also invited ­people to give their testimonies about their own experiences with impunity or reflections on the bombing. They thus echoed the CONADEP truth commission, which had only ten years ­earlier completed its Nunca Más report. In this case, while the actos of Memoria Activa ­were not the same as a formally convened truth commission, they did represent a grassroots space for developing a series of collected truths that faced off quite directly with the Argentine judiciary, creating an evolving narrative resisting the silence and impunity they felt emanated from the courts. This desire for truth inspired many of the transitional justice pro­cesses in Latin Amer­i­ca. In the 1990s, the early years of t­ hese post-­A MIA social movements, public memory remained an impor­tant force for establishing a social accounting and truth that s­ haped a form of repair and transition from the vio­ lence of state repression (1976–1983) and terrorism (1990s). However, I argue



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that the trauma of ongoing impunity created a need to protest regularly, as Argentines found themselves in a pro­cess of perhaps perpetual transition ­towards a justice that may never arrive. Within this framework, we can view Memoria Activa’s Monday actos (commemorating the Monday on which the bombing took place), which demanded both memory and justice. On t­hose Mondays, they also performed a dif­fer­ent vision of society, a dif­fer­ent model of citizenship that offered an alternative tribunal for justice and a place for citizens to tell their stories. ­T hese actos also resonated with the activism of the Madres de Plaza de Mayo, as detailed in Diana Taylor’s seminal work Disappearing Acts (1997), in the use of bodies to challenge the state and disrupt the possibility of disappearing histories and experiences. One of the found­ers of Memoria Activa, Rabbi Sergio Bergman, became the group’s spokesperson in the early years. Rabbi Bergman, then the leader of one of the few Reform synagogues in Buenos Aires, was young and charismatic.7 When he was still active with Memoria Activa, his name was mentioned quite often with that of Rabbi Daniel Goldman, who led the largest Conservative synagogue, Bet El, and was a disciple of Rabbi Marshall Meyer. Rabbi Goldman was also very involved in questions of social justice, and in that regard, he followed in the legacy of Rabbi Meyer, a North American who helped advocate for ­human rights during the dictatorship and served on the CONADEP truth commission.8 While both Memoria Activa and Familiares y Amigos de las Víctimas fought for memory and justice, they had dif­fer­ent approaches to their advocacy. Familiares wanted to keep the AMIA case separate from the other cases of injustice in Argentina. Memoria Activa, instead, emphasized the connection between the AMIA bombing and the history of impunity in Argentina—­going back to the dictatorship and continuing on to more recent events, such as the murder of the journalist José Cabezas in 1997. However, according to Luis Czyzewski, Familiares did not want to combine what happened with other cases of injustice. Further, the groups had dif­fer­ent strategies, with Memoria Activa interested in pursuing international remedies for justice (such as its appeal to the Inter-­A merican Commission on ­Human Rights). With Familiares more closely affiliated with the official Jewish community organ­izations, Memoria Activa viewed itself as more autonomous in their approach.9 At issue was how to understand and define the bombing, an impor­tant aspect of the way they w ­ ere trying to make sense of the attack and position their po­liti­cal strategy and advocacy for justice in the case. Such divisions also occurred in the Madres de Plaza de Mayo, who split into two groups, as noted above. This pro­cess reflects how memories of vio­lence often become the site of strug­g le for redefining civil society ( Jelin and Kaufman 2000). As sociologist Elizabeth Jelin argues (2002; 2003; 2017), memory requires a form of ­labor that is constitutive of demo­cratic citizenship, and contestation can be indicative

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of a healthy democracy. Indeed, such contestation became a necessary dimension of the activism in the weekly actos of Memoria Activa, as they sought to find justice for the victims of the bombing. “Yo Acuso”: A Division Develops It is instructive to look more closely at how the internal division between Memoria Activa and Familiares y Amigos de las Víctimas took place, to understand how a community reshapes itself in the face of trauma. It was prompted by Laura Ginsberg’s 1997 speech during the third anniversary of the bombing. On that day, July 18, 1997, Laura publicly confronted the government in a way that the official Jewish community leaders found troubling. In what became known as her “Yo Acuso” speech, she accused President Menem of being responsible for not investigating the AMIA bombing and covering up what had happened. Indeed, as explored in chapter 4, this narrative became a key site of memory within a larger field of public monuments and commemorations. This was the first time a group had publicly denounced the conduct of the investigation and criticized the president and authorities. According to Laura, ­a fter she gave this speech, the leaders of the AMIA and DAIA requested that Memoria Activa apologize for insulting the president.10 The group refused, whereas Familiares stood with the AMIA and DAIA (the institutions that traditionally represented the Jewish community to the state), thus creating the division. This moment represented a watershed, the first time that the Jewish community, or any segment thereof, had actually stood up to the state and accused it of being responsible for the impunity surrounding the AMIA bombing and, further, of being involved in the “local connection”—­a term that Laura Ginsberg, the familiar who read the speech, continues to use as a central part of her claims against the state (through her new group, A.P.E.M.I.A.). In the immediate aftermath, the presidents of the DAIA and AMIA allegedly met with President Menem and apologized to him, ­ a fter he demanded an apology. Memoria Activa refused, separating itself from the Jewish community leadership. Some ­family members of victims did not agree with the policy of confronting the state directly and ­stopped attending the Monday actos in the plaza. The Monday actos, however, continued (which we w ­ ill explore l­ater in this chapter). Eventually, Laura Ginsberg would also leave Memoria Activa and form her own group, A.P.E.M.I.A., in 2002. She continued to fight for justice, but also emphasized truth. As she told me in an interview in 2014, “We believe ­there is a possibility to know the truth—­this is our work ­today. An investigatory commission in this country—to open the archives—is the ­battle we are choosing in t­ hese years.” Though skeptical of “memory,” as it has become manipulated by vari­ous groups in power (including community leadership, in her view), she said her wish and hope was for truth.11



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Despite their divisions, t­hese groups participated in the t­rials that developed ­a fter the attack. During the first trial (2001–2004), the ­family members of the victims ­were divided into two plaintiff groups. One part of the querella ( judicial complaint) was represented by Memoria Activa, which had its own attorney who was paid using donations collected through fund­r ais­i ng, whereas the Familiares, together with the AMIA and the DAIA, was represented by a separate attorney. In the second trial (2015–2019), several groups ­were represented, including Memoria Activa, 18-­J (another group of ­family members, friends, and survivors of the AMIA bombing, whose name stands for July 18, the date of the bombing), A.P.E.M.I.A., the AMIA and DAIA. The complex relationship that developed among t­ hese groups often hinged on their relationship to the state. Historically, many criticized the way the DAIA leadership had acted during the dictatorship, suggesting they chose to sustain diplomatic relations with the state instead of trying to fight for the release of Jewish victims of the po­liti­cal repression (Gurevich 2005). In the aftermath of the bombing of the AMIA, some accused the DAIA of taking on a more conciliatory relationship with the state (Gurevich 2005; Melamed 2000).12 The divisions among the groups also translated into the geographic positioning of the protests. When I first arrived in 2001, Memoria Activa and Familiares held separate actos on the July 18 anniversary that symbolically situated them in dif­fer­ent ways vis-­à-­v is the vio­lence: Memoria Activa in front of the high courts; Familiares firmly in front of the AMIA building (and in affiliation with the Jewish community leadership). Yet traditionally, Memoria Activa would hold its large annual acto on the Monday closest to the July anniversary, leaving the date of July 18 to the Familiares group to hold their acto at the site of the bombing (their usual place for monthly actos). The year 2014, however, marked one of the first times that Memoria Activa chose to hold its acto at the same exact time as the annual anniversary acto, forcing Argentines to have to choose between the two sites. Unlike Memoria Activa and Familiares, A.P.E.M.I.A. did not hold regularly occurring actos but has or­ga­n ized actos on the July  18 anniversary, though it has chosen other sites, such as the Plaza de Mayo. This symbolically reflected Laura Ginsberg’s ideology—­t hat the AMIA bombing is not a Jewish question but a question about impunity in Argentina. She has thus allied herself with other progressive po­liti­cal groups, such as the student movement of the University of Buenos Aires and u ­ nions.13 ­There are impor­tant differences among ­these groups, which aligned in dif­fer­ent ways vis-­à-­v is the state and the Jewish community. However, collectively, their strug­g les for memory and justice have also helped them publicly affirm their citizenship and generate a sense of belonging in the Argentine nation as Jews. As with the Madres de Plaza de Mayo, the division among

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f­ amily members of the victims reflects the evolution of divergent interests, needs, and positions in relation to the aftermath of the AMIA bombing. Overall, ­these protests have also represented a particularly Argentine modality of civic expression and protest, an attempt not just to repair one’s personal loss and trauma, but also to repair the nation. While all of them contributed to the cause for justice and memory, in the next section, I examine the significance of Memoria Activa, in par­tic­u­lar, who opened their space of protest to multiple testimonies in ways that proved pivotal to reshaping citizenship a­ fter the bombing. Age ncy in the A f te rmath of the AMIA B om b i ng One of the most impor­tant ele­ments of ­these actos, as both protests and commemorations, became the public space they created for testimonies. In Argentina, victims’ testimonies played a significant role in the CONADEP truth commission established by President Alfonsín ­a fter the dictatorship. The Nunca Más report went on to become a bestseller, with a profound impact on Argentines who shared in this moment of public acknowl­edgment of their state’s crimes (see Crenzel 2009). The commission gave victims the opportunity to tell their stories and create a historical rec­ord; it also gave survivors official acknowl­edgment of the abuses they suffered. This attention to the value of survivors’ testimony has also been evident in other genocides, such as the Holocaust, as described by Annette Wieviorka (2006), in what she called the “era of the witness.” The power of testimony, then, for the individual victim and the nation as a w ­ hole, would inform the model of truth commissions around the world (Hayner 2001). ­A fter the AMIA bombing, Jewish Argentines expanded the significance of testimony as a genre by engaging it as a shared register of protest. During Memoria Activa’s actos, citizens w ­ ere invited to give their testimony, facing the high courts. These weekly actos took place every Monday from 1994 to the end of 2004, were then continued by an informal group called Ciudadanos de la Plaza. Although they first met in silence, they then opened up the plaza to testimonies from all citizens. By including t­hose who may not have directly suffered in the bombing—­either through surviving the blast or by losing a f­ amily member or friend—­t he group in turn suggested that the bombing itself does not have discrete bound­a ries and asserted that it should affect every­one concerned about justice and the rule of law. This further reinforces the significance of t­hese movements for shaping transitional justice on the ground. For instance, the model of truth commissions exemplifies this idea that through testimony the state and, by extension, the nation can acknowledge and recognize the experience of a victim, a key ele­ment for survival in the aftermath of vio­lence. As we saw in chapter 1, such recognition can be vital to surviving trauma individually and, as we see ­here,



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collectively as well. However, testimony has also been criticized for not fully allowing victims to articulate their experiences, hindering their ability to “move on.”14 Additional criticism is levied at the juridical level—­where truth commissions often serve to stand in for a justice that may not be immediately pos­si­ble and thus allow a state to suggest it has made an effort in some form and is not necessarily accountable for providing justice (see Hinton 2018). This then pre­sents a challenge for civil society and citizenship, exacerbated a­ fter the AMIA bombing for Jewish Argentines, who questioned their place in the nation and the meaning of their citizenship a­ fter the attack. Such strug­gles over po­liti­cal agency also resonated with responses to state vio­lence in Argentina. If we look again at the testimonies given at the ESMA megatrial, as we saw in chapter 2, they operated through a dialogic form of memory, which represented a form of agency in response to the trauma of their experiences. In Memoria Activa’s actos, agency also developed through testimonies, in this case, through the way ­these practices created public spaces for testimony to c­ ounter the lack of justice and the official narratives emanating from the state about the investigation. Through the group’s use of memory (which they deliberately defined as “active”), they thereby sought some form of coherence and repair in the face of what they perceived to be silence from the state. Memoria Activa created what they called their Plaza of Memory by expanding the space of testimony, inviting anyone who wished to speak about the impact of the bombing in their lives or who, more broadly, was troubled by impunity. The audience with whom they constructed their narratives included ­family members of the victims, h ­ uman rights activists, including Madres de Plaza de Mayo, (whose children were disappeared during the dictatorship and are still missing), Holocaust survivors, and regular citizens—­many of them also witnesses and survivors to other periods of vio­lence. This attempt to create a broader, pluralistic space of witnessing made Memoria Activa’s actos distinct from t­ hose of other groups. P ­ eople came to the plaza on Mondays to bear witness to what they experienced as a result of the bombing and impunity—­how this attack impacted their lives. In the pro­cess, Memoria Activa created an alternative tribunal—­open to Jews, non-­Jews, survivors, ­family members, and ­others. By allowing ­others to testify, they opened what may have been a personal or communal tragedy to other narratives, including the history of impunity in Argentina. This then enabled individuals to map their own stories within the contours of the 1994 bombing and its aftermath.15 Therein lies the strength and also the greatest challenge for the group—to engage the many other narratives and histories of impunity, while keeping the actos focused on their ultimate goal: justice in the AMIA bombing. In what follows, I explore the vari­ous lives s­haped by the actos in the Plaza of Memory, which offered them a space for performing their citizenship and striving for personal and po­liti­cal repair.

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Mondays in the Plaza of Memory ­Every Monday morning, from 1994 to 2004, the Plaza of Memory filled with speakers and listeners joined for the weekly actos of Memoria Activa. This plaza cannot be found on any map; its official name is the Plaza Lavalle, chosen for its location in front of Argentina’s Palace of Justice. Monday a­ fter Monday, this group confronted the high courts and transformed this space into the Plaza of Memory to fight for memory and to seek justice for the victims of the 1994 bombing of the AMIA building.16 ­Every weekend, Memoria Activa would run a posting in the progressive daily newspaper Página/12 to announce who the speakers would be the following Monday morning. On ­those mornings, the group convened in the Plaza Lavalle to blow the shofar (a ram’s horn traditionally used in religious Jewish ceremonies) and then to hear the testimony of that speaker. Over the ten years it convened such weekly actos, Memoria Activa collected hundreds of testimonies, given by every­one from well-­k nown writers to local schoolchildren.17 Survivors of the bombing, ­family members of the victims, journalists, rabbis, Madres de Plaza de Mayo, educators, students, concerned citizens, visitors from abroad, all came forward to give their testimonies and to listen to the testimonies of ­others. They thus created an evolving narrative about the impact of that vio­lence and the lack of justice that followed, in which t­hose giving their testimonies could stitch the AMIA into their personal stories and stitch themselves into the story of citizenship that followed. The presence of TV cameras and the media, and the publication of the testimonies on Memoria Activa’s website, also turned the nation and the world beyond into potential listeners of ­these actos. Many of the spectators for ­these actos had not lost anyone in the bombing but felt personally implicated in its aftermath. They joined ­these actos ­every Monday morning, which w ­ ere convened at the time and day the bombing took place. With their bodies, they disrupted the space of the city and the ordinary flow of Monday mornings. The speaker who convened the crowd ­every Monday referred to this space as the “Plaza of Memory” and to the courts b­ ehind them as the “Palace of Injustice.” With their presence, they would thus attempt to intervene in the discursive and physical space of the everyday life of the city, and assume the words of ­those in power to reshape the vision of the nation and their sense of who can demand justice. My very first trip to Argentina coincided with the seventh anniversary of the bombing in 2001. Memoria Activa always convened on Mondays in ­t hose years, and on that Monday, July  16, hundreds of ­people filled the Plaza of Memory to commemorate the seven years since the July 18, 1994 attack. The speaker began the acto by marking off the days (more than three thousand) since the bombing of the Israeli embassy, then the days (more than two thousand) since the bombing of the AMIA building, continuing with the number of ­t hose killed (eighty-­five) and the number of t­ hose wounded (hundreds). He



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then prepared us for a moment of silence by voicing the name and age of each person killed. To each rendering, the crowd responded with a s­ imple word—­ “Presente,” “­Here”—­invoking the presence of each person killed. He then continued with the introduction of the shofar, which rang out ­every Monday morning of t­hese actos in the Plaza of Memory: “The shofar . . . ​brings together the ­people to listen, to know the truth. . . . ​The shofar of the ­people . . . ​ one minute of silence, one minute of remembrance, . . . ​one minute of demanding justice.”18 The shofar was blown—­t he piercing sound momentarily drowning every­ thing out in the urban soundscape as we all stood and remembered. And then he continued: “And so, the shofar of the ­people is blown. Just like this, week ­a fter week, we listen to its sound, [and] we reiterate our hope that it w ­ ill break down the walls of impunity in our country. In the Plaza of Memory, [­here are] the testimonies.” It is this shofar—­a shattering sound that is a call to gather and to listen—­ which marks the beginning of the actos and the disruption of ordinary time. It also turns listening itself into a social practice and a form of agency just as critical to understanding post-­A MIA Buenos Aires as the testimonies ­people come to offer ­every Monday morning at the plaza. ­A fter the testimonies, the speaker would conclude the acto by remembering the victims, demanding justice for the 30,000 victims of the dictatorship, the victims of the Israeli embassy bombing, and the victims of the AMIA. ­A fter naming each group, the crowd shouted, “Justicia!” From ­t here, the ritual closed with a reading from Deuteronomy 16:20, first in Hebrew, “Tzedek, tzedek, tirdof,” and then in Spanish, “Justicia, justicia, perseguirás!” (“Justice, justice, s­ hall you pursue”). Enrique Burbinski was often the one who led t­hese actos. He had been with Memoria Activa since it first formed right a­ fter the bombing, also serving in leadership roles in other organ­izations in the Jewish community, such as the sports club Hacoaj and the Buenos Aires office of the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (H.I.A.S.)—­a North American Jewish immigrant relief organ­ization based in New York. Throughout my fieldwork during the last years of Memoria Activa’s presence in the plaza (2001–2004), it was usually Enrique who would mark the beginning of each acto by standing in front of the microphone set up in front of one of the palm trees that lined the edge of the plaza—­t he steps of the Tribunales serving as his backdrop for the tele­ v i­ sion cameras that broadcast Memoria Activa’s actos to the nation ­every week. Typically, ­after briefly checking his Palm Pi­lot for the exact number of weeks they had been gathering t­ here waiting for justice to in the AMIA case, he would begin the acto by voicing the number of weeks they w ­ ere waiting for justice. ­T hese acts—­standing together, simply listening, shouting “Justice!”— together helped rebuild citizenship and a form of transitional justice on the

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ground. Their Monday protests responded to the personal and collective strug­ gles for meaning and coherence by si­mul­t a­neously seeking justice and accountability for the bombing and holding on to a civil society threatened by impunity. In this way, they respond to the double meaning of coherence—­both in terms of meaning, and in the reconstruction of the collective. Fundamentally, ­t hese actos have become sites for negotiating and rebuilding the public sphere and the very bound­a ries of the “we”—as Argentines and Jews.19 Indeed, Burbinski emphasized the open nature of their actos. ­People came to protest against vari­ous forms of impunity and injustice, invoking the history of the dis­appeared as well as more recent cases, such as the 1997 murder of the journalist José Cabezas. 20 By employing Argentine forms of protest, specifically the strategy of appropriating public spaces, they demanded to be included in the Argentine “we” as Jews. What makes them distinct, however, is the importance of listening. ­These actos not only required but demanded listeners, who made them both pos­si­ble and necessary. T ­ hose who stood on the outer edges, on the bound­a ries—­the listeners—­h ave become the critical interlocutors for the witnesses and for the very development of this space of witnessing. In this way, ­these memory movements have introduced listening itself as a social practice essential for redefining the public sphere ­a fter the bombing. They thus created an alternative tribunal that commented on the failure of the state in providing truth or justice. This reflected a broader pattern in Argentina evident in transitional justice more broadly, namely, focusing on truth when justice is not available. ­These practices of testifying and listening—­ for Memoria Activa and the other memory movements—­developed to create a community with a sense of shared obligation for the cause of justice. In t­ hese actos, individuals sought coherence in articulating and seeking meaning a­ fter the bombing and also in rebuilding their community through their narratives and their presence as listeners, who ­ were central to the testimonies that emerged in this plaza. Testimony and Citizenship In what Memoria Activa called the Plaza of Memory, ­people came forward, both Jewish and non-­Jewish, to give their testimonies, creating a heterogeneous, plural space of witnessing and testimony. T ­ hese testimonies also included intersecting frames of historical vio­lence—­the dictatorship as well as the Holocaust (a theme explored further in chapter 5). Looking ahead to the connections that ­w ill be forged across periods of vio­lence, I would like to highlight two testimonies h ­ ere that underline the significance of sharing such narratives in the public sphere for the development of po­liti­cal agency. Diana Wang was invited to speak in the plaza one Monday. A ­ fter the attack, as described in chapter 1, she began attending the actos of Memoria Activa as an impor­tant dimension of her own path ­towards reshaping her sense of Jewish



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belonging and Argentine citizenship. As the ­d aughter of Holocaust survivors, when she gave her testimony on May 19, 2003, she chose to speak about the connections between the Shoah and the bombing, specifically focusing on the significance of re­sis­tance and agency in response to discrimination and vio­lence. Standing before the high courts of Argentina that morning, Diana noted, This is what I feel e­ very Monday ­here, in this plaza. Memoria Activa has also shaken itself out of the place of the victim. . . . ​Far from keeping ourselves hidden in a perennial lament, the cry of “Justice, Justice, ­shall you pursue” invokes action. To follow, you must move, you must walk, you must do, claim, protest, insist, be obstinate, invent resources. . . . ​In this path, what we are d­ oing . . . ​is to leave the corner that is supposedly safe, that protects the victim, to go to the space . . . ​of the street, to the open air of horns, to the p­ eople who pass by, thinking about other t­ hings. This movement is a risk; we occupy spaces that are not traditionally ours, spaces where we say “Jew” just like that, naked, without needing to use other more delicate euphemisms, so that it sounds better. We have made ourselves vis­i­ble in a way that had not happened before.21 This move into public spaces also resonated with Diana’s work with Holocaust survivors, including the group Niños de la Shoá (Child Survivors of the Shoah), which would l­ater expand to be called Generaciones de la Shoá (Generations of the Shoah) (see chapter 5). This ability to find a space to publicly voice their stories then enabled them to eventually position themselves as survivors to the broader public. What Diana noted about invoking Jewishness in the public sphere became central to their po­liti­cal agency, also challenging an Argentine national imaginary that may exclude them. This resonated with other groups, who turned to public spaces as a way to challenge erasure, including the Madres de Plaza de Mayo who disrupted the idea that their c­hildren w ­ ere dis­appeared, or H.I.J.O.S., through escraches, who resisted the semblance of normalcy that surrounded the perpetrators of dictatorship crimes. That same year, in August 2003, Reizl Sztarker, the founding director of the Yiddish Coro Guebirtig (Guebirtig Choir), was invited to give her testimony in the Plaza Lavalle. This coro formed as a response to the destruction and loss of the AMIA bombing, which took place very close to Reizl’s apartment in the Once (pronounced OHN-­say) neighborhood. In an interview, she described seeing the glass shake in her apartment. With animated eyes, she told me she did not know what to do with herself a­ fter the bombing. That is when she exclaimed, “I will make a choir!”—choosing, to sing in response to the inhumanity that she had witnessed. 22 That day in the plaza, as she stood with the ­others, the shofar was blown, the introductions ­were made, and then Reizl came to the microphone to give her testimony. She spoke about the bombing and the effect it has had on her

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life. She then turned to a song the choir was then practicing—­“Mein Nisht” (“Do Not Believe”), a piece that she said was particularly somber and difficult for the choir to learn. Some w ­ ere even reluctant to sing it, but Reizl persisted, asking, “Who ­w ill sing this, if we ­don’t?” In her testimony at the Plaza of Memory, Reizl described the significance of this song: Our g­ reat writer . . . ​Peretz wrote a poem entitled, “Do Not Believe,” Mein Nisht! Do not believe the world is a tavern where you fill yourself eating and drinking while o ­ thers look on with weak eyes. . . . ​Do not believe the world is a chaos—­Every­thing is mea­sured, every­thing has weight. Do not believe ­t here is no law and no justice. Mister President, Ministers, Legislators, Judges: Do not rest ­u ntil you identify and punish all of ­t hose responsible for the victims of the embassy [bombing], the AMIA [bombing], the 30,000 dis­appeared [in the Dirty War], the hunger of our c­ hildren and all of the prob­lems plaguing our society. Do not rest u ­ ntil your courageous and honest strug­g le allows us to live in the nation of our dreams. And this is how we ­w ill be able to say to our poet: you ­were right, in Argentina ­t here is law and t­ here is justice.23 Reizl’s testimony at the plaza that morning created a dialogue between a Yiddish poet and the leaders of Argentina, just as Diana’s testimony offered a bridge between understanding Jewish history and con­temporary strug­g les with citizenship and agency. ­These are just two of many testimonies in the plaza where Memoria Activa expanded the space of the witness—­m aking it more accessible for ­others to offer their testimonies and include their own stories of the devastation of the 1994 bombing, often linking it to other instances of impunity in Argentina or personal stories of loss. The call to listening occasioned by the shofar in the plaza on Monday mornings and the monthly commemorations at the site of the bombing (or­ga­ nized by Familiares) marked points of entry into the space of witnessing. Yet ­these testimonies also required listeners, who gathered at e­ very acto and became critical interlocutors for ­those bearing witness. As listeners, they became necessary to hear the testimonies given, to respond “Presente” and stand with the ­family members as they would enter, and, following Caruth (1995; 1996), be able to also depart from the space of witnessing their loss.24 The Listeners After the conclusion of an acto, ­t hose gathered together as listeners would then separate again into smaller groups, and go about the rest of their days. It took me several weeks to figure out the dynamics of the dif­fer­ent groups, who would join together for the acto and then disperse to vari­ous nearby cafés. The leadership of Memoria Activa went to one, whereas a group of ­women, retired schoolteachers from the Jewish school system, went to another, and



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­ thers went to the Banchero café. To get to this coffee shop, one would have o to walk one short block before crossing the many lanes of Corrientes Ave­nue, a crossing which also affords a view of the famous Obelisk. In ­later interviews, I was told the Banchero used to be famous as the destination many chose for their post-­acto coffees, especially in the early days of Memoria Activa, when many attendees joined the small café t­ ables together to make one long stretch of activists. By 2001, the group who went to Banchero was smaller, composed mostly of men whom I had noticed standing at the plaza e­ very Monday with the sign “Todos somos Memoria Activa” (“We are all Memoria Activa”). I went to the Banchero by chance one morning ­after the acto to have a coffee and warm myself up. One of the men I recognized from the plaza approached me. He was dressed in a sharp wool coat and cap, and he walked straight up to my ­table and introduced himself, asking if I had been at the acto and commending me for being a young person from abroad ­there to observe the actos. He gladly gave me his phone number when I asked if I could follow up with an interview. Bernardo Gruman lived with his wife, Fanny, in the neighborhood of Villa Crespo. Originally from Warsaw, Poland, he had worked his entire life in Buenos Aires. When I arrived at his home for our interview, he sat me down in his tidy apartment, at a large dining room ­table, and took out a folder of writings and clippings. He surprised me with his poetry—he had written poems to many of the p­ eople he had met during his presence at the actos of Memoria Activa. He typed up ­these poems and then photocopied them. Bernardo helped introduce me to the world of t­ hose I call the listeners who regularly went to the plaza and then to the Banchero café. ­A fter 2004, Memoria Activa no longer held regular weekly actos (only convening larger gatherings on the July anniversary), and it was many of t­hese same listeners who continued in a group they called Ciudadanos de Plaza (Citizens of the Plaza). Together with Memoria Activa, they helped sustain a presence in the plaza for over twenty years. It was through Bernardo that I first met Benjamín Guz, who made his way to this plaza e­ very Monday morning by colectivo (bus) with his close friend, Alberto.25 They both lived on the outskirts of the city in a working-­class barrio that used to be one of the homes to the textile industry in the city. Benjamín invited me to visit them one day, and I went, taking the colectivo a long way from the center of the city and the areas of Barrio Norte that w ­ ere more affluent (and popu­lar with tourists and ex-­pats). In t­ hose neighborhoods, Buenos Aires seemed more like Paris, or at least what one might imagine Paris to be—­w ith vaguely Eu­ro­pean boutiques, cafés, architecture, and well-­d ressed ­women and men. The impact of the years a­ fter the economic collapse of 2001 challenged that vision. Men, w ­ omen, and c­ hildren known as cartoneros would travel into the city to sift through the garbage and rescue ­t hose pieces of paper and cardboard that they could then sell. The poverty was becoming vis­i­ble in the more affluent areas in a way it had not been before.

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I had never been to their part of the city before; in fact, I usually moved within a narrow stretch that bordered the River Plate, and so I got on the bus they told me to take, my faithful Guía-­T in hand. In that small, palm-­size guide, the city neatly moved from page to page, divided into grids and lines. I stepped up to the coin machine and dropped in my eighty centavos (at the time, approximately twenty-­five cents), hoping none of the coins turned out to be counterfeit, a situation that seemed all too common for me in t­hose days, as an outsider who did not know how to tell the real from the fake by touch alone. Any time a store clerk returned a bill or coin to me saying it was a trucho, or fake, I was surprised, as they w ­ ere, in turn, by my inability to see the difference. ­A fter paying the fare, I took a seat by the win­dow and settled in for what turned out to be the longest r­ ide I had taken at that point in my fieldwork. For over an hour, I looked out the win­dow while following the neighborhoods closely with my fin­gers in the pages of the Guía-­T. As we made our way into the far reaches of the city, the low-­lying buildings, ­houses, and stores all blended into shades of grayish cream. A certain emptiness seemed to linger on the street corners as we passed, and then suddenly we crossed into an intersection bustling with residential life. I had fi­n ally arrived. Benjamín and Alberto ­were very happy to see me. They warmly greeted me and then took me on a tour of their neighborhood. They began with the main commercial strip, and then we walked to the Jewish school and synagogue, where they showed me the classrooms and the space for worship and invited me with pride to come again. Benjamín told me that the community in his neighborhood (and by “community” he meant the Jewish community) got together a­ fter the bombing to form a neighborhood vigil. The bombing of the AMIA took place in the center of the city, many kilo­meters from where Benjamín now stood, telling me his story. “Yes,” he noted seriously, “we all got together and stood guard around the school and synagogue. We had to take t­hings in our own hands b­ ecause we w ­ ere afraid another attack would happen.” I stood with him in front of that school, far on the outskirts of a city that was one of the southernmost capitals in the Amer­i­cas, on the margins of many North American minds, and ­imagined what that fear must have been like ­a fter two terrorist attacks. ­A fter the bombing, in addition to protecting the Jewish spaces in his neighborhood, Benjamín, like many ­others, also chose to go to the heart of the city—to the Plaza Lavalle—­facing the high courts of his nation to demand justice. E ­ very Monday morning—at the time and day the bombing took place—­ they gathered together in front of the Palace of Justice, the Tribunales, the high courts of the land, to hold actos—­acts that w ­ ere partly po­l iti­cal action and partly per­for­mance, interlinked, together with other listeners. Like many o ­ thers gathered t­ here, they had not lost anyone directly in the bombing but felt personally implicated in the crisis of belonging that followed



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the attack and sought to participate in some way in the rebuilding and reimagining of the Argentine to include the Jewish. Eugenia Szejer—­a nother listener in the plaza—­would usually arrive early, often walking slowly, perfectly coiffed and dressed neatly, with her leather purse strapped pragmatically across her chest. She would speak to as many p­ eople as she could, not missing a t­hing with her sharp blue eyes. During my time in the plaza, she always stood on the same side of the microphone and did not feel shy about voicing her comments and critiques, loudly, about what­ever was being said or whoever was speaking, even in the ­m iddle of a speech. I observed her from another corner of the plaza for several weeks before someone introduced us. A ­ fter that, she took my arm ­u nder hers and insisted I stand right next to her during the protests. One day, ­a fter the last call for justice in the plaza, Eugenia invited me for coffee to one of the nearby cafés, where she first told me about her history and how she experienced the bombing. Eugenia was born in Poland in the 1930s and arrived in Argentina with her ­family as a young girl. As she put it, Argentina gave her a place to live and raise a f­ amily, but it did not “regalar” anything—it did not make anything easy or give anything away. Eugenia told me that on the day of the bombing, she almost collapsed when she found out what had happened. Her niece, whom she described as like a ­d aughter to her, worked in the AMIA building, and only upon learning that she had taken the day off and thus was not harmed did Eugenia feel relief. But it did not end t­ here for her. She identified with a f­ amily history of activism and standing up against discrimination and oppression, and she could not stand idly by ­a fter the injustice of the bombing and the subsequent failures of her state— of Argentina—to investigate what had happened. She thus felt her active participation in the protests of Memoria Activa was part of her obligation as an Argentine citizen, and she saw this activism as part of an impor­tant history of ­human rights in Argentina. As listeners in the plaza, she and the many ­others who gathered t­here also became critical interlocutors for the testimonies that emerged as the central platform of Memoria Activa’s public activism. When we spoke in 2003 about this, Eugenia said she felt from the first days of the bombing that she had a personal obligation to advocate for memory and justice: ­ fter that, I took it upon myself to not lose the memory of what hapA pened to us . . . ​of not losing the memory u ­ ntil t­here was justice for this. Some day, we had to find the criminals who did this—at the very least, for them to pay for what ­they’ve done. All in all, ­today, it ­w ill be nine years since the explosion of the AMIA, and in all of the years of Memoria Activa, I have had the fortune of never missing a Monday. I ­w ill tell you something: I was receiving radiation for breast cancer, and ­after treatment, I would go to Memoria Activa. [The actos w ­ ere] something I felt I had to attend. It w ­ asn’t that anything pushed me. We did not stop

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for any Monday, not Christmas, not New Year’s, not Yom Kippur, nothing. The only t­ hing we did [differently] on Yom Kippur is not have testimonies. We are pre­sent ­because ­t hese are the trenches that we ­w ill never abandon any Monday.26 On ­these Mondays, Eugenia and the other listeners established an ongoing presence in the public sphere, a form of activism that articulated with the modalities of protest and citizenship initiated by the Madres de Plaza de Mayo.27 By including news cameras who broadcast their Monday actos and testimonies, Memoria Activa also expanded their “­imagined community” to the nation at large, an imagining that came into being through such acts of memory and repair. Such repair also worked through the ways in which concerns that might be specific to the Jewish community could also become compelling for all Argentines in relation to questions of tolerance and inclusion. Eugenia described one Monday that happened to be Yom Kippur, when they ­were in the plaza with Memoria Activa. Since this is the Jewish Day of Atonement, no one usually spoke in the plaza, though they did typically gather in silence. However, just the day before, someone had desecrated ten Jewish tombstones in the La Tablada Cemetery. This, unfortunately, was not an uncommon occurrence in Argentina, but that day, Eugenia told me she felt compelled to speak: When I went to Memoria Activa, on the next day, the Monday that was Yom Kippur, ­there was a lot of media t­here, a lot of cameras, ­because they knew, they knew that someone would say something about [the desecrated tombstones]. I told Gerardo Masur [one of the organizers] that he should say something about what happened, that we needed to say something. And I heard him say, “We emphatically repudiate what happened yesterday ­because this was an antisemitic attack.” [But] you know when someone pinches someone and they jump? Well, I jumped up and I started screaming, “Basta! (Enough!) Enough with all of this antisemitism. Enough!” She told me this story as we sat together at her dining room ­table. Eugenia remained steadfast in her truth, her eyes taking on an even more vibrant shade of blue and opening up in a way that seemed to take in every­t hing around us. She continued: All of the media was ­there, and well, ­a fter that I was everywhere. Argentine society needs to understand us, that it starts with the Jews but ends with all of the dignity a h ­ uman being has. Enough! It i­sn’t [directed] against us alone—­a ll of Argentine society has to respond. B ­ ecause in 1939, ­people did not yet know what Hitler was, but ­today they know what he did, they know what happened. She told me her public proclamations ­were then broadcast everywhere: “­ They put me on all of the media.” This also resulted in someone leaving a threat on her



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answering machine when she came home that day telling her “that I should be quiet, of course. But I never shut up. It did not ­m atter to me that they ­were threatening me.” Although she was not an activist by training, Eugenia deeply believed in justice. That feeling of steadfast commitment to her values of calling out injustice allowed her to carve out a public space for her voice and to claim the power of her citizenship. Her dedication and commitment to justice was something she embodied in her presence as an active listener in that plaza, as a key interlocutor for the testimonies that would emerge ­there, along with the many other listeners over the years of actos who engaged their agency as they disrupted and challenged the impunity that surrounded the AMIA bombing. Citizens of the Plaza Although ­a fter December 2004 Memoria Activa ended its regular weekly vigils in the Plaza Lavalle, a small group simply calling itself Ciudadanos de la Plaza continued attending after that, and Eugenia would also go there those days, listening to the shofar and remembering the victims. ­There ­were several differences between the Ciudadanos de la Plaza and Memoria Activa. Ciudadanos positioned their actos closer to the monument dedicated to the victims in the center of the plaza than to the high courts. 28 They also did not convene local media or command the same form of attention. Even so, they found their presence to be vital, allowing them to hold on to the memory of the victims through this space and this regular Monday gathering. When I returned throughout the years that followed, especially in the period between 2010 and 2016, they would often tell me that they felt this ritual of remembering, blowing the shofar and calling for justice, was their obligation as citizens. As of 2018, on my last visit, the Ciudadanos group was no longer gathering e­ very week (though Memoria Activa did return for the July ceremonies and the monument to the victims remained); but for the many years they stood faithfully on Mondays, they felt that it was imperative for them to hold onto that space of memory through their presence, to keep it open as a space of possibility. Memoria Activa would also return to the plaza on the July anniversaries, inviting some of t­ hese Ciudadanos, like Benjamín, to stand with them to blow the shofar. During the years Ciudadanos still gathered regularly on Mondays, I sat down with Benjamín again at the Banchero in 2014, the café they frequented ­after e­ very Monday acto. A ­ fter ordering our coffees, he spoke of his commitment to standing in the plaza. It was Benjamín who would bring the shofar, putting every­t hing into blowing it as a continuous call to justice. I asked him about his many Mondays in the plaza and what he hoped for the f­uture. He then looked at me straight in the eyes, with a certain pain I felt, sitting across from him, as he described waiting and waiting for a justice that may never come: “As long as

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7. ​Twentieth anniversary of Memoria Activa in the Plaza Lavalle, July 18, 2014. Benjamín Guz appears at the far right with a shofar. Photo by Oliver Schietinger.

I live, I w ­ ill wait for you to tell me what happened.”29 He, like many Argentines, ­were waiting to find out who was responsible, and when justice would arrive. Eugenia was also still hoping for justice. Over ten years a­ fter we first met, in 2014, we sat down for another interview, this time at a coffee shop near her apartment. Her hair was still done, as always, and her eyes ­were the same vivid blue. ­A fter years of activism, she still advocated powerfully for truth and justice: “Finding out who put the dynamite in and who was it that put the bomb t­ here—­that was the main ­thing [to find out] in order to be able to prosecute them. We did not want vengeance. We wanted justice, and we continue demanding justice, even ­after all t­ hese years.” And yet this desire that animated her acts was in dialogue with a sense of profound uncertainty and ontological and epistemological precarity: In not knowing anything, we ­were angry, filled with anguish knowing that the [2001–2004] trial was useless, that ten years ­were lost ­because they ­d idn’t do anything. Nothing ­w ill be known of the real magnitude—­ who paid money, who received [that money] . . . ​­because even if they could say that [the bombing was done] by ­people from abroad, ­those from right ­here [in Argentina] helped. And for t­ hose from ­here, ­there are many responsible, starting with President Menem and every­one ­else, and all of his government, from the police [onward]. . . . ​A nd h ­ ere we are, still without knowing.



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It is b­ ecause of not knowing, and this ongoing need for justice, that Eugenia told me, “This is why we need to continue standing ­t here [in the Plaza].” The same sentiments ­were felt by Isidoro Bronstein, who also stood vigil at the plaza since the first actos of Memoria Activa a­ fter the bombing. Born in 1930 in the city of Rosario, he eventually moved to Buenos Aires and had a ­f amily. In our first interview in 2003, he told me that when the AMIA bombing took place, he had been retired for only a month, and so, he said, “I was out on the street, and I heard what happened, and I just started walking and walking all night. I was afraid—­afraid of the rubble, of the destruction.”30 The AMIA had been a special place for him, and he told me that he would often go ­there. When I interviewed Isidoro again in 2013, in the years when he would attend the Monday Ciudadanos de la Plaza actos, he returned in his account to ­those first days ­a fter the bombing. 31 He recalled ­going on the third day ­a fter the attack to the Plaza del Congreso, for what became known as the After­noon of the Umbrellas, where, he said, “I started fighting for this, so that what happened could get clarified.” ­A fter that, he started ­going to the Plaza Lavalle ­every Monday morning to “demand justice.” In ­those early days, he described crowds and crowds of ­people, including crews from vari­ous news channels. “They filmed all of the testimonies,” he told me, “and then showed them all day on tele­vi­sion. . . . ​Monday a­ fter Monday, Monday ­after Monday, and I never ­stopped ­going, whenever I could.” We w ­ ere sitting in the Banchero café, when Isidoro made this reflection. This is where I spent so many Mondays with Isidoro and his companions, and he just looked at me from across the ­table and said, “To think that nineteen years have already passed. It’s a lifetime.” I then asked him what he felt about the possibilities of justice. That is how Memoria Activa and Ciudadanos de la Plaza literally framed the purpose of their gatherings, as they shouted, “Justicia!” into the air on t­ hose many hundreds of Monday mornings. Isidoro still had a sense of hope, telling me, “­We’re waiting [and hoping] that one year, t­here might be truth. T ­ here might be justice. It w ­ ill happen.” He continued: “I believe that at some point they w ­ ill have to discover what happened.” Throughout those years, he felt the plaza had made the citizens who gathered t­here to feel like ­brothers. They called each other to check in. He described how much Benjamín’s friend had concerned himself with replacing the plaque and making sure the monument would remain. And so perhaps they ­were returning ­every Monday for the possibility of justice, but also for a commitment to one another. “We ­can’t stop coming,” he continued, reflecting on all of ­those p­ eople who had died and why that mattered to finding out what had happened. “They could find out what happened. They could condemn someone. Like in any

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other country, when something like this [terrorism] happens—in Spain, with the Twin Towers, they find out.” “But ­here,” he lamented, “­here, nothing. And this brings me so much sadness.” The sadness Isidoro expressed in relation to the lack of justice he felt did not stop him or the other Ciudadanos from gathering in this space on Mondays, where they held on to this space of memory. Memoria Activa returned to the plaza to convene the large July anniversary commemorations, while continuing their advocacy for justice through other channels. Of course, it is also impor­t ant to consider how such public practices relate to the more private dimensions of loss and trauma, as we saw in the experience of Sofía in chapter 1. Yet ­those attending ­these public actos also sought a form of coherence, rebuilding their sense of agency and their communities. ­A fter their respective traumas, the Madres de Plaza de Mayo held their Thursday marches, the H.I.J.O.S. or­ga­n ized escraches, and the groups that formed ­after the AMIA attack held weekly and monthly actos. ­These movements ­were certainly focused on advocating for accountability and justice. Yet beyond justice, ­these actos helped Isidoro and o ­ thers to enact their citizenship and agency by disrupting the public sphere. In this way, they also became a power­ful form of personal and social repair in the face of uncertainty and loss. C onclusion ­These actos—­a form of both protest and commemoration—­served to publicly manifest an agency and citizenship vital to sustaining civil society in a period of impunity. They w ­ ere also impor­t ant tools for individuals grappling with the trauma of loss—­t he loss of loved ones to vio­lence, as well as the profound precarity they felt as citizens who could not trust their state to provide justice. Such agency became critical to the creation of narratives and testimony in the face of trauma and the limits of coherence in the face of vio­lence. Through the monthly gatherings of Familiares at the site of the bombing, or the weekly actos convened by Memoria Activa that created an alternative tribunal and space of memory, ­these movements offered survivors and citizens a way to perform their agency in response to their personal loss and to the feeling of loss they experienced as citizens unprotected by their state. The advocacy of the group A.P.E.M.I.A. was also significant in demanding truth and justice, even though it did not convene regularly occurring actos outside of the yearly anniversaries. Listeners w ­ ere central to creating a shared fabric of belonging and mutually accountable citizenship in the actos of the f­amily members convened by Familiares on Pasteur Street and in the Plaza of Memory. In that plaza, the actos of Memoria Activa echoed the commemorative and po­liti­cal practices of other ­human rights movements in Argentina, such as the Madres de Plaza de Mayo, whose regular protests in the Plaza de Mayo helped shift the national consciousness and raise international awareness about the disappearance of their



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c­ hildren during the military dictatorship. That model of protest and re­sis­t ance remained power­ful in Argentina as an idiom for change and citizenship, and Memoria Activa followed along t­hose lines in its weekly actos. Fundamentally, ­these protests required the presence of active listeners, as did the actos on Pasteur Street, thus turning listening itself into a practice of citizenship impor­tant to rebuilding a fractured civil society. 32 Ordinary citizens, convened as Ciudadanos de la Plaza, would continue the weekly actos in the Plaza Lavalle as a way to sustain the call for memory and establish their po­liti­cal agency. In the wake of the 1994 bombing, during a time of pervasive impunity for the crimes of the dictatorship, t­hese movements represented attempts to rebuild and repair a society where ­people felt mutually implicated (following Rothberg) and w ­ ere not mere spectators.33 They disrupted public space and time and the very idea that this vio­lence should be forgotten or erased. Through their agency, they challenged the idea that life on the surface should simply return to normal as if nothing had happened at all, when that may not be pos­si­ble for survivors, for ­family members, or for concerned citizens. Disruption in public space through ­these actos also represents a desire for repair. Even if such repair may be in a state of what I have called a perpetual transition to justice, an abiding liminality, it still offers a possibility for agency vital to recovery.

C hap te r 4

Sites of Memory, Erasure, and Belonging

Leaving the plaza lavalle on a sunny day in March 2018, the escrache started moving, vibrantly, rambunctiously. We wound our way from the high courts, marching down the leafy streets of a still-­summery March, drums pounding as the m ­ usic and chanting pulsed through the crowd. We kept on walking, together, to the home of Jorge Luis Magnacco, el ladrón de bebés, the baby thief, a doctor who was part of the machinery of state vio­lence during the dictatorship. The protesters held signs for the 30,000 dis­appeared, and other symbols of the H.I.J.O.S. organ­ization and the ­human rights movement, including “Juicio y castigo”—­justice and punishment, the calls for accountability central to addressing the crimes of the dictatorship. This protest was about expressing ­these demands, but also getting the rest of society to listen and to care. As we moved closer to Magnacco’s home, volunteers with bullhorns shouted out to the neighbors, calling out “Vecinos!” (“neighbors”) to advise them that they ­were living near a perpetrator. We passed elegant limestone buildings that extended past the trees lining ­these streets, which ­were other­w ise calm and peaceful. Some neighbors stretched the upper part of their bodies out of win­ dows to look down upon us as we marched, leaning on their elbows with curiosity. ­Others did not seem to care, turning away on the street and not even paying attention. And yet we marched on. The goal of any escrache is to make the history vis­i­ble, to prevent a perpetrator from ­going back to life as usual without being held accountable in some way, beginning with society’s acknowl­edgment. The strategy included drawing the attention of neighbors and communities by physically and materially disrupting the streets. We continued marching, singing songs, as activists pray-­painted the garbage receptacles and stenciled walls as we passed by. One such stencil read, “Magnacco, ladrón de bebés de la ESMA” (“Magnacco, ESMA’s baby thief ”). Other messages ­ were more immediate, written in rushed handwriting rather than stencils. “El único lugar para un genocida es la cárcel,” read another message on a garbage bin—­“The only place for a genocidaire is prison.” 96



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8. ​“El único lugar para un genocida es la cárcel”—­“The only place for a genocidaire is prison.” Magnacco escrache, March 17, 2018, Buenos Aires. Photo by Natasha Zaretsky.

The use of “genocida” was intentional, consonant with the reframing of the repression of the dictatorship as a genocide—­the deliberate attempt to destroy a portion of the population, in this case for being “subversive” to the national order (see D. Feierstein 2014). This framing also situated what happened in Argentina in relation to other histories and national contexts, including Rwanda, Guatemala, Armenia, and the Holocaust. In response to this violence, the escrache sought to address the kind of public silence and impunity that seemed to threaten the achievements and pro­g ress of the ­human rights movement. Such silence and erasure also functioned through public space, which often served to “dis­appear” the history of what had happened, as physical sites in the city became inscribed and reinscribed with new experiences and meanings, their violent histories often suppressed in the pro­cess. The response of the survivors and f­ amily members of victims sought to resist such erasure through their use of space and place. In the previous chapter, we saw how public protests fostered po­liti­cal agency for citizens who came together to challenge impunity. For them, what was at stake was their personal repair in the wake of vio­lence, and beyond that, the repair of the collective, of the nation, fractured by repression, terrorism, and impunity.

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Here, these contestations over the meaning of the past occurred through public sites—­memorials, monuments, and the very streets and plazas of Buenos Aires. This chapter focuses on how loss and trauma is negotiated through such public sites of memory, exploring their significance to the landscape of survival in the aftermath of the dictatorship as well as the AMIA bombing. Certainly, as monuments and public commemorations, they seek to ensure that society continues remembering, especially in cases where justice hovers on the horizon. Yet if considered within the framework of transitional justice, following Alexander Hinton (2013), questions arise about normative understandings of pro­g ress and temporality, as explored in chapter 1. Perhaps, then, ­these sites are not precisely about remembering alone. Through such sites, Argentines contest and negotiate the very definition of the collective and their belonging. In the pro­cess, they also disrupt understandings of time as they grapple with the tensions inherent to the dynamics of absence and presence in ­these strug­ gles for personal and collective repair. C ollective Me mory and Com m e morations Collective memory—as manifested in monuments, memorials, and other commemorative practices—­often represents the locus of strug­g le between the state and civil society in the wake of vio­lence.1 Commemorations are a form of public telling, a narrative about the past that becomes a node of contestation following periods of po­liti­cal vio­lence. Like testimony, commemorations are attempts at repre­sen­ta­tion; they reflect a need for coherence (imposing an order to the experience) and a strug­g le over the constitution of the social sphere (the definition, or redefinition, of the “we”). In addition to the challenge of giving order and meaning to that which may defy it, t­ hese sites also become a place for struggling over the very definition and bound­aries of the public sphere ( Jelin and Kaufman 2000, 96–98). They also serve to negotiate the bound­aries of collective memory, a concept developed by Maurice Halbwachs to capture the essentially collective nature of all memory, which he considered to always be socially framed. Indeed, an individual’s remembrance is always contingent on the group in some way: “The framework of collective memory confines and binds our most intimate remembrances to each other” (Halbwachs 1992, 53). The very idea of collective memory arose for Halbwachs as a way to understand what happened to solidarity when members of a group w ­ ere not together, when they could not engage in an embodied “collective effervescence,” following Émile Durkheim’s work (Coser 1992, 25). Yet this does not mean collective memory is fixed or static; instead, it becomes configurated and reconstructed through pre­sent groups and their needs (Halbwachs 1992, 51), thus revealing how memory appears to be in a state of dynamic transformation (Coser 1992, 25; Halbwachs 1992, 40), contingent and heterogeneous.



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In this way, we see that the social both constitutes memory and is constituted by the memorial pro­cesses at work in vari­ous sites and practices. Rather than thinking of memory in the singular, 2 it may be more useful to consider collective memories—­that within any one group ­there are multiple perceptions of the collective that are being developed; indeed, contestations over what collective memory may be are just as revealing (see Jelin 2003; 2017). Further, collective memory is often deployed as a strategy in struggling over the constitution and bound­a ries of the group, be it a nation, a diaspora, or civil society. 3 In addition, the nation-­state’s interests in fostering a sense of national identity and ­i magined community (­a fter Anderson 1991 [1983]; see also Gillis 1994) may be at odds with the needs of civil society (and vari­ous groups within civil society). Understanding how collective memory operates in a world that has become increasingly transnational also demonstrates the power of what Michael Rothberg calls “multidirectional memory,” which is “subject to ongoing negotiation, cross-­referencing and borrowing” (2009, 3). Vio­lence and loss further complicate the ways such sites of collective memory become negotiated. War and genocide, for instance, pre­sent profound challenges for the state and civil society as they strug­g le to understand the past and inscribe it into the public sphere. This includes cases where the state’s lack of action and impunity represent a form of silence, such as what took place in Argentina in the 1990s during the era of impunity for dictatorship crimes or in response to the AMIA bombing. T ­ hese dynamics of remembering thus become even more pressing in times when memories become silenced during periods of repression and vio­lence, or when ­there are conflicting memories of trauma (see Zerubavel 2019). Given the importance of social frameworks for remembering—­that all memory is collective in Halbwachs’s formulation—it is impor­tant to consider what happens when an individual does not have a context to remember, or when their very form of remembering is a site of contestation for how to establish the bound­a ries of their collective.4 ­These commemorative pro­cesses often unfold through material sites, which Pierre Nora famously coined as “lieux de mémoire” (Nora 1996 [1992]) to denote the way they mediate history, which traditionally, he argued, existed in an au­then­tic or unmediated form, not requiring sites such as archives or museums to help society remember. Although they aim “to fix a state of ­t hings, to immortalize death, and to materialize the immaterial,” for Nora, “it is also clear that lieux de mémoire thrive only b­ ecause of their capacity for change, their ability to resurrect old meanings and generate new ones along with new and unforeseeable connections” (Nora 1996 [1992], 15). This pro­cess of generating meaning, however, has also often become commodified, as Marita Sturken has argued (2007), and influenced by the incorporation of new forms of technology, such as digital media (see Shandler 2017).

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­ hese forms of cultural memory become further complicated when a T society is in a state of demo­cratic transition and seeks to reconstruct itself as a nation following periods of vio­lence ( Jelin and Kaufman 2000, 107). This strug­ gle is not only between the state and civil society but within civil society too, as actors vie for control of the “owner­ship” of the memory (see Bosco 2004). Yet what is key h ­ ere is that the decision for what gets remembered publicly has become increasingly outside the control of the state alone. This also speaks to the strug­g les over how to define the group and the nation, strug­g les occurring in and through sites of memory.5 Such sites of memory also inform the very ways in which communities conceptualize themselves as a collective. James Young, for instance, in his paradigmatic work on Holocaust memorials and monuments in Eu­rope, Israel, and the United States (1992; 1993; 2000; 2016), does not see memorials as spaces for collective memory, preferring the term “collected memory” to describe “the many discrete memories . . . ​g athered into common memorial spaces and assigned common meaning” (1993, xi). While memory is always individual and one’s own, what can be shared, for Young, is forms or meaning (xi–­x ii). ­These common spaces—­commemorative sites, days, and monuments—­ can then create the “illusion of common memory” (6), which is central to the state’s proj­ect of national identity but which artists and participants can also engage and perhaps contest. Forms of memorialization can also yield opportunities for reimagining the relationship to the past and one another. Counter-­monuments, for instance, compel participants to actively engage with the remembering that happens at ­t hese sites (Young 1992). They are designed for observers to participate in ways that resist an idea of passively discharging a burden to remember.6 In this way, they also invite reflection on the value of monuments and memory itself to socie­ties more broadly. In Argentina, such sites represent ways in which citizens engage with the state. As Katherine Hite establishes, Argentines engage photo­g raphs and commemorative sites as a way to resist and challenge the state, calling it to action (2012, 5), both through traditional monuments as well as interventions that would be more like counter-­monuments (90). Counter-­monuments, in par­t ic­u ­lar, can help us interrogate the value given to traditional memorials, revealing questions about the power and limits of repre­sen­t a­t ion.7 In addition, any specific local site is also embedded in a field of memory that transcends borders of space and time. Viewing any site as evolving and dynamic in relation to a range of groups, as well as other histories of both vio­ lence and commemoration, affirms what Michael Rothberg describes as “memory’s multidirectionality,” which, he notes, “encourages us to think of the public sphere as a malleable, discursive space in which groups . . . ​come into being through their dialogic interactions with ­others” (2009, 5). Importantly, he concludes that “both the subjects and the spaces of the public are open to continual



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reconstruction” (5). This notion of “continual reconstruction,” then, suggests a contingent relationship between sites of memory and other forms of repair, including justice, social movements, and testimony, as explored in previous chapters. Ultimately, this contingency carves out an impor­tant space for agency, necessary for contesting and reimagining both memory and belonging. S pace s of M e mory and Plac e s for Ju sti c e One of the most significant po­liti­cal spaces in Argentina for contemplating questions of agency and citizenship is the Plaza de Mayo. This public square represents the symbolic heart of the city and nation, surrounded by the Presidential Palace (the Casa Rosada, or “Pink House”), along with the Metropolitan Cathedral. This is the square where, famously, the Madres de Plaza de Mayo would march e­ very Thursday, starting their protests in 1977, in plain sight during years of tremendous repression. They walked together, rounding the monument in the center of the plaza, Thursday ­a fter Thursday, situating themselves outside the ordinary flow of time and space with white headscarves, ­simple material they inscribed with their ­ children’s names and the dates of their disappearances. ­Every Thursday after­noon they gathered ­there, their presence on Thursdays marking time in such a way that it became a site of memory—­a site for sustaining a relationship to the past vio­lence and negotiating its ongoing significance. As the ­mothers of t­ hose dis­appeared during the dictatorship marched in the Plaza de Mayo, their c­ hildren’s f­ aces, suspended in their youth, appeared in two-­d imensional facsimiles, their lines and edges sometimes covered in fraying plastic. ­These images have disrupted the flow of time and space in the circular ronda of the central plaza of Argentina, facing the Presidential Palace, week a­ fter week, for over four decades. The stones in the center of this plaza bear the traces of thousands of footsteps, of the weekly marches that have continued for over forty years since they first began. T ­ hese stones have also been covered with white paint to represent the headscarves that became such an iconic part of the Madres de Plaza de Mayo movement, allowing them to hold a space for other strug­g les over the years, other claims for justice, other forms of re­sis­t ance against impunity. This is where A.P.E.M.I.A. (Laura Ginsberg’s organ­i zation) chose to hold some of its annual protests, situating itself directly within a po­liti­cal narrative about impunity and justice in Argentina. In 2014, another group, 18-­J (a more recent organ­ization of f­amily members), also held its commemoration t­here, releasing eighty-­five black balloons for each victim, which floated up to the sky, slowly, as we all stood surrounded by the official institutions of the nation. And yet we can won­der, would any of this exist without the weekly presence of the Madres in this plaza? Are their bodies and headscarves placeholders for the possibility of justice, for themselves and o ­ thers?

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9. ​The Plaza de Mayo, 2014. Photo by Natasha Zaretsky.

Since the dictatorship ended, as explored in previous chapters, ­things have changed. Amnesty laws have been overturned, resulting in new t­rials of the perpetrators of the h ­ uman rights abuses during the dictatorship. March 24, the date of the military coup, has become an official holiday, the Day of Remembrance for Truth and Justice. In addition, pillars commemorating this past can now be found throughout Argentina. “Memory,” “Justice,” and “Truth” literally rise to the sky at key sites related to the dictatorship, such as at the former ESMA, where an estimated five thousand victims w ­ ere tortured and killed. Now, it, too, is a site of memory, called the ex-­ESMA, and designated as the Space of Memory, also home to h ­ uman rights organ­izations and the archive Memoria Abierta (Open Memory). Through t­hese sites, it has become pos­si­ ble to engage with the material traces of that past vio­lence, to see ­these spaces with one’s own eyes, to bear witness. Just like any memorial, the meaning of ­these sites may never be settled; yet they have opened new opportunities for reflection and agency that are vital for repair. Signposts Not far from the ex-­ESMA, you can find the Parque de la Memoria, or Park of Memory, a serene space situated on the edge of Buenos Aires’s River Plate. Upon entering during a visit in 2013, I could see vari­ous sites of



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10. ​Monument to the Victims of State Terrorism, Buenos Aires, 2013. Photo by Natasha Zaretsky.

memory—­metal rods uncannily reverberating in the wind, geometric sculptures, and other material interventions in the landscape. A wall stretches down ­toward the ­water’s edge, inscribed with rows of names documenting the ­people dis­appeared and killed by the military dictatorship—­t he Monument to the Victims of State Terrorism. Thirty years ­after the end of the dictatorship, I walked along that path with an Argentine friend, searching through the rows of names ­u ntil she found a name she knew. The park had provided visitors with blank sheets of white paper, which she used to g­ ently position over her friend’s name, slowly tracing the edges of the letters in memory of that friend killed in t­hose years of state vio­lence. This small act is just one of many such acts of repair possible in this park, which forms part of a complex topography of memory in Argentina, along with the narratives of survivors and f­amily members of victims of the dictatorship, their testimonies, and the public protests, explored in previous chapters. And yet it also points to the significance of space and place to understanding the strug­g le to rebuild society and self in the wake of vio­lence and trauma.8 The idea for the Park of Memory began with the advocacy of ­human rights groups, which started working t­oward its creation in the 1990s (Sion 2015, 21). It is located along the River Plate, not far from the ex-­ESMA, where thousands

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of victims w ­ ere tortured and dis­appeared, some of them also thrown into the very river along which this park now stands. During the years the ESMA functioned as a site of torture, from the outside, none of that was vis­i­ble. Even though it was located within the bound­aries of Buenos Aires, ­people lived their lives, passing by, not necessarily knowing what was happening inside. The realities of that simultaneity ­were perhaps the most chilling part of the dictatorship for many—­t hat even though they may have thought something was happening, they may not have known ­there ­were concentration camps and torture centers right in their neighborhood, right in their city. And the death flights (Verbitsky 1996) deposited the bodies of t­hose tortured at the ESMA in the river. Given the symbolic importance of this par­t ic­u ­l ar site in the nation’s imaginary, it is unsurprising that it was also met with critiques and contestations. The plan for the Park of Memory included creating a sculpture park, documentation center, and the Monument to the Victims of State Terrorism, which was clearly designed in line with Maya Lin’s Vietnam Veterans Memorial, with the names of the dis­appeared inscribed carefully in the stone. The contestations focused on the inclusion of other monuments and the very notion of a monument itself. In addition to commemorating the victims of state terror, the organizers also included a monument to the victims of the AMIA bombing and to the Righ­teous of the Nations (reflecting t­hose who helped save Jews during the Holocaust). Some criticized the way this plan connected ­these dif­fer­ent memories in one place (Druliolle 2011, 23), while in other cases, the critiques focused on the idea of asserting with such finality, in a monument, that loved ones had indeed died (30–31). This park was officially inaugurated in 2001, and despite the vari­ous contestations, it became an impor­tant site for marking the dis­appeared that also invited, and in some cases, demanded the viewer to reflect on the way they physically located themselves into the histories of t­ hese spaces. Along the river itself, signposts situate the visitor in space and time—in the history of what happened that comes into being through one’s presence at that very site where the vio­lence also took place. One sign depicts multiple outlines of p­ eople, along with the number 30,000, the estimated number of dis­appeared. Another pre­sents an outline of a pregnant ­woman—­a symbol of the victims of repression, as many w ­ omen who w ­ ere detained while pregnant had their c­ hildren taken from them by t­hose in power. Or, hauntingly, yet another sign pre­sents the profile of just one person in the m ­ iddle of an airplane, an image that links this park and this space to the bodies thrown into the River Plate during the infamous death flights, when t­ hose considered subversive ­were “dis­appeared” into the ­water.9 Perhaps ­t hese images would not signify anything without the frameworks of memory Halbwachs described. And yet, aside from knowing the history or situating yourself within a social context, it is also impor­tant to physically



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11. ​Signposts at the Park of Memory, Buenos Aires, 2013. Photo by Natasha Zaretsky.

stand at ­these sites. Indeed, this park underscores the importance of embodied connections to t­ hese spaces for citizens, especially so close to where the repression took place—in the w ­ ater within view, where a lone statue now stands, or in the space of the ESMA, which was officially designated the ex-­ESMA during Néstor Kirchner’s presidency, a space of torture transformed into a space of remembering. Such physical spaces of remembering also offer opportunities for artistic interventions, as they did for Marcelo Brodsky, who lost his b­ rother Fernando in the repression. Andreas Huyssen, for instance, describes Brodsky’s work as emblematic of “Latin Amer­i­ca’s postdictatorial postmodernism of mourning” (Huyssen 2001). Yet even as it is situated in par­t ic­u ­lar places, it also connects to visual frameworks referencing the Holocaust and Berlin memorials, which Huyssen describes as enabling “Holocaust discourse [to] function like an international prism that energizes the local discourses about the desaparecidos” as well as genocide and other forms of loss (2001).10 Indeed, Huyssen describes Brodsky’s work in the Bosque de Memoria (Forest of Memory) in Tucumán as engaging with the complexities of fracture and disappearance so emblematic of t­hose years. In the Buenos Aires park as well, Brodsky, in fact, became a vital part of the commission selected for the creation of the Monument to the Victims of State Terrorism. As Annette Levine describes, during a trip to the outskirts of Buenos Aires (the Ciudad Universitaria) to look for a location for the park, Brodsky encountered some of the remains of the AMIA building, which he felt compelled

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to save precisely ­because he “knew that ­those remains would dis­appear with the construction of the Memory Park” and he “wanted to preserve them from oblivion” (Huyssen 2001, 88, as cited in A. Levine 2015, 91). A ­ fter finding the tip of the letter A in the “AMIA” portion of the façade of the destroyed building, Brodsky then created an exhibition, Piedras por la justicia (Stones for Justice). He installed this work in a plaza in 2003 on the occasion of the ninth anniversary of the bombing, along with images of the façade of the old building, over which he laid his handwriting inscribing how he had found t­ hese pieces (see A. Levine 2015, 91–95). In this way, he had created a site of memory that disrupts the public spaces of the city, and also connected this to his other creative interventions in the repre­sen­ta­tion of the dictatorship related to the loss of his ­brother, forming a space of intersection. Fluid Interventions Sites of memory became impor­tant ways for Argentines to work through the tensions that existed between recovery and oblivion, between remembering and erasure, between justice and impunity. This was also clear in more fluid and ephemeral acts of repair, such as the Magnacco escrache. The 2018 Magnacco escrache also borrowed t­hese repre­sen­ta­tional strategies of inscribing p­ eople spatially and historically.11 During the March 2018 escrache that wound through the streets of Buenos Aires, as we got closer and closer to Magnacco’s home, I started noticing signs and the young man climbing the trees to put them up at specific distances. In bright yellow, like any other road sign, one sign noted, a 350 m, Jorge Luis Magnacco, Ladrón de Bebés,” ( Jorge Luis Magnacco, Baby Thief, 350 m), along with his street address. As we got even closer to Magnacco’s home in the tree-­l ined neighborhood of Recoleta, protesters started handing out flyers, and neighbors and passersby ­stopped to see what the commotion was about—­precisely the point of the escrache. Of course, many kept on walking as well. We kept on walking—250 meters away, then 150 meters away, and then we ­were ­t here. We had arrived. Right ­there, standing on the street in front of Magnacco’s apartment building, we looked up at his win­dow on the tenth floor of the building. As more ­people gathered, the group became louder, shouting up to Magnacco to demand that his history not go forgotten. And yet the laws seemed to be allowing for a certain kind of forgetting. Initially, in a 2011 trial focusing on the appropriation of c­ hildren during the dictatorship, Magnacco was accused along with other key figures in the dictatorship such as junta leaders Jorge Videla and Reynaldo Bignone. The trial, focusing on thirty-­four kidnapped babies, resulted in a 2012 ruling that t­ hese acts constituted crimes against humanity, and Magnacco was sentenced to ten years. He was given h ­ ouse arrest ­because of his age and health, though that was ­later revoked in 2013. He was also convicted in the appropriation of o ­ thers



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born during that time, including Rodolfo Fernando Pérez Roisinblit (in a 2005 ruling) and Evelín Karina Bauer Pegoraro (in a 2012 sentence). However, in 2017, following the “2 × 1” ruling (explored in chapter 2), the years served ­were combined, and he was given conditional liberty (see Zaretsky 2017a). The notion that Magnacco could live calmly in his apartment in Recoleta challenged the notion of juridical accountability central to the vision of social repair offered by the t­rials and pro­cesses of justice. This is what inspired H.I.J.O.S. to hold this escrache on March 17, 2018, resonating with the history of how they and other social movements turned to public streets and plazas as spaces of protest and disruption. Even though the signs they put up along t­hese streets for this escrache and the many other protests, may seem like ephemeral interventions, perhaps their very contingency and precarity in time also sustains their urgency as acts of repair, in tension with the suggested, if not a­ ctual, permanence of a monument. Walls of Memory As we have seen, monuments and material sites of memory reveal the importance of the public sphere for negotiating national belonging. In the aftermath of the AMIA bombing, Jewish Argentines also used sites of memory to define themselves in relation to Argentina as a state and other communities suffering loss and impunity. For some time ­a fter the bombing of July  18, 1994, the only ­thing that stood where the AMIA building had been destroyed was a ­simple black wall bearing the first names of each victim. Sofía, along with other ­family members of the victims, would come to this wall to mourn the loss of her only ­d aughter ­every month on the eigh­teenth, the anniversary of the bombing (see chapter 1, figure 1). In the wake of the 1994 attack, the trees, the plaques, the names, the monuments, and the actos that would develop all sought to mark the memory of the vio­lence and loss in a way that resists its erasure. Despite ­these traces of memory, t­hese acts of repair, when visiting t­hese sites, t­here ­were no other immediate signs of the chaos of the bombing. The rubble and fragments of books, concrete, and lives had been cleaned up. The street had been repaved. The scene of chaos and utter destruction was now calm, with a ten-­story building standing formidably, like a fortress, recessed from the street. The remains of the bombing had become “civilized”—­the haphazard consequences of the bombing neatly or­g a­n ized into memorial trees lining the block, with each victim’s name ­etched into a plaque under­neath. When I first arrived in Argentina in 2001, Pasteur Street had been rebuilt. The Jewish community leaders chose to rebuild the AMIA on the same site as the attack. Sofía understood to some extent the difficulties of locating another space for the building, given the concerns of neighbors who feared another attack would take place, reflecting tensions that have also occurred in other contexts, such as the 9/11 attacks in New York City (see Sturken 2004). Yet

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for f­ amily members of the victims, like Sofía, the pain remained. She told me that she could not forgive the paving over of what had been a sacred space, the last place where her ­d aughter had been alive.12 As I first walked along that street, I discovered many reminders of what had taken place. Trees had been planted to commemorate each of the eighty-­five victims, their names engraved in black stone plaques under­neath. The thick wall that protected the new AMIA building bore the first name of each victim spray-­painted on a black piece of metal, a wall that would change over time while retaining its aesthetics of black wall and white names. When Sofía and other f­amily members of victims returned, month a­fter month, to remember their loved ones and demand justice, they would also incorporate large posters with photo­g raphs of their loved ones, along with their names and ages at the time of their deaths, connecting their memory work to the repre­ sen­ta­t ional practices also found in the activism of the Madres de Plaza de Mayo.

12. ​A monthly acto at the AMIA building’s wall of names, December 18, 2003. Photo by Natasha Zaretsky.

­ very month ­a fter the attack, ­f amily members of the victims of the bombE ing and their supporters gathered at that wall with the group Familiares y Amigos de las Víctimas to remember t­ hose who had died and to protest the injustice that followed, interrupting the normal flow of traffic and pedestrians to bring every­one back to that moment of vio­lence that forever changed their world. Just as Memoria Activa (and l­ ater Ciudadanos de la Plaza) stood in the Plaza Lavalle,



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facing the high courts, for their weekly actos, Familiares returned monthly to the site of the attack itself to remember. Central to their actos was the wall, which bears only the first names of the victims, without any indication of age, profession, or ethnicity and without telling us if they ­were someone’s d­ aughter or ­mother or friend. They simply stand, both intimate and unknowable, as Andrea, as Dora, as Agustín, as names on a wall. For years, Sofía returned to this site to mourn her ­d aughter Andrea’s loss. When each victim was named, a person from the crowd—­later, I would learn they ­were usually f­amily friends or friends of the victims—­would approach a small stand, painted black, with the words Justicia y memoria (“Justice and memory”) inscribed on it, and light one candle for the victim named. They then took a long-­stemmed red r­ ose from a bucket holding several dozen and placed it in a vase located on that stand.13 In addition to the roses in the stand for each victim, someone would place one red r­ ose next to each image. The acto would conclude with the Mourner’s Kaddish, a­ fter which, the crowd would depart. And Pasteur Street, not far from the Medical School of the University of Buenos Aires, in a neighborhood, Once, known for its narrow streets, would return to the flow of everyday life. Over time, though, as I would return to this street and approach the memorial trees that lined Pasteur, it was also pos­si­ble to see the passage of time, with some trees appearing abandoned. ­These trees may symbolically represent a form of hope, and they certainly represent a form of remembrance, but they also do not have many caregivers, it seems, as over the years some have appeared to reach a state of abandonment, with their bases filled with trash and their plaques not clean. Sofía Guterman’s d­ aughter’s name, Andrea Guterman, was also on one of ­t hose memorial trees, which ­were inaugurated in 1999, all bearing the date of July 18, 1994, the date of death shared by each of the eighty-­five victims. On some days, you can especially notice the decay. Twenty years a­ fter the attack, when I went to the tree honoring Andrea, I noticed two plaques from Andrea Guterman’s tree ­were missing. The soil surrounding the tree was filled with ­water from the rain. The grate surrounding another tree was bent in and fixed with what looked like white tape. This, of course, was but one moment I witnessed. But it also evokes the passage of time and the challenges of maintaining t­ hese sites of memory. Just as the escraches, the protests, and the actos may appear as ephemeral interventions into public spaces, the material sites of memory remain just as precarious in the face of time. Securing Memory and Belonging The wall of names at the site of the bombing originally arose as a gesture of repair right a­ fter the immediate trauma and loss of the attack. It was the only t­ hing standing on the ground where the 1994 building was destroyed. By 1999, when the new building was inaugurated, the wall of names remained,

13. ​Commemorative tree on Pasteur Street, 2013. Photo by Natasha Zaretsky.



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mounted onto a new wall of security. This thick wall was built to protect the new building from potential attacks. Such security procedures became commonplace at almost ­every Jewish space in Buenos Aires ­a fter the bombing, as well as in many other locales in Argentina. I remember feeling the surprise, a­ fter g­ oing through the security rituals at the AMIA (checking my document, asking me extensively about my intended appointments), to find on the other side of that wall a bright internal courtyard. With the sky open above, I saw a monument to the victims of the AMIA bombing designed by Yaacov Agam, a series of colorful vertical sheets that create an image of the Star of David as you walk from one edge to the other. Other monuments can also be found in this space, such as one designed by Sara Brodsky (whose son Fernando was dis­appeared) for the Jewish victims of the dictatorship. Yet they are only vis­i­ble, a­ fter you pass through security. (A notable exception is Mirta Kupferminc monument in the Plaza Lavalle, which stands open in a public space.) In many cases, though, they exist b­ ehind walls, hidden from public view. One needs to pass through security in order to view them. This then suggests a complex articulation of remembering and security that permeates ­t hese par­t ic­u ­lar sites of memory.14 The security barricades and procedures have reconfigured the urban landscape, inscribing new physical bound­aries and borders within the city that demarcate Jewish space as separate, dif­fer­ent, and fortified. Their most vis­i­ble aspect are the pi­lotes, small concrete pillars, which stand at almost ­every Jewish building, carving into the body of the city and reshaping Jewish life both from within and from without.15 ­A fter the 1994 AMIA bombing, ­these pi­lotes became a common feature in front of almost all Jewish institutions, responding to the fear of another attack. Such security has also become a component of memorials that can be found in Jewish community spaces, like the Agam monument in the new AMIA building as well as monuments in the La Tablada Jewish Cemetery. The Jewish cemetery La Tablada (located on the outskirts of Buenos Aires) has monuments specifically dedicated to the victims of the Shoah, the fallen from Israeli wars, and the victims of the Israeli embassy bombing and the AMIA bombing. This pre­ sents impor­ t ant implications for understanding the relationship between Jewish memory and Argentine belonging. While designed as a form of protection, security also defined the very bound­a ries of this community. ­These pi­lotes marked Jewish space as necessarily dif­fer­ent while also commenting on the failures of the state to protect them.16 As such, ­t hese security mea­sures can be viewed as sites of memory where citizens contest and challenge the meaning of past vio­lence in relation to con­temporary po­liti­cal demands. At first, the security practices may not appear to be part of the landscape of commemoration, when thinking of plaques, memorials, or monuments. However, though the pi­lotes and other barricades

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14. ​The wall of names in front of the reconstructed AMIA building, undated photo, circa 2000. Photo by Ilene Perlman. Courtesy of the AMIA Centro de Documentación e Información sobre Judaismo Argentino Marc Turkow/Marc Turkow Center for Documentation and Information about Argentine Judaism.

­ ere not intended as sites of memory or monuments, they have become material w and symbolic loci of the vio­lence of the bombing and the fear it generated ­every day in Buenos Aires. They recall the bombing and serve as a daily reminder of the vio­lence of that day. More than just a necessary requirement for memory and commemorations, then, ­these security mea­sures also function as sites of memory themselves. Like other memories of vio­lence, ­these pi­lotes and security mea­sures have become critical tools for the Jewish community to rebuild ­a fter destruction and to redefine its relationship to the rest of society and the state. The Plaza of Memory On the many Mondays I spent in the Plaza Lavalle, informally called the Plaza of Memory, it felt like the actos w ­ ere also a site of memory, a regular, dependable, part of the urban landscape. A ­ fter December 2004, Memoria Activa chose to no longer hold weekly actos, and focused their advocacy on fighting for justice in the AMIA case, though they still returned to the plaza for the July anniversary. ­A fter 2004, another group took over the Monday actos, informally calling themselves Ciudadanos de la Plaza (see chapter 3), and continuing to convene actos on Monday mornings through 2018. E ­ very Monday, just



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like Memoria Activa, they would begin by blowing the shofar and remembering the victims. The main difference, however, was that they chose to stand near the Monument to the Victims of the AMIA Bombing, designed by the Jewish Argentine artist Mirta Kupferminc. In 2006, I returned to the plaza for the first time since Memoria Activa ­stopped its weekly actos. I was curious to see how the space had changed and what had happened to the regular participants in t­hese actos, t­hose who typically attended as listeners. Though I had expected some changes, the emptiness surprised me. Unlike other Monday mornings, when the plaza buzzed with the activity of media gathered to chronicle the acto, it was relatively empty this time. I stood at the edge of the plaza, quietly observing the monument to the eighty-­five victims of the AMIA bombing that stood almost at the center of the plaza, seeming to anchor the space. The monument itself, ­shaped almost like a sundial, was designed to be durable to the ele­ments, to withstand and survive in a public, outdoor space. Yet signs of abandon surrounded us. For a while, the only other person in the area was a homeless man who had been sleeping on a patch of grass. I stood near the monument as he noisily arose from his slumber and began to stretch himself awake. Other passersby w ­ ere just walking their dogs. Yet o ­ thers w ­ ere office workers, their arms stacked with papers and files, walking briskly across the plaza. The first person to arrive that morning was Tita, who wore a bright wool coat to withstand the cold winter day that greeted us. Although she had a cold and was bundled up, she told me that she felt she needed to be ­there. Only about fifteen to twenty ­people continued to go to the plaza on Mondays, so she explained that each person made a difference. I knew that Tita had survived persecution during Argentina’s state terrorism, though she rarely spoke about it to me directly. Instead, we talked at length about the state of politics in Argentina, and she continually looked at her watch as the minutes stretched past 9:53 a.m., wondering aloud where every­one was. Since ­those who regularly attended t­hese actos w ­ ere primarily el­derly, ­there could have been any number of health reasons why they w ­ ere not t­ here. Fi­nally, the ­others started arriving. When Alberto saw me from a distance, he was amazed, and a­ fter asking about my own life and f­ amily, he started telling me about the plaza. As we talked, he showed me the plastic that had been installed over the plaque at the base of the Monument to the Victims of the AMIA Bombing, which had been put in to protect what was under­neath. That morning it was covered in dirt and what appeared to be pigeon droppings. Alberto carefully took out a tissue from his pocket and moistened it slowly. He kneeled down and then ­gently wiped away the accumulated remains of the week that had preceded this Monday, making the surface new again and the words beneath legible.

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Benjamín also arrived, this time wearing a yarmulke and carry­ing a shofar. Since Memoria Activa had left the plaza, he had studied how to blow the shofar so that he could continue this tradition. ­A fter greeting almost every­one ­there, I stood off to the side, curious to see how this acto might be dif­fer­ent from my previous visits. The citizens gathered began the acto in a similar way, convening the crowd to listen, and then Benjamín blew the shofar. This is also something he did proudly on the large July anniversaries still or­g a­n ized by Memoria Activa (see chapter 3, Figure 7). He put his entire body into the exercise, his air pushing up into the ram’s horn, moving the sound out in bursts. He breathed heavi­ly when he finished, and p­ eople congratulated him for a job well done. Then something occurred that had not happened in the ­earlier years of my fieldwork: ­those formerly gathered to listen now began to offer their testimonies, sharing their experiences related to the impunity and injustice following the bombing before ending the acto with a call for justice, as they had done e­ very Monday during Memoria Activa’s time as well. They called out for the memory of the 30,000 dis­appeared, of the victims of the Israeli embassy bombing, of the victims of the AMIA bombing. A ­ fter each victim’s name, the crowd responded “Justicia!” They ended with the same words from Deuteronomy: Tzedek, tzedek, tirdof (“Justice, justice s­ hall you pursue”). While they remained in the Plaza of Memory to hold onto it as a site of memory, they shifted their location from a position close to the high courts, moving instead to the Monument to the Victims of the AMIA. Perhaps one of the few post-­A MIA Jewish sites that does not have security is this monument, which stands freely in the ­m iddle of the Plaza Lavalle, deliberately open to the ele­ments. Mirta Kupferminc designed this in collaboration with the architect Andrés Segal. In 2014, Mirta stood with me at the monument, raising her arms to touch the materials she had carefully designed and installed almost twenty years ­earlier.17 She told me she had selected an Argentine wood called quebracho, both for its durability and capacity for change. “It is a very durable material,” she said, “a wood that resists the weather but can also transform over time. When we first put it in, it was red, and now it has changed, showing the passage of time. And it is good that it shows this passage of time. But it does not get destroyed— it is still standing.” She used one piece of wood for each victim, inscribing ­t hese pieces with the names and ages in a vertical formation clustered into the shape of a “V.” They are dif­fer­ent sizes, denoting the “unique individuality of each person, and yet they ­were all united together, marking the common destiny they shared.” The shape of their names is also like a “V,” like two hands of a clock marking the hour 9:53—­the specific time when the bombing took place. For Mirta, the “V” also acts as an “embrace of the Palace of Justice. . . . ​ It is like a vector, searching,” she told me. This search for justice was of course

15. ​Monument to the Victims of the AMIA Bombing, designed by Mirta Kupferminc, Plaza Lavalle, August 2013. Photo by Juan Pablo Chillón.

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also sustained by Memoria Activa and ­later Ciudadanos de la Plaza with their weekly vigils, which held onto this site as a space of memory, anchoring the material traces of the bombing in the public sphere. Te stimonie s as Site s of Me mory and P ublic D isrup ti on All of the physical sites and spaces of memory explored above—­the Park of Memory, the Plaza de Mayo, the Plaza Lavalle (also called the Plaza of Memory), the site of the AMIA bombing itself at Pasteur Street—­form part of the geography of memory that has arisen in the aftermath of vio­lence. As such, they also served as acts of repair, impor­t ant sites for citizens to assert their agency in response to a state that has historically often failed to provide justice. Yet ­there are other ways in which memory and space find articulation—­both in the ways in which the city itself figures into the narratives of the bombing, and in how narratives and testimony reshape and reinscribe the meaning of vari­ous sites. This was evident in the experience of Anita Weinstein, who sat down with me for an interview in 2018, a­ fter many years of knowing her as the director of the AMIA’s Marc Turkow Center for Information and Documentation about Argentine Judaism, the archive I consulted for photo­g raphs and other original materials related to the bombing. Anita is a survivor of the attack and was working in the building when the bomb exploded in 1994. What struck me in her account was how she turned to the city itself in narrating her own experience of that Monday.18 She began by telling me where she was that morning: “I was walking to Ayacucho [Street], and in that moment my assistant Mirta Strier was with me, and a­ fter ­doing several ­t hings in the center, we made our way to Pasteur. We went down Tucumán and went to Pasteur. And we did this that morning, July 18, 1994, like any other Monday.” From t­ here, she continued walking me through what she did, how her body moved through space, walking into the building, saying hello to ­people, “to the guys talking about soccer,” and then ­going up to the second floor. The small details were still alive in her telling; on the way upstairs, she said, “we made the sign for coffee to the waiter.” Once upstairs, she remembered that she had to go to another part of the floor for a letter, and that is how she found herself in the back of the building, which ultimately saved her. Years ­later she still vividly remembered what happened next: “And a few moments ­later, I sat down—­that is when the explosion happened. That is when the roof started to move and ­things started falling, when the ­things on the sides started to fall, where instinctively I s­topped [and asked,] ‘What is this?’ . . . ​We soon w ­ eren’t able to see what was happening to us, the screams.” It was only then, she told me, that they turned around, “to look at what was ­behind us. The building in ruins, still falling. The screams . . . ​That chaos, and screaming that it was a bomb. It was a bomb. It was a bomb.”



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In remembering that day, Anita and many o ­ thers I interviewed situated themselves in the geography of the city as they told me their stories, something we saw in the words of José Blumenfeld and Elena Pavlotzky (see chapter  3). Anita also expressed the inability to understand what happened, to make sense of what she was seeing at first. The desire for some kind of coherence, and the impossibilities of achieving such coherence, run through the stories and testimonies of ­family members of victims of vio­lence—as well as the survivors. And yet the impossibility of achieving some kind of closure, I would argue, also helps animate advocacy and the public testimonies that are just as impor­tant in generating new listeners (see Zaretsky 2015b) and witnesses to their personal trauma. Their transformation of personal loss into public speech acts offers t­ hese possibilities of repair, which, following Halbwachs, require social contexts for remembering, in this case, through the public sites of memory. The significance of narrative for Sofía—­speaking to o ­ thers about her loss, about her ­d aughter, writing poetry and ­later books—­was an impor­t ant part of her recovery, affirming the significance of narrative noted in the scholarship on trauma and vio­lence. Her use of language also extended to the many talks and speeches she gave on her frequent visits to schools and, of course, on the actos and anniversaries. For Sofía and other f­amily members of the victims, ­these are what Annette Levine describes as “spaces of return” (2015, 79). Their testimonies in public spaces are animated by their desire for justice, evident perhaps most notably during the yearly anniversaries. In t­ hose moments, they testify to the loss, to the vacío as much as to the possibility of justice and memory. Invited to speak at the nineteenth anniversary of the bombing, on July 18, 2013, Sofía framed her strug­g le in terms of temporality: Nineteen years without justice. The years grow dangerously, who knows ­u ntil what point. Why? Why did they kill us? We hear [the victims] asking us this question all the time. We hear them sometimes among the living, ­silent, but with a power­ful strength. We hear them whispering from the grey stones of their tombs. And we know that as long as we ­don’t have all of the truth, they ­w ill never have their answer. ­ hese words spoken at the site of the attack represent a certain kind of disrupT tion, intended to intervene in the ordinary flow of time. At the heart of Sofía’s public testimony was a resounding epistemological vacío—­what happened and who would be held accountable. This shows how ­t hose who lost someone use their testimonies to search for a certain kind of repair, articulating personal and po­ l iti­ cal coherence. This tension between disruption and coherence becomes mutually constitutive, animating the kind of liminality at the heart of ­t hese acts of repair. Yet this desire for a way forward comes for survivors in dif­fer­ent forms. Sofía turned to publishing books (Guterman 1995; 1997; 1998; 1999; 2004) as

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well as giving public speeches that helped her sustain the memory of her ­d aughter. Other activists, such as Laura Ginsberg, took on a more critical stance vis-­à-­v is the community leadership and the uses of memory. Laura’s husband Jorge Ginsberg died in the attack, and since then, she has been advocating for justice, first as a founding member of the group Memoria Activa, and then, as of 2002, as the founder of A.P.E.M.I.A. In 1997, on the third anniversary of the bombing, Laura was still with Memoria Activa, and together with Diana Wassner Malamud (who also lost her husband in the bombing), Laura prepared a speech, which repeats a phrase, Yo acuso, an Argentine version of J’accuse. The “Yo acuso,” directed at President Menem and other leaders, was intended to connect the ­h andling of the AMIA bombing to another historical denunciation of a government—­Émile Zola’s letter “J’Accuse,” directed to the French government in 1898 as an accusation for an antisemitic cover-up in relation to the treatment of Alfred Dreyfus. As noted in chapter 3, this speech became a pivotal moment in the relationship between Jewish Argentines and the state. I first heard about Laura’s speech from Eugenia Szejer. Over coffee one day, she told me about it in animated tones and insisted that I borrow the videotape from her. In the same breath, she also insisted that I return it to her, as it was a valuable part of her personal library, and so I went home to watch it as soon as I could. The footage of the speech was shaky but clear, showing Laura standing on the podium to give her speech. Appearing on a platform in front of the AMIA building, Laura stood firmly, holding the piece of paper as she read the accusation of Memoria Activa: I close my eyes and imagine that it is July 18, 1994, at seven in the morning. We wake up like it is any other Monday to start the week. Parents share breakfast with their ­children and we all say, “I love you,” before leaving home. But many of us did not [do this], ­because we never would have thought this would be the last time. I close my eyes and imagine that it is that July 18 at ten in the morning. Mónica and Felix go to work, Romina to university. Jorge is carry­ing coffee to a client, and Sebastián, at five years old, continues walking with his mom on Pasteur Street. No one would arrive at their destination. I open my eyes, and they are filled with an image of horror: smoke, firefighters, police, ­people pushing, ­people crying, ­people screaming, ­people praying, ­people who c­ an’t do anything, not cry or scream. . . . ​Seven minutes before ten, the AMIA building is blown up.19 She continued in that way, referencing closing her eyes and then opening them again, shuttling between what one could imagine would have happened if ­t here had been no bombing with the real­ity of what did transpire. She then turned to her accusation: “All of the crimes and attacks committed and that



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may happen in the f­uture have one common denominator.” H ­ ere her voice takes on a resounding power, as she shouts: Yo acuso [I accuse] the government[s] of [president] Menem and [president] Duhalde of consenting to impunity, of consenting to indifference ­toward ­those who know and keep quiet, of consenting to insecurity, [consenting] to the incompetence and ineptitude. . . . Yo acuso [I accuse] the government of Menem and Duhalde of covering up the local connection that killed our f­amily members. ­ fter this accusation of the cover-­up—­one that also remained central to the A most recent AMIA trial (2015–2019), she spoke of the reason for their fight for justice: ­ oday is July 18, and three years have passed. Three years. Three years. T And as on e­very anniversary and e­very day of our lives, we continue without having a response. ­Because of that, like on ­every anniversary, we say: We are h ­ ere ­today, on the last corner of their lives, on the first corner of the large path that we find ourselves on to fight for justice. ­Because exactly three years ago, their laughter was extinguished, our laughter and all the shared laughter that no longer ­w ill be. ­Because their dreams, our dreams, and the infinity of shared dreams that ­w ill never be have gone up in smoke in clouds of explosives and horror. . . . And they deserve justice, b­ ecause wherever in the world they may be, or from inside of us, only ­a fter finding justice ­w ill our dead be able to rest in peace. The dead of the AMIA: presente. I quote this speech at length ­because of the impact it had on the Jewish community at the time of its pronouncement. It represented a moment of profound disruption in the usual order of ­things. Typically, few would dare to accuse a community leader or the Argentine president in a public way. This was a moment of disruption in the way that the Madres de Plaza de Mayo and H.I.J.O.S. also disrupted public spaces as a central part of their advocacy. This idea that they ­were still “pre­sent” resonates and reverberates years ­later in the words also voiced by Sofía. For Laura Ginsberg, though, ­t here was nothing more impor­t ant than justice and accountability, and having a clarity that allows insights into what happened and why. In an interview in 2014, she told me, “It’s difficult to imagine how it is to live for twenty years without knowing anything about a crime that was the worst terrorist attack occurring in our country’s history.” 20 Indeed, although a new trial did conclude in 2019, it did not hold t­hose in positions of power (such as one of the community leaders from ­those years, DAIA president Rubén Beraja, or Argentine president Carlos Menem) accountable in a way that would meet the call for justice articulated by Laura Ginsberg

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in 1997. Nor did it focus on the question of who was responsible for the a­ ctual attack and why they did it—­the “why” that Sofía also voiced nineteen years ­a fter the bombing. Through ­these ongoing public calls for justice, though, ­there is clearly a desire for a kind of repair that is emblematic of transitional justice efforts. It is worthwhile to note that Laura Ginsberg also advocated for an investigatory commission about the bombing and the opening of government archives.21 And yet I would argue that part of the strategy also hinges on reclaiming the possibility of belonging and inclusion within the narratives related to ­human rights, justice, and impunity. In 2014, when Laura Ginsberg sat down with me again more than fifteen years a­ fter first voicing the “Yo acuso” in public, she continued to demand her vision of truth and argued for the power of citizenship: “This is our country. And finding truth ­w ill not naturally come through demo­cratic institutions. On the contrary, the demo­cratic institutions are moving to hide—­and citizens have to go to the streets to demand justice and punishment ( juicio y castigo) for all of the criminals.”22 “Juicio y castigo,” of course, is a phrase common to framing calls for justice in relation to the crimes of the dictatorship, still vis­i­ble on the signs in the 2018 Magnacco escrache. In this way, Laura is using her testimony to achieve a dif­fer­ent kind of order—to achieve a narrative framing where the impunity of the AMIA bombing is not simply viewed as a Jewish prob­lem alone, but considered as part of broader challenges to the rule of law. Public testimony can thus help Jewish Argentines reframe their belonging and use memory to reshape their positioning in the collective. Indeed, as we s­hall see, such public sites of memory would prove vital for their strug­g le to navigate uncertainty and find some form of coherence, be it through truth or justice. Framewor ks of B e long i ng Clearly ­these testimonial interventions into public space ­were impor­tant for ­family members of victims, such as Sofía Guterman and Laura Ginsberg. Yet for many o ­ thers, their participation at ­t hese sites of memory, through giving testimonies or being pre­sent as listeners, allowed them to carve out a space of agency and belonging for themselves, also forging a possibility for repair. Indeed, part of the power of this space for citizens was how it helped them respond to the epistemological liminality in which they existed—­not knowing who was responsible for the bombing in the case of the AMIA, not knowing if justice would ever arrive, not knowing what happened to their ­children who ­were dis­appeared during the dictatorship, not knowing how to live with the aftermath of such violence, not knowing how to grapple with the indifference they faced. As such, the Plaza of Memory became a physical site that allowed for t­hese pro­cesses of repair and recovery to unfold, and, following Halbwachs’s ideas about the social frameworks of collective memory, they did so in ways that also helped them re-­establish frameworks of belonging. In what



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follows, I share several testimonial interventions in the public space of this plaza, which together reflect how it became a heterogeneous site of memory and citizenship. Marking the Traces of ­Those Who Have Dis­appeared During the height of Memoria Activa’s presence at the high courts, on ­those Mondays when the group would gather e­ very week in the Plaza, its actos ­were more than rituals of memory. They ­were also occasions for ­people to see friends. On one such Monday in July 2002, I arrived just on time, a few minutes before the acto was to begin. The exact moment in which the bombing took place, 9:53 a.m., was commemorated e­ very Monday h ­ ere, beginning with the blowing of the shofar. That morning, the sun was shining and every­thing seemed as uncannily serene as always, in comparison to the rest of the hustle and bustle of a normal Monday morning start to the workweek. A group was already gathered in the usual spot, directly across from the looming entrance to the high courts. Next to them ­were cameras set up to document this acto and broadcast it on news channels such as Crónica TV. That morning, the sound of the shofar was a bit dissonant, which was intended to disrupt the flow of time, the appearance of normal life, so that it could be a call to listen that almost immediately generated a silence. The first speaker that day spoke of her losses during the dictatorship, her ­d aughter was dis­appeared. At one point she was talking about losing her ­family in the concentration camps, in a gas chamber: “Seguramente se murió” (“Surely, she died.”) Just the way she put it—­surely, she died, she must have died. Not being certain, but having to guess. This exposed a kind of limit of what one can know about such a death, which can never be witnessed. And then she went on to talk about her d­ aughter, “mi única hija,” my only d­ aughter, “que seguramente se murió en el Rió de la Plata,” who surely died in the River Plate—­a gain, not fully knowing what actually happened, or what her d­ aughter was thinking or feeling in that moment. And maybe it was that not knowing, or the sense of loss or vanis­h ing that ­these words elicited that impacted every­one listening in that plaza on that Argentine winter morning. She then ended her testimony by talking about the Park of Memory that would be opening on September 6, along the River Plate, with trees planted, a symbol of life, as she put it, to mark the ones who had dis­appeared. Resisting Indifference ­Others also grappled with how to remember ­t hose who had dis­appeared and who may be on the verge of being forgotten. Although Jack often spoke to me about what I was ­doing at ­t hese actos, he did not often come with me. One Monday, though, he was invited to give his testimony at Memoria Activa on two subjects that he cared very much about—­t he murder of Soviet Jewish writers ­u nder Stalin on the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of this

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event, August 12, 2002, and the way in which episodes like this seem to be forgotten. I arrived early that morning to the plaza, filled with sunshine. T ­ here I saw another friend, Luciano Zito, a filmmaker who also knew Jack and had spoken to him at length about his own f­amily’s history in Poland. We w ­ ere standing together when Jack arrived. That morning t­here was something especially piercing about the shofar. Two men had shofars and blew them so plaintively, then kissing each other afterward on the cheek, as is common in Argentina. The birds ­were singing too in that moment, as if in unison. Luciano mentioned to me something that stood out to him in the plaza—­ the indifference of t­hose g­ oing to and from work, of every­one who went on with their business as if nothing was happening ­there. For them, this cry of the shofar and the testimonies being given did not register as a call to listen. Perhaps they had somewhere impor­tant to be. Or perhaps it was b­ ecause this had already become a normalized part of their landscape. As if to help emphasize that point, just as Luciano was speaking, a car pulled out loudly, in the ­m iddle of someone’s testimony. It was then Jack’s turn. In his testimony, he spoke about the Jewish writers and what happened to them u ­ nder Stalin, reflecting on what it meant that they ­were killed and nobody cared. Perhaps p­ eople did care, I thought, but maybe not in the way ­others can see, and maybe that then translates into a generalized indifference that leads to some kind of oblivion, some kind of collective forgetting. Jack often spoke of this with such urgency. This notion of forgetting or indifference was, in fact, a m ­ atter of life and death for Jack, who often lamented in our conversations how so many p­ eople during the Holocaust could live their lives without knowing anything of what was ­going on. This seemed to reflect how that apathy or indifference was also a part of that vio­lence. Years ­later, what Jack feared, and often reflected on in his writing and our conversations, was that ­people would forget ­these tragedies, would not even know what to remember, and that the lives of t­ hose who suffered might simply dis­appear. Presence, Silence, and Witnessing On another Monday morning, in March 2003, as the weather turned to fall, it was fi­nally raining, making the heat a bit easier to take. I took the bumpy number 29 colectivo to the Tribunales stop that morning, arriving about ten minutes before the acto was to begin. By that point, the rain was heavy enough to make it difficult to navigate the puddly streets. And yet the plaza was already filled with ­people setting ­things up for the acto, with every­one standing u ­ nder an umbrella. Almost right away I ran into Jaique Till, one of the found­ers of the Coro Guebirtig, who shared with me that the group would begin its work in March. Benjamín was t­ here, as always, as was Diana, and, of course, the other organizers of Memoria Activa.



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That day, the testimonies took on a range of issues related to po­liti­cal protest and memory. Yet they also offered a public platform for personal experiences, and became a way for ­people to create new connections and community. I stood next to Diana and Benjamín that morning, dutifully recording and listening, with my umbrella in one hand and my recorder in the other. The first speaker was Enrique Federman, a professional clown, who began by telling a story about how every­one knows about clowns being sad inside but making every­one feel better on the outside. And so, he said, even in sadness one can have solidarity. Then he turned to the story of his own grand­ father. Enrique said his zeide [“grand­f ather” in Yiddish] came to Argentina on one of the last boats, if not the last one, from Germany in 1937. He took his grand­father to a restaurant on Sarmiento Street to eat yiddishe ( Jewish) food. That grand­father ate a traditional Jewish dish, kreplaj con crema, but Enrique realized he did not want to say anything to his grand­f ather during this lunch. He just sat and watched him in silence. And he said he wanted to do the same ­t hing ­here, at Memoria Activa—­i nstead of saying something, to just stand and watch every­one in silence. And yet that seemingly small act of listening in silence, of being pre­sent ­there as the necessary interlocutor—becoming a listener also implicated in this story of resisting impunity—served as one of ­those acts of repair in the face of the vio­lence and loss of the AMIA. The next speaker gave a dif­fer­ent testimony that focused more on the po­liti­cal dimensions and dynamics of loss. Alberto Indij, an attorney, spoke of the country being decimated over the last twenty-­five years. The reasons for its pre­sent de­cadence, for its fall, stemmed from what he called the “emptiness of justice” and the “lack of re­spect for the rule of law.” The Plaza of Memory gave both of ­these citizens a space to express their testimonies, to share their sense of loss—­personal in the case of Enrique, po­liti­ cal in the case of Alberto. At the end, one of the organizers of Memoria Activa stood up to read from a page that was almost melting in her fin­gers from the rain. She began by calling us to remember the 30,000 dead in the dictatorship, for t­hose who died in the embassy bombing, for t­hose who died in the AMIA bombing, and for all of the o ­ thers dead in the streets. She ended on the ­simple word “Justicia.” “We Are All Memoria Activa” One Monday morning in March 2003, Jack told me he was in the mood to walk, and so ­a fter we had our coffee together, we walked over to the plaza. Jack seemed tentative about approaching the area where Memoria Activa gathered, so I asked him, “Jack, ­you’re coming all the way with me?” And he said, “Yes, and I w ­ ill see ­people I ­h aven’t seen in years.” That par­tic­u ­lar day, perhaps b­ ecause I was more attuned to t­hese details since Jack was with me, I noticed other t­hings happening in the plaza—­like

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the ­people sleeping ­there. Although ­there ­were not that many, ­there was one man ­here, a man and a young boy t­ here. They w ­ ere just waking up when we arrived. I wondered what had brought them ­t here. There were so many other kinds of injustices surrounding us all the time, the ones that are sometimes vis­i­ble and sometimes forgotten. Jack was right. He did see p­ eople he knew who w ­ ere gathered t­ here, such as Enrique from Memoria Activa, Eugenia Szejer, José Blumenfeld. They w ­ ere all busy that morning talking about the DAIA, one of the Jewish community organ­izations, which led into a discussion of the dynamics among the groups of ­family members of the victims, of who still goes to the actos on the eigh­ teenth, and who only goes to Memoria Activa. A ­woman I did not know said that she had ­stopped ­going to the actos altogether for a while. At first she would go, even though she had not lost anyone, out of solidarity, and then she saw that the groups ­were fighting among themselves and thought, forget it. But she had returned. “Hay que volver,” she said. You have to come back. I looked up and saw the Banchero crowd, including Benjamín, holding the Todos somos Memoria Activa sign. “We are all Memoria Activa,” it read, in all-­capital large black letters against a white background. He carried this banner with him in a bag, holding onto it as he traveled by bus from the far outskirts of the city and unfurling it step by step ­every Monday. One of the most striking testimonies that morning was from a veteran of the Malvinas (Falkland Islands) War. Perhaps his testimony was so moving precisely b­ ecause I was not expecting it. He said that this was the first time he was speaking to a large group, and that as a member of the Jewish community he was honored to be ­there. Part of his strug­g le was as a veteran; he felt that veterans had to fight for every­t hing and that no one wanted to give them jobs or support. T ­ here was pain in the story of survival he shared with us that morning. ­A fter he spoke, he walked back to his ­l ittle boys. Eugenia also spoke to him, thanking him for his testimony. But what stood out to me was the way his younger son embraced him, holding on tightly to his legs and clearly showing him his love and support for that act of speaking in front of a crowd, for sharing his testimony that day. At the end of the acto, the same calls for justice that concluded ­every Monday rang out again. ­There was no noise from the streets that morning. Hardly any cars or buses s­ topped. The sounds of the acto, of the calls for justice, almost seemed to echo off the walls of the high courts in front of us. Volver a la Vida, Returning to Life ­These acts of repair, though, w ­ ere not just about giving testimony in a shared space; they w ­ ere also about finding a way to return to life itself through the communities the participants developed in ­t hese sites and spaces of memory. Adriana Schettini, a journalist, spent many years g­ oing to Memoria Activa’s actos, even though she had not lost anyone in the attack and was not herself



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Jewish.23 She spoke in a power­ful way about the need for community that emerged ­a fter the bombing. As an Argentine citizen, she did not feel like she could stand by with such injustice. A ­ fter the attack, she started g­ oing to the Plaza Lavalle on Mondays, and from t­here she would join all of the p­ eople who used to go to the Banchero, especially in the first years ­a fter the attack. The café is located just a few short blocks from the plaza. The sidewalks, though, along t­ hese streets are narrow, fitting no more than two p­ eople across, and often on ­t hose walks, taxis and larger vehicles would roar by, within mere inches of pedestrians. ­A fter crossing Corrientes, one of the largest ave­nues in the city, one arrives at the Banchero. A relatively ordinary café, Banchero is a place where you can spend hours with an espresso reading one of the newspapers offered to visitors or watching the news endlessly streaming on the mounted TV screens (­u nless soccer is on, of course). One can eat the classic medialunas (Argentine croissants, made with ­either manteca, butter, or grasa, fat), or instead, have a full meal—­ lunch or dinner. Most of my visits ­there, ­those gathered would order their coffee, with elaborate instructions to the waitress, and then sit with it for however long it took to discuss every­thing that happened that morning in the plaza, and the world beyond. Adriana told me about the early years of Memoria Activa and how every­ one would go together to the Banchero ­a fter the actos, making one very long ­table that would be set up for them. She described it as a way to “volver a la vida”— to return to life. ­There ­were also legendary stories from ­those early years, ones ­people would repeat to me, again and again, like what happened to Tita, a survivor of the dictatorship who had been held in two concentration camps, El Banco and El Olimpo. Tita supported many groups, attending Memoria Activa’s actos as well as the commemorations held on the eigh­teenth in front of the AMIA building, and also joining the Madres. One day, Adriana told me, she, Tita, and ­others ­were sitting at the Banchero, and right t­here, in the same space, having an ordinary cup of coffee, was Tita’s repressor, Julián the Turk. In Adriana’s telling, Tita went up to him and said to his face, “Now, why d­ on’t you call me ‘ judía de mierda’ [derogatory term for Jew] now, in front of all of ­these ­people?” As we know from Nunca Más and accounts of survivors like Jacobo Timerman (1981), during the dictatorship, many Jews w ­ ere treated differently while detained, in what some perceive as systematic forms of antisemitism. Years ­later, Tita found herself in the same space as her torturer. This was the 1990s, during the years of impunity, when he and so many ­others walked freely. Despite this l­egal freedom in t­hose years, this did not protect them from social accountability. And Tita had the chance to say something directly to the man who had repressed her. The man only responded, “No te conozco,” I ­don’t know you. But Tita knew him. And what impressed Adriana was Tita’s ability to stand up to him in the way that she did. In this way, t­ hese collective

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spaces also offered unexpected opportunities for agency for ­those who had survived vio­lence and loss. Reclaiming Justice Years a­ fter the incident in the Banchero occurred, Tita sat down with me in the same café to talk about her experience and how she understood her own history and activism. 24 This was in 2013, with many ­human rights ­t rials underway. Indeed, Julián the Turk (whose real name was Julio Héctor Simón), was tried and found guilty, sentenced in 2006 to twenty five years in prison for his crimes in the first conviction of the new post-­a mnesty era. Yet Tita’s activism continued. She told me that in addition to ­going to the plaza on Mondays, she also went to the marches of the Madres de Plaza de Mayo on Thursdays, out of solidarity, as a survivor of the torture of the dictatorship. Before we went to the Banchero, we had gathered at the monument to the AMIA victims with the other Ciudadanos de la Plaza. Benjamín had blown the shofar that morning to begin, and to conclude the acto, Tita made the calls for justice, with the crowd responding “. . . ​justice!” For the 30,000 detained-­d isappeared at the hands of the military dictatorship, we demand . . . . . . ​justice!” [from the crowd]. For the dead in the massacre of the Israeli embassy, we demand . . . . . . ​justice!” [from the crowd] For the dead in the massacre of the AMIA, we demand . . . . . . ​justice!” [from the crowd] For the dead and dis­appeared in democracy, we demand . . . . . . ​justice!” [from the crowd Tita concluded the acto with the words, “Justice, justice, ­shall you pursue, and from ­here, we ­w ill not be moved.” The crowd responded, reciting the passage from Deuteronomy in Hebrew, “Tzedek, tzedek, tirdof.” From ­there we walked to the Banchero, and Tita, whose full name is Rebeca Sakolsky, told me about her life. Born in 1921, she grew up in San Francisco in the region of Córdoba. She told me she was raised in a home where her f­ather had always shown her what solidarity with o ­ thers meant. He had a small country store and, she would tell me, would always help o ­ thers. For instance, on Passover he would have matzo to hand out to t­ hose who could not afford to pay. T ­ hose she called paisanos—an Italian word for “countrymen,” used h ­ ere to refer to fellow Jews—always knew they could go to her ­father. This desire to help ­others and to empathize with ­those who had less led Tita to attend some events and meetings of the Communist Party. When she was twenty-­one, she got married and moved to Buenos Aires, and although she was not very active po­liti­cally, she told me that she always sympathized



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with the c­ auses. During the years of the dictatorship, she said she lived in a large ­house in the neighborhood of Villa del Parque, and when she heard from a young architect that someone needed a place to stay, she told them they could stay in her home. A ­ fter staying with her, many w ­ ere able to escape, she said, but o ­ thers died. “And it’s t­here, in that ­house, that I fell—­that I caí [was dis­ appeared and taken to] concentration camps—to the Banco and [the Olimpo].” ­These w ­ ere detention centers where hundreds w ­ ere brutally tortured, the Banco in greater Buenos Aires and the Olimpo within the borders of the city. She did not share more about what happened to her, other than to say she had been tortured. And the previous week, she told me, marked thirty-­five years since the Olimpo, and she had gathered with fifty other survivors to remember and to be with each other. “The emotion is still with me,” she told me, from the reunion. T ­ here, she saw many of her companions and felt the support of other ­human rights organ­izations, which she found so impor­tant to her survival. Tita then reflected further on her sense of solidarity with o ­ thers. At fifty-­ five years of age when she entered the camp, she was the oldest prisoner. But the solidarity she felt to help ­others, she said, came from how she was raised. “It’s a lie that we all have a price,” she said. She always felt committed to helping o ­ thers, which is also what inspired her to come to the Plaza Lavalle from the very first Monday she knew actos ­were happening. She explained, “Porque un espacio de lucha, no se puede dejar. Porque si no, perdiste la lucha.” (“­Because a space of strug­g le you c­ an’t abandon. If you lose it, you have lost the strug­g le.”) Yet ­a fter so many years, when I asked if she had any hope in this case, she was emphatic in answering: “No, no, no. I know that nothing w ­ ill happen.” For her, all of the p­ eople who had recently stood trial she named—­Beraja, Corach, Menem—­would not be held accountable. In this way, she predicted in 2013 what would happen years ­later at the conclusion to the trial in 2019. “­Here, justice? No,” she told me, shaking her head. I then asked, “Why do you still come [to the plaza], given your lack of hope?” And she said, “To reclaim justice. ­Because the most impor­tant ­thing for a person is the ability to demand justice, and [we need to do what­ever we can] so that one day, ­t here might be justice.” In this way, Tita reaffirmed the importance of t­hese public sites not only to create spaces of community and support but also to assert her demands as a citizen for justice, an act of repair, even if the possibility for fi­n ally achieving justice might not materialize. And yet she felt it was imperative to hold on to this space as a citizen, noting its significance “even if you are the only one here.” This happened sometimes in the plaza, as she continued, “One time, it was raining, and we ­were just two ­people, but I [still] came.” Her presence, ­there in that public space, was what mattered to her, to hold on to the possibility of justice—­t his holding on was her act of repair.

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Conclusion : R e si sti ng E rasure I remember my first visit to the city, walking along the gates of the ESMA, a power­ful sensation in my bones as I moved along the edges of a concentration camp where torture took place within the very limits of the city. At that time, in the early 2000s, no vis­i­ble memorial existed to the places of torture, though that would soon change. It made me won­der, though, What happens if such vio­lence is not publicly remembered? Would the victims remain in the public consciousness without something—or someone—­helping them to remember? Without commemoration? And even if t­hose sites of memory take hold, do they necessarily foster memory or, as James Young noted (1993), just relieve society of feeling the burden of memory, letting them remember and then step away, moving on?25 ­These questions ­were pressing in the years ­a fter the end of the dictatorship. In the 1980s and 1990s, perpetrators lived freely and the ­f amily members of victims w ­ ere desperately looking for any signs of life, or the truth of what happened to their loved ones, or justice and accountability for perpetrators. Yet even de­cades ­later, ­a fter ­t rials began in the early 2000s, memory persisted as an impor­tant force in shaping strug­g les for accountability in Argentina. It also played this vital role for Jewish Argentines facing the aftermath of the AMIA bombing, a violent terrorist attack that remains in a state of impunity. The sites of memory that have developed over ­t hese many years—­t he plazas, the parks, the public testimonies—­a ll engage public spaces for Argentines to gather and remember, to give their testimonies and to call for justice. In ­doing so, citizens reinscribe the public sphere with new meanings, which hinge on the acknowl­edgment of past vio­lence and loss. And they do this to hold on to the possibility for a justice even if it continues to hover on the horizon, situating them in a state of perhaps perpetual transition or liminality. ­T hese sites of memory, however, allow them to negotiate their liminality, and through that strug­g le, they perform an agency that can also be personally and collectively transformative. Still, we can ask, What would happen to t­hese sites if ­people s­topped standing t­here? If they ­stopped marching on Thursdays? Or gathering on Mondays? Would the memory of that past dissolve? All of ­t hese sites of memory exist in a state of tension with the fear of erasure, a fear that the vio­lence and loss they and their fellow citizens endured, would simply vanish, without a trace of justice or memory in the end. And yet even if this does happen, Argentines use these spaces, through their acts of repair, to become instances of agency and resistance against the inevitable loss that may transform ­these sites of memory over time. All they can do, perhaps, as Tita and ­others have done, is to hold on to ­t hese spaces while they still can, gesturing ­toward the repair they so desire.

C hap te r 5

Nunca Más and the Intersections of Genocide, Loss, and Survival

Diana Wang was born in Poland in August  1945, just months ­a fter the end of World War II. Her parents survived the Holocaust, and then made their way to Argentina a­ fter the war b­ ecause that is where two of their only remaining living relatives had settled. Due to immigration restrictions, however, they could not access l­egal papers to enter Argentina, so they instead had to travel via Uruguay, then crossing the border so that they could re­u nite with the only ­family that remained for them.1 Diana’s parents raised their ­children without much explicit mention of being Jewish, in what Diana described as a way to almost protect them from their history and what they experienced as Jews in Poland. As we saw in chapter 1, when Diana de­cided to return to Poland, her m ­ other strug­g led with this trip, worrying and fearing for her d­ aughter’s safety. Diana embarked on that journey in the years a­ fter the 1994 AMIA bombing, which also prompted a profound shift in how she felt about being Jewish. The first time we met, in 2001 over coffee near the Botanical Garden in the Palermo neighborhood, she told me about the impact of the AMIA bombing on her life. On the day of the attack, July 18, 1994, her m ­ other called, telling her, “They are coming for us again. I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry for bringing you ­here!” In that moment, Diana told me that it seemed like her m ­ other felt a sense of danger as a Jew, a feeling she thought she had escaped when they left Poland. The urgency of that moment—­for her ­mother and Diana herself—­ was palpable to me from across the ­t able. Her ­mother conveyed her anguish at not being able to protect her ­children; the vision of Argentina as a safe haven had collapsed. She was also not alone. As Diana would l­ater tell me in another interview, years ­later, “My mom did what ­today I know many survivors do— [she] made a connection between the AMIA attack and the Shoah, a connection that was surprising for me, but now I see that it’s common. In other words, when I ask survivors how they experienced that moment, they all say the same ­t hing. The question is ‘Again? This is happening to us again? This is happening to us again?’ ”2 It almost seemed as if the vio­lence of the bombing 129

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had elided time for Diana’s ­mother and other survivors. They felt that, again, ­people w ­ ere pursuing them, that it was not safe to be Jewish. The hope for ­t hose who had fled Eu­rope was that they would be safe in a new refuge. They held onto that feeling in their new home of Argentina, even though many Nazis, such as Adolf Eichmann, also found refuge ­t here. In some cases, we see painful intersections of genocide. Some Holocaust survivors who had resettled in Argentina also had ­children who ­were persecuted and dis­appeared during the dictatorship. This, of course, prompted a profound trauma, to which many responded through activism and a turn to memory as a way to prevent further vio­lence. In this chapter, I explore how in many of t­ hese cases, Argentines articulated one period of vio­lence with another as they tried to make sense of the vio­lence in their lives. In this way, they generated intersections and sometimes disjunctures as they collapsed time and space, linking Argentina to Eu­rope, the 1976–1983 dictatorship to the 1994 AMIA bombing, or the bombing and dictatorship to the Holocaust. Despite the meaningful differences among ­these experiences of vio­lence, survivors engaged t­ hese experiences in their gestures ­towards repair. This chapter begins with a focus on the concept of genocide and the idea of “Nunca más”—­“Never Again”—­the title given to the CONADEP truth commission report, which offered the first chronicle of the systematic patterns of abuse and h ­ uman rights crimes during the dictatorship. As we have seen, despite the 1984 publication of Nunca Más, despite the calls for memory and justice that have resounded through the plazas and sites of memory explored in the previous chapter, vio­lence and impunity have also continued, resulting in a pervasive liminality for Argentines seeking justice and truth. This chapter returns to an exploration of testimony and narrative as acts of repair, focusing in par­tic­ u­lar on the intersections and disjunctures among periods of vio­lence that emerge; this can include profound points of connection as well as silences that then condition their search for meaning. In the frictions generated through t­ hese encounters, we see the ways in which the disruption of time (Green­house 1996) can generate social o ­ rders. Such intersections also offer power­ful insights into the complex temporality of citizenship and survival when justice remains elusive. Imag ining D i ffe re nc e I would like to return briefly to the Magnacco escrache explored in the previous chapter, where in 2018, de­cades ­after the dictatorship ended, the ­children of the dis­appeared (H.I.J.O.S.) and their supporters wound their way through the streets of Buenos Aires to protest his release, b­ ecause of the crimes he had committed as the obstetrician at the ESMA torture center. As we walked, p­ eople sang, “Olé, olé. Olé, olá. . . . ​Como a los Nazis, les va a pasar”—­“What happened to the Nazis w ­ ill happen to you.” In this way, they situated the crimes of the dictatorship along with the crimes of the Nazis, and emphasized the justice and accountability that awaited them.



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Years e­ arlier, another protest began from that same plaza, on July 17, 2004, the eve­n ing before the tenth anniversary of the AMIA bombing. Or­g a­n ized by Memoria Activa along with Jewish youth groups and other supporters, the acto began with speeches in the plaza, which included representatives from Madres de Plaza de Mayo and Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo. They thereby also connected the fight for justice in the AMIA case to other ­human rights strug­ gles. A large crowd stood gathered in the darkened plaza, carry­ing torches and individual posters to mark the ten years since the bombing took place. ­A fter the speeches, we began walking from the plaza ­t oward Pasteur Street, planning to end the protest at the AMIA building in a return to the site of original destruction. In the darkness, on a frigid winter night, hundreds marched down the eerily empty streets of the Once district. At first, every­one marched in relative silence, with a group in front holding a large black banner with white letters that said in all capitals, “BUSCAMOS LA VERDAD, DENUNCIAMOS LAS MENTIRAS”(“We Seek Truth, We Denounce Lies”), “MEMORIA ACTIVA” printed in red under­neath. ­There ­were barely any streetlights. Most of the businesses ­were shuttered for the eve­ning. And we marched in relative silence—­until all of a sudden someone started singing: “Olé, olé. Olé, olá. Olé, olé. Olé, olá. Como a los Nazis, les va a pasar. A donde vayan, les iremos a buscar.” Slowly the rest of the crowd caught on. And then again, and again, ­t hese sounds r­ ose through the crowd as we marched through the dark night, ­u ntil we arrived at the street where all of this began—­the AMIA building at 633 Pasteur Street. Years l­ater, in March 2018, we would return to the same language in the Magnacco escrache, the same intersections between the Nazis and the perpetrators of vio­lence in Argentina—be it the 1994 AMIA bombing or the 1976– 1983 dictatorship. I would like to emphasize again that ­there are impor­tant differences between state terrorism (also considered to be genocide) and a terrorist bombing that remains unsolved. However, despite ­these differences, for ­these citizens, t­ here is something impor­t ant at stake in engaging the same discursive framings through ­these memory acts, which expose power­f ul articulations of vio­lence. To underline that point, in the Magnacco escrache, signs and spray-­painting named Magnacco a genocida (genocidaire) and further said, “The only place for a genocidaire is prison” (see figure 8 in chapter 4). Calling Magnacco a genocida derives from the discursive reframing of the crimes of the dictatorship as genocide, stemming from the systematic campaign to exterminate a portion of the population they deemed to be subversive. At first glance, it may seem that the word “genocide” does not necessarily capture what took place in Argentina, in the way “genocide” defines the Holocaust, or what took place in Rwanda or Guatemala. In fact, the word

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“genocide” has only been used relatively recently to describe what took place in Argentina during the dictatorship. The history of that concept can, however, be quite instructive to understand how it applies to Argentina. Raphael Lemkin, a Polish Jewish jurist, coined the term “genocide” in 1944 and then advocated for the creation of the Genocide Convention as a way to create a juridical framework for responding to, and hopefully, preventing genocide—­defined as the intent to destroy another group in part or in whole—­f rom recurring. 3 Before a genocide is carried out, however, it is necessary to imagine another group as fundamentally dif­fer­ent—an “other” that needs to be destroyed. This was evident in Nazism and also in the logic of the dictatorship that positioned one group—­whom it called the subversives—as a direct threat to its concept of civilization in Argentina. Nations often define themselves through imagining. Benedict Anderson used “­i magined communities” to describe modern nations as not simply existing as such but requiring citizens to actively imagine a wider community of fellow citizens through their practices (Anderson 1991 [1983]). Yet nations define themselves as much by how they imagine who belongs—­who is included in the national fabric—as by who they imagine does not, rendering certain ­people the “­others” who are excluded through systemic inequalities, deportation, discrimination, and other forms of vio­lence. Imagination, then, becomes central to understanding genocide and other extreme forms of vio­lence. Indeed, genocide requires the ability to imagine one group of ­human beings as being so radically dif­fer­ent as to be outside of humanity itself. As Kevin O’Neill and Alexander Hinton write, “Imagination [is] a creative force that both interprets events in terms of a set of existing cultural codes and generates new constellations of meaning in moments of transformation [and chaos]” (2009, 11). Imagination can thus generate certain ways of conceiving of h ­ uman belonging and difference—of generating ­those “constellations of meaning” that can then produce violence; in the aftermath, imagination can also be important as a response to that violence. This question of how we imagine and perceive difference is a theme that concerns not only scholars but also survivors. This is evident in the work of Primo Levi, an Italian Jew who survived Auschwitz and was liberated in 1945.4 ­A fter returning to Italy, he felt an urgency to tell his story and to write. His account of his experiences became one of the first testimonials published about the Holocaust, printed in Italian in 1947 as Se questo è un uomo. This translates in En­g lish to “If this is a man”—­a narrative reflection on liminality and repair. Levi writes with piercing detail about his experiences in the camps, his relationships with other inmates, the injustices and the humanity he witnessed t­here. In one striking scene, he describes what happened when he was being interviewed by an SS officer at Auschwitz about his knowledge of chemistry, focusing in par­tic­u­lar on the way in which the Nazi was looking at him, noting “that look



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was not one between men; and if I had known how completely to explain the nature of that look, which came as if across the glass win­dow of an aquar­ium between two beings who lived in dif­fer­ent worlds, I would also have explained the essence of the g­ reat insanity of the third Germany” (Levi 1993 [1958], 105– 106). In this quote, we can clearly see Levi struggling with the dehumanization at the heart of Auschwitz—­a dehumanization rooted in that look between “two beings who lived in dif­fer­ent worlds,” a look that required an imagining of difference that lies at the foundation of the Holocaust and all genocides. In Argentina, this imagination of difference resulted in certain groups being defined as subversive or potentially subversive. From 1976 to 1983, Argentina was ruled by a military dictatorship (a junta comprised of officers of the navy, the army, and the air force) that engaged in what they called a “dirty war” against alleged terrorism and subversion of “Western and Christian order.” Essentially, the junta set out to preserve its vision of national order by annihilating anyone it deemed subversive—­a category that would come to define virtually anyone the leaders perceived to be a threat. This included ­those actively involved in radical left-­w ing guerrilla movements and anyone ­else who the dictatorship deemed might be threatening to its vision of national order, such as priests, students, psychologists, historians, trade u ­ nionists, and also Jews, who represented an estimated 12 ­percent of ­t hose dis­appeared, although only comprising 1 to 2 ­percent of the population as a ­whole.5 In this case, then, we also see the power of imagination at work—­t he kind of imagination required to look at a group of ­people and see them as “subversives” outside the national order, as the “other” the dominant power needs to eliminate in order for the nation to survive. This imagining of a subversive “other” then stripped t­hese h ­ uman beings of their subjectivity and their lives to fulfill the dictatorship’s vision of order. In this way, we can see the resonance between what happened in Argentina with other genocides. Most scholars have deemed the abuses perpetrated by the Argentine military to be crimes against humanity.6 Yet over the last twenty years, “genocide” has also been used to describe this period of po­liti­cal vio­lence. Anthropologist Antonius  Robben (2012) notes that Argentine h ­ uman rights activists turned from using “state terrorism” to “genocide” (in addition to “crimes against humanity”) in the mid-2000s. What tran­spired u ­ nder the military dictatorship is clearly an example of crimes against humanity, state terrorism, and po­liti­cal repression; yet defining this period as genocide has been met with some disagreement and debate. The first mention of “genocide” in the Nunca Más report occurs in relation to the “disappearances.” More specifically, the authors of Nunca Más asserted that “at the heart of th[e] policy of total disappearance—­behind the façade of a fight against a terrorist minority—­lurked genocide” (CONADEP 2003[1984], 234). However, the report does not explain the use of the term,

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and it was only in the early twenty-­fi rst ­century, some twenty years ­later and coinciding with the acceleration of h ­ uman rights t­ rials that followed the 2003 overturning of the amnesty laws, that the use of the term “genocide” came into more prominence in Argentina to describe the actions of the junta. In the course of the t­ rials of the alleged perpetrators, some courts couched their rulings in terms of crimes against humanity as being part and parcel of genocide. But the juridical use of the term predated t­hese ­trials; in 1998, Spanish judge Baltasar Garzón framed state vio­lence in Argentina as genocide, based on the intent to destroy a national group. This was also the basis for charges of genocide and terrorism Garzón had filed from Spain against ninety-­ eight Argentine military members.7 ­L ater, in Argentina, during the 2006 sentencing of Miguel Etchecolatz (former director of intelligence for the Buenos Aires Provincial Police) for an array of crimes including kidnapping, murder, and torture, the Argentine authorities lashed out at the former government, accusing it of having perpetrated “crimes against humanity in the context of genocide that took place in Argentina” (Rozanski 2016). It was, in fact, the first time that an Argentine court of law used the term “genocide” to describe what had tran­spired during the dictatorship.8 The Etchecolatz sentence also affirmed that the crimes he committed should be deemed genocide.9 The ruling also depended on the testimony of Argentine scholar Daniel Feierstein, whose work has been quite influential in arguing for genocide as a way to understand the vio­lence in Argentina.10 Essentially, he notes that the junta’s hatred of and strug­g le against “domestic subversion” became an obsession that compelled its members to use extreme vio­lence against anyone they perceived to be a threat, including kidnapping, incarceration, terror, widespread use of torture, disappearances, and other forms of repression. Feierstein further asserts that one of the significant modalities of genocide is “the way in which annihilation has been used to destroy and reor­ga­n ize social relations” (2014, 1), with a “genocidal social practice as a technology of power—­a way of managing ­people as a group” (14). However, t­here are debates over the implications of using “genocide” in the case of Argentina. Anthropologist Antonius Robben, for instance, suggests that it can collectivize the guilt in t­ hese crimes, rendering society at large more responsible and, consequently in his view, perhaps affecting the possibility for national reconciliation (2012, 306). Yet despite ­these and other critiques, genocide has taken on a juridical and po­liti­cal significance in Argentina’s h ­ uman rights movement and has come to be an impor­tant way to understand and frame state vio­lence previously viewed as part of the “Dirty War.” In this way, the dictatorship repression has been juridically and socially reframed as genocide, in ways that create discursive intersections with the Holocaust and other genocides.



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Te stimonie s : Navi gati ng S i le nc e, Truth, and Transiti on s The conflict over how to understand the crimes of the military dictatorship reflects precisely the kind of contestation over the past that has been constitutive of civil society ( Jelin 2003). As survivors and ­family members of victims face the vio­lence and loss of the dictatorship, or the Holocaust, or the bombing, they, too, turn to discourse as a way to make sense of the past, using narrative and testimony to seek some form of meaning and coherence, even if it is never achieved. Yet it is also impor­t ant to consider the dynamics of silence that also operate in ­t hese cultural spaces. Not all survivors ­were able to tell their stories for a society that may not have been prepared for them in the immediate aftermath of the vio­lence. This happened in the case of po­l iti­cal prisoners (Park 2014), and for some time, members of certain left-­w ing groups, such as the Montoneros. As we ­w ill see ­later in this chapter, some Holocaust survivors also experienced this silence in the first years of their survival (Wang 1998). For many years, the Jewish experience of the dictatorship was also met with a certain community silence, with the notable exception of the seminal work by Jacobo Timerman, Prisoner without a Name, Cell without a Number (1981). Timerman’s memoir represents one of the first public accounts of torture in Argentina, in which he also details the par­tic­u ­lar treatment Jews received. The silence many experienced, though, relates to what historian Emmanuel Kahan has noted about community divisions and “fractures,” as well as contested repre­sen­ta­tions about community institutions and their role at that time (2019).11 Part of the reason many survivors did not initially share their stories had to do with a concern that the world would be indifferent to them, or was not prepared to listen. This reflects the absence of a social context for remembering, which, as we have seen in chapter  4, is critical for collective memory (Halbwachs 1980[1950]). Despite some notable exceptions in the case of Holocaust survivors (such as Primo Levi and Elie Wiesel), for the most part, the initial years a­ fter the war largely reflected a public silence. This silence also resonated with the inability to acknowledge the experience of survivors, who encountered limits in government policies. In the years a­ fter World War II, immigration quotas forced Holocaust survivors to enter Argentina u ­ nder false names and papers and, consequently, to live in a form of l­egal silence. They also experienced what survivors felt in other countries too—­n amely, a feeling that society may not be ready for their experiences. While this occurred in the years immediately ­a fter the war (Wieviorka 2006), legacies of silence continued to inform the experience of the second generation as well, as evidenced in their embodied forms of trauma (Kidron

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2009) as well as the ongoing impact of that past on their lives through what Marianne Hirsch has termed “postmemory” (2008; 2012). Yet it is also impor­t ant to highlight silence and its power for perpetrators. Leigh Payne has written extensively on this, focusing on the way in which perpetrators’ confessions reveal the complexities of silence and speech in the public sphere (2008; 2019). Indeed, for dif­fer­ent reasons, Nazis ­were s­ ilent, fleeing accountability by living in other countries ­u nder assumed names, many of them landing in Argentina. Adolf Eichmann was one of t­ hose Nazis who fled to Argentina, where he lived ­u nder an assumed name for years in Buenos Aires. That is where he was kidnapped by Israeli agents and then taken to Israel to stand trial for the crimes he committed during the Holocaust. The concerns about Nazis in Argentina only increased for Jewish Argentines with the capture of Eichmann. This escalated antisemitic sentiments, especially among neo-­Nazi groups (Rein 2005a). The most extreme case was that of a young Jewish ­woman, Graciela Sirota, a student on her way to the University of Buenos Aires, who was kidnapped by neo-Nazis who also tattooed a swastika onto her body.12 This case, then, highlighted the ongoing ambivalence surrounding Jewish belonging in Argentina. The presence of Nazis and the surges in antisemitism (which would continue during the dictatorship and in the years of democracy when two anti-­Jewish bombings took place) reinforced how Jews continued to be ­imagined as the “other” in fundamental ways. Yet Eichmann’s trial ended up having another effect on understanding survivor testimony more globally. ­A fter Eichmann was transported to Israel, he stood trial in Jerusalem in 1961, as chronicled by phi­los­o­pher Hannah Arendt in her paradigmatic work on “the banality of evil” (Arendt 1994 [1963]). This was a landmark event b­ ecause it created a new space and acknowl­edgment for Holocaust survivors for the first time, who before then had largely remained ­silent, with some notable exceptions. The Eichmann trial gave survivors the space to tell their stories and be acknowledged, publicly, for their history—­a first that would help herald what Annette Wieviorka has called “the era of the witness” (2006). This era included notable visual and archival endeavors, including the airing of the Holocaust miniseries on tele­vi­sion, the release of the documentary film Shoah, and the creation of impor­tant archives such as the Yale Fortunoff Archives and the Shoah Visual History Foundation. Eichmann’s trial helped open this space of the witness, creating a public forum for survivors to offer their testimonies and tell their stories publicly in ways that had not been pos­si­ble before. Following that, we also see the role survivors began to play in establishing the patterns of genocide, and the significance newly given to their testimonies and voices in both understanding what took place in a genocide and in helping to think about a way forward from po­liti­cal vio­lence to democracy, in what would become called “transitional justice.”



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The goals of transitional justice mechanisms include accountability, documentation, and reconciliation, and they often develop in places where retributive justice may not be pos­si­ble. Transitional justice is often defined by official, temporary, nonjudicial fact-­fi nding bodies established to investigate a pattern of abuses of h ­ uman rights and to establish the truth of the crimes. If justice can be viewed within a framework of restoring a fractured society, we can also think about it as a social pro­cess that can develop outside of ­trials, reaffirming the value of transitional justice mechanisms like truth commissions.13 Most conclude their work with a final report containing findings of fact and recommendations. But at the heart of this is the idea of “Never Again”—­ that establishing the patterns of vio­lence and creating a space for survivors to tell their stories generates a restorative form of justice (following Minow) that ­w ill help prevent vio­lence. Nunca Más (Never Again) was the very title given to Argentina’s truth commission report, prepared by the CONADEP. Formed in 1983 by the demo­ cratically elected Alfonsín government as a way for Argentina to come to terms with state violence, the truth commission also aimed to mitigate the possibility of another coup, which the new government feared might occur if extensive civil ­trials of perpetrators took place. At the time, the commission was not linked explic­itly to reconciliation (the idea that reconciliation stems from truth arose with the 1991 South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission). The Argentine commission, however, turned to truth as a way to transition into peace and democracy. In Argentina, such a transition required challenging the military’s version of the 1976–1983 vio­lence.14 As Marguerite Feitlowitz describes in A Lexicon of Terror (1998), the military used language to suppress what was happening and to distort the truth. And burying the truth of genocide is what allowed the vio­lence of that time to continue. To resist that, the idea of “truth” became linked to “Never Again”—­that telling one’s story and acknowledging the story of victims and survivors would help prevent genocide and vio­lence from recurring. The CONADEP truth commission was certainly groundbreaking—­ resulting in the collection of hundreds of testimonies and systematically establishing the patterns of torture and repression undertaken by the military dictatorship in power. But it also left an impor­tant mark in the collective memory of Argentina, through the voices of survivors. And in that way, we again circle back to the legacy of the Holocaust and the renewed importance of the testimony of the survivor post-­Eichmann. Just as the voice of the Holocaust survivor was entering “the era of the witness” (following Wieviorka), so too did the voice of the f­ amily member of the victim and of the survivor become central to establishing the truth of what happened during the repression in Argentina. In what follows, I begin by considering the social implications of survivor testimony in establishing truth for society in the wake of vio­lence and

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genocide. I then turn to the impact of such testimony on survivors themselves, in par­tic­u ­lar, in cases where they are situated at the intersection of multiple periods of vio­lence, including the AMIA bombing, the Shoah, and the dictatorship, representing a series of disjunctive temporalities that expose certain fault lines of repair. Implicate d L i ste ne r s The lack of information and the inability to know what happened to their dis­ appeared f­amily members motivated their m ­ others, grand­ mothers, and ­children—­the Madres de Plaza de Mayo, the Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo, the H.I.J.O.S., and o ­ thers—to march and to continue their strug­g le over many years. The change to the amnesty laws in the early 2000s allowed ­trials to begin again, opening up new possibilities for both justice and truth, despite the pervasive trauma and vacío, the void Sofía described, that would persist for so many who lost their f­amily members to vio­lence. The desire to find some sort of coherence, be it through knowledge or certainty or justice, also informed the responses to the 1994 AMIA bombing, which, as we have seen, led many to actively participate in public actos to help them grapple with the destruction. O ­ thers, however, responded differently; instead of po­liti­cal action, they reflected on the meaning of their belonging as Jewish Argentines, leading to a revival of certain Jewish practices, both religious and cultural, the latter with groups that studied Yiddish or turned to music (as in the case of the Coro Guebirtig; see Zaretsky 2008b). In t­ hose years a­ fter the bombing, the group Niños de la Shoá was also created as a space for survivors who w ­ ere ­children during the years of the Holocaust.15 In that time, ­a fter the AMIA bombing, t­here ­were not many institutions devoted to the Holocaust, except for Sherit Hapleitá and the Holocaust Museum of Buenos Aires. Since that time, along with the Niños de la Shoá (or ­Children of the Shoah, who would become the group Generations of the Shoah and eventually join the Holocaust Museum in Buenos Aires), Argentina has witnessed an evolution in the way it memorializes the Holocaust, through programming, publications, museums, and commemorative events. It is also the only Latin American member nation in the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, which gives official state support for Holocaust commemoration in the national school curriculum. But much of what may be viewed as a community revitalization of public Holocaust memory began in the aftermath of the AMIA bombing. In response to the 1994 attack, Diana began searching for ways to understand her parents’ experience of the Shoah, and she started ­going to the Monday morning actos of Memoria Activa and studying Yiddish.16 Diana also helped lead Niños de la Shoá (together with Graciela Jinich in the early years of the group). The first meeting I attended of the Niños group took place in the IWO



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building,17 located on a small side street in Once, the neighborhood that had received Jewish immigrants since they first began arriving in Argentina in large numbers during the nineteenth c­ entury.18 The crowded streets w ­ ere now filled with textile shops and ­wholesalers, synagogues and kosher restaurants, and, increasingly, Korean-­owned businesses as well, representing more recent waves of immigrants. The IWO was originally located in the same building on Pasteur Street as the AMIA and DAIA, the building that was destroyed in the 1994 bombing. In addition to offering education in Yiddish, the IWO also had a Yiddish library, including an archive of community rec­ords—­w ritten in Yiddish—­d ating to the nineteenth ­century and the early rise of the Jewish Argentine community. ­T hese community archives ­were heavi­ly damaged by the bombing. While some have been restored, the nineteenth-­century documents have been lost.19 Now in a new space, they helped host the Niños group for their meetings at times. The members of the Niños group w ­ ere brought together b­ ecause of their shared experience of the Shoah. 20 They defined this historical event broadly by including ­those who had survived the concentration camps, lived in the ghettos, hid in homes of non-­Jews, and ­were forcibly separated from their families, among other experiences. The group began to meet in 1997. While the experience of the Holocaust joined every­one ­t here, certain differences remained—­most notably, regional and linguistic differences. Primary groups w ­ ere Polish-­and French-­speaking, though t­here ­were also several members who spoke Hungarian and a handful who spoke Rus­sian; Yiddish was shared by several members as well.21 Diana was instrumental in leading and sustaining the group. She herself lived with this history submerged in her own home ­u ntil the AMIA bombing. As we have seen, although she was born in Poland in August  1945 and was aware that her ­family survived the war ­there, they did not speak about their experience or proclaim their Jewish identity in a strong way when they arrived in Argentina. In her case, the 1994 AMIA bombing led Diana to reflect on her Jewish identity in a new way, and she began attending the Monday morning actos of Memoria Activa. That is where she saw a w ­ oman with a T-­shirt from Marcha por la Vida (March of the Living), 22 which ultimately led her to return to Poland for the first time. That first visit led to a significant devotion to the Shoah in her personal and intellectual life, leading her to be one of the central organizers of the Niños group (and eventually, Generations of the Shoah). Despite her leadership and commitment, Diana was not exactly a child survivor, since she had been born in August  1945. Many members of the Niños group ­were born before the war began but ­were such young ­children that their experiences and subsequent memories ­were qualitatively dif­fer­ent from t­ hose of other survivors. T ­ here w ­ ere members who survived ghettos and

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concentration camps, but many o ­ thers felt they did not experience what they felt was generally understood by society at large as “the Holocaust” (in their minds, they thought p­ eople considered it to be synonymous with death camps and ghettos). Some Niños did survive the camps and ghettos. ­O thers had dif­fer­ent experiences, such as being hidden in non-­Jewish ­houses during the war. In this way, the Shoah fundamentally s­ haped who they are. Diana helped found and continued sustaining a space where they could share their stories, even if not every­one could easily fit into how o ­ thers viewed a survivor. Although the group began by meeting in ­people’s homes, it eventually convened their gatherings at institutions such as the IWO and the Fundación Memoria del Holocausto (Holocaust Memory Foundation). As the organ­ ization grew, it established itself as an official nonprofit and was involved with vari­ous outreach activities, in addition to its meetings. These included participation in a 2003 documentary by Bernardo Kononovich, Aquellos Niños (And They Were Children), the organization of conferences, the publication of newsletters, and outreach to schools. Though they had built lives in Argentina and had families, many survivors did not feel fully acknowledged by the state, partially b­ ecause of the ways in which they w ­ ere forced to enter Argentina during the period of government quotas. Significantly, in 2005 the Argentine government issued an apology and overturned a secret order dating to 1938 that prohibited Jews from legally entering Argentina—an order that compelled many survivors to falsify their immigration documents and hide their Jewish identity. The annulment of this order effectively allowed ­these survivors to correct their immigration rec­ords to acknowledge their Jewish identity. Over the years, survivors in Argentina also made their voices more vis­i­ble in the public sphere, publishing their testimonies, often through Jewish community presses, in a wave of testimonial publications beginning in the 1990s. 23 In addition to her work coordinating the group, Diana also wrote extensively about the experience of Holocaust survivors in Argentina more broadly, including a book chronicling the stories of child survivors and the c­ hildren of survivors.24 In addition to their published testimonies, many survivors also gave oral testimonies to international archives devoted to documenting the Holocaust experience. Despite depositing their testimonies in archives and books, survivors continued to tell and retell their stories in the monthly gatherings I observed during my fieldwork in Buenos Aires. While many of their activities involved reaching out to the public and the Jewish community, their work began with each other. They shared their experiences and offered their testimonies to one another as what I have termed “implicated listeners” (Zaretsky 2013a), building an evolving collective narrative about the ongoing impact of their past that



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allowed them to negotiate a place for themselves in the community being rebuilt ­a fter the AMIA bombing. Elsa: Hay Para Contar While some survivors did share their stories with one another ­a fter they resettled in Argentina, o ­ thers w ­ ere afraid that speaking would not have a tremendous impact. This is where the listener can make a difference, as explored by Dori Laub (1992a; 1992b; 1995).25 Indeed, many who had survived the horrors of the Holocaust did not want to speak or felt that what they would say would not result in significant changes. I met Elsa Rozín through the Niños group in my first years in Buenos Aires.26 She first told me her story on a late fall day in her home, a large apartment in Belgrano. We sat down in her living room, and with her bright French accent she began to talk about her family’s history. Elsa was born in 1923, in a small town outside of Minsk. Her f­ather ­later migrated to Belgium, bringing her entire ­family over a year ­later, when Elsa was three or four years old. She talked about the details of her life, expressing a keen awareness of her sense of difference from an early age, of the danger of being Jewish. She lived through the increasing curtailments on the rights of Jews. The war began, she said, and she was hidden. Then her ­sister and ­mother w ­ ere taken away. But her ­father survived. She was seventeen years old at that time and lived in hiding with friends u ­ ntil they too ­were taken to Birkenau. She was taken to the camp, she said, but then survived. As we sat in the tranquil setting of her apartment, she traced the outlines of her history, first telling me the stories in detail, only to stop her narrative by simply saying, “Hay para contar—en otro tiempo, en otro lugar” (“­There is a lot to tell—at another time, another place”) while waving her hand, as if she did not want to burden me with the story she was telling. That first visit, we did not spend too much time talking, instead, deciding to take a walk to get a coffee. As we walked arm in arm, Elsa asked me about my personal life and about my research. But we would return to talking about her history. Although she told me that she had already given her testimony (to an archive, I guessed), she still sat with me on another day to give me her interview. Every­one Dis­appeared. When Elsa invited me back again, she told me more of her story. When she left Minsk to go to Belgium, her m ­ other’s f­ amily was left ­behind in Belarus: “My grandparents, u ­ ncles and aunts, every­one was left.” When the war came, she told me, “all of them dis­appeared, they ­were deported, we never heard anything more about them.” Elsa remembered that soon ­after the Germans entered Belgium, “they started with the star [i.e., the yellow star of David], and then we w ­ ere already in high school, Jews already could not go to school, and we w ­ eren’t able to go

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out on the streets a­ fter eight o ­ ’clock. Even if we went to a friend’s h ­ ouse, we would just stay over to sleep.” She also remembered how the pro­ cess of genocide unfolded on the ground: “­A fter the star, ­there ­were raids, and Jews started to hide, and ­there ­were Jewish neighborhoods [i.e., ghettos], that all started in 1942. We ­d idn’t know about camps yet, work camps. In Belgium, ­there was a city named Malin, and t­ here was a camp ­t here where all of the Jews ­were taken. This was in 1942. In July, August, they did a raid where we lived.” She explained that it was not specifically a Jewish neighborhood but that Jews lived ­there. Elsa and her youn­gest s­ister w ­ ere not home at the time when the raid happened, and she described what she did know: The Germans took my ­mother and my ­sister Louise, and they left my ­father. So that after­noon, when we returned home, the caretaker of the building told us not to go up. He told us not to go, that we s­houldn’t go in ­because the Germans had come and they took away my mom and ­sister. They left my ­father b­ ecause he was an older man, although they sometimes took the el­derly as well, but I d­ on’t know what happened and they had left him. So I went to the h ­ ouse of my boyfriend, since I d­ idn’t know where to go, and my youn­gest ­sister went to her friend’s ­house, and my dad was left alone. Someone then helped find a ­house outside of Brussels where Elsa could go with her boyfriend, George, and his mom. They placed her s­ister in another ­house to be in hiding, also outside of Brussels: For a time, we practically did not go outside. We d­ idn’t go out b­ ecause they started bombings, all night long, all night. . . . ​Sometimes we would go out at night just to get a bit of air. And the ­people hiding us, they ­were an older c­ ouple that w ­ eren’t r­eally afraid of d­ oing it (and they w ­ ere paid to hide us), but anyone could still denounce them. . . . ​So ­there was a lot of fear—­fear of the Germans, fear of [Belgian] collaborators, fear of t­ hose who might denounce them. During that time, she said, they would talk, they would sometimes hear ­music from the c­ouple hiding them, and sometimes they would hear the radio that came in from London. All of it, as Elsa described, was “very dangerous.” They spent 1942 ­there and the beginning of 1943. Elsa was not yet eigh­teen. In 1943, they w ­ ere captured, and Elsa was sent to a w ­ omen’s prison, she believes somewhere on the outskirts of Paris. Then in January 1944 another turning point came: “This I have very clear. They came for us in trucks and took us to the famous trains. At that point, we ­d idn’t know. P ­ eople knew that ­these w ­ eren’t work camps, but that they w ­ ere extermination camps. ­People ­were already talking about this. We arrived at Birkenau.”



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She was still with George [her boyfriend] and another adolescent boy and girl as well. As much as they could, Elsa said, they tried to stay together. She remembered her experience ­t here in vivid detail: When we arrived, every­thing was crazed [enloquecido]. It was so confusing, you have no idea. But at least we w ­ ere still all together. Well, when we got off the train, it was already almost nighttime, the Germans with their dogs, yelling at us in German. They made us get off and told the men, “You, go to that side.” And you know, you are with an internal chaos, you ­don’t know what’s happening to you, what y­ ou’re d­ oing. [The Germans] ­were looking at the younger ­women who ­were stronger, ­there w ­ ere twenty of us; this was in Birkenau. And the men w ­ ere on the other side; they separated us. Betty and I went in, one of the last ones to get off the train. T ­ here, we w ­ ere twenty ­women, and we entered Birkenau and first went to the forty-­fi rst block. At this point, she moved from chronicling what happened to her with details, to reflecting more on what it meant and why ­these images stayed with her, noting, “It’s just that the image that you have of something is so horrendous, that sometimes you can forget some ­t hings, but the images, you never forget. ­B ecause you entered the camp to get to the block, and t­ here ­were corpses, cadavers, everywhere. It’s something where you are shaken; you d­ on’t know if ­you’ve arrived in hell.” From t­ here, they w ­ ere taken to the disinfection area. Elsa continued: “They put a number on us, they cut our hair, and then they selected us for where to work, they gave us clothes, t­hese sacks, and then they brought us back to the block.” Elsa was selected to work in a factory where they made grenades, and she had to work at night, rising at four ­o’clock in the morning. She remembered ­those days, what she felt and what she wondered: “I c­ ouldn’t eat, and they stole my rations. I felt like I was falling, you know, it was a sensation. And ­because ­you’re so young, ­you’ve never seen the world, you say to yourself, ‘What’s happening? What did I do?’ You say all the t­ hings that happened to you, and I remembered then my mama and my ­sister, wondering what must have happened to them. They may have even been in the same place. I never saw [my ­mother]. I never knew anything more about what happened to her.” Elsa continued to describe her daily routine, working in the factory, finding other French-­speaking girls. She said, “As time passed, as overwhelming as every­thing was, ­there is a mutual support, where we can share so many ­things.” She remembered the girls’ names, two Belgian ­sisters. One was named Matilde and the other was Catherine, who she said w ­ ere from Paris, and they lived together in the block and worked together in the factory. For Elsa, the friendship with Matilde and Catherine was central. “I believe,” she said, “that this was a way to rebuild ourselves. You know what happens? We always said that dignity, that all of a sudden, they beat out of you, they humiliate

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you, as a h ­ uman being. It’s as if you do not exist. And you fight to maintain yourself.” This is how she saw her friendship with t­hese girls. They had a lot in common, she said, including songs. And together, they learned how the camp operated. Throughout her narrative, she noted the ways in which p­ eople helped her survive, such as the time when she was sick with a high fever and thought she would surely die. But someone was able to get medicine for her. She said, “Thanks to him, I was able to survive.” In 1945, the Germans started evacuating the camps. Some prisoners stayed ­behind, Elsa said, ­because they ­were sick: But we left to walk, the famous march, in the snow. But we ­were all together and we arrived. It was incredible. And I remember one of the two s­ isters from Brussels said, “I ­can’t go on anymore.” You have no idea, the snow, the snow. Well, look, I ­don’t have to tell you this; I think ­people can see this on films, and ­there are documentaries about this. But can you believe that despite every­t hing, one of the ­sisters ­couldn’t go on, and you know what we asked [one of ] the soldiers? If he might have a bit of alcohol. He ended up giving a piece of sugar moistened with alcohol, and that revived her. So we continued. They passed by many dif­fer­ent concentration camps ­u ntil they arrived in April at a smaller one: “I think I weighed thirty-­eight kilos. At that point, I was afraid to sit down b­ ecause I was afraid I ­wouldn’t be able to get up again. I remember how difficult it was with the l­ittle strength I had when we arrived. And it was spring, it ­wasn’t cold anymore, ­there ­wasn’t snow anymore. . . . ​May 8 was the armistice. And on May 5, we saw the soldiers go into trucks and leave, b­ ecause they already knew the war was over. We ­were left inside.” The Germans left the prisoners ­there, but Elsa said that they had no idea that they w ­ ere on their own. Then some p­ eople approached the door who seemed to be prisoners of war (they w ­ ere not in a concentration camp), asking if t­ here ­were any French speakers, which is when Elsa and her friends replied. ­T hose men then opened the door for them and took them into their barracks, where they tried to give them something to eat. “And this,” Elsa said, “was the worst t­hing they could do. I was near a fire, t­here was a kitchen, they w ­ ere making fried eggs, and you know, the smell, I almost fainted. I ­don’t know if I just lost my strength or if it was the smell of the eggs, but I just ­couldn’t take it anymore.” Then the armistice came, and the Rus­sians came from one side and the Americans from the other. ­A fter that, they created refugee camps and asked the girls which side they would like to go to. Catherine invited Elsa to go to France with her, and she went, not knowing who was left in Belgium. Liberation, though, did not feel entirely freeing for Elsa: “In t­hose first months, I did not have the sensation like, ‘How amazing that we are f­ree!’ I



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did not have the strength for this. And even though the war had ended, ­t here was still a chaos. And you d­ on’t even have the strength to react.” She eventually got on a train back to Brussels, telling the conductor, “Look, sir, I ­don’t have money to pay. I am coming from a concentration camp.” She said she d­ idn’t even know exactly where to go when she arrived, but she ultimately found a friend who helped reconnect her with her aunt. Elsa spent time in a sanatorium recuperating a­ fter that, before ultimately leaving Eu­rope. “You know what?” she said. “No one was left in Eu­rope. My Jewish friends and the few who ­were ­there had left. Every­one went to Israel, or emigrated to the U.S. But with Eu­rope, with Belgium, it’s like, I d­ idn’t miss it. For me, it was like a liberation. ­Because Eu­rope had a very dark stain, the losses ­were so ­g reat in my ­family, and the suffering.” She felt like she did not have a home t­here anymore, but once she eventually resettled in Argentina, she also did not entirely feel in place, partly ­because of the radical distance from Eu­rope in terms of the experience of ­people t­here and what they knew, or ­d idn’t fully understand had happened. No One Wanted to Know. Eventually, Elsa left Eu­rope and went to the United States to be with one of her ­brothers who had moved ­there. She then settled in Argentina, where she would have c­ hildren and build a new life. But when she first arrived in Buenos Aires, she said that no one r­ eally wanted to talk or to know about what happened to her. “In Eu­rope,” she said, “­people knew about the camps. . . . ​But when I arrived ­here in Argentina, hardly anyone knew anything. And no one wanted to know anything. . . . ​I tell you that the ­people did not want to hear a lot. They would say, ‘Look, ­don’t get upset. It already passed. Try to move on.’ And I would say, ‘But you ­don’t know what happened.’ And they would answer, ‘Yes, we heard about it on the news.’ ” But for Elsa, that was just not the same. This form of silencing was only exacerbated by ­those she felt questioned her experience. She described g­ oing to a theater to see a documentary about the concentration camps at the very beginning of her years in Argentina. “Leaving the theater,” she told me, “­a fter the documentary, p­ eople w ­ ere saying, ‘Well, I ­don’t know if that’s all true. ­There has to be a lot of propaganda, too.’ I d­ idn’t say anything. T ­ hese w ­ ere ­people leaving the theater, talking in the hall. And they said, ‘Do you think this could be true?’ ” She was stunned that they would question this: “This shocked me, but I ­wasn’t ­going to talk to them about it. This speaks to the entire context of having deaf ears, of not being engaged, of letting horrendous t­ hings happen, and that is what happened.” Elsa then got married and had kids. And she says that she had a “re-­adaptation that was pretty happy.” Slowly, she said, she would talk to her kids about what had happened. They knew about Nazism, that she had been taken, that the Germans had taken her m ­ other, that she had been in a concentration camp. Certain t­hings, though, remained outside the realm of their early conversations:

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But the gas chambers, I did not tell them about. The more horrific ­things I waited u ­ ntil they could learn about at an older age. I knew they could read about them. And even if for me, I was in a block where I would always see them bringing ­people to the gas chambers, I just d­ idn’t want to talk to them about it. As my ­d aughter says, “Mama is a heroine.” I ­don’t know if I’m that, you see, but I was able to rebuild my life, and that I believe is an accomplishment. Over time, Elsa did give her testimony in vari­ous places, including the Shoah Visual History Foundation, but was not very interested in ­going over this past again and again in groups with other survivors: “You never forget this, you never forget. But to speak with ­those who ­were also ­there, it seems like it ­doesn’t make a lot of sense, ­because they already know and I also know, and to return to talk about ­t hese ­t hings . . . ​So I just ­d idn’t want to.” At some point, though, she felt the need to join a group, and began regularly attending the meetings of the Niños, where other survivors who ­were ­children during the years of the Holocaust gathered to share their stories. She did say that something happened for her when she listened to ­others’ experiences, but, she still felt outside the group in some ways. Being t­here did not necessarily help her to feel like she belonged, leaving a vacío of a dif­fer­ent kind. Even so, she needed to find a space where she could encounter other listeners who shared in her experience, who ­were “implicated listeners.” The scholarship on trauma suggests the importance of a listener for a narrative to emerge (Laub 1992a; 1995), yet ­here we see that the type of listener can also make a difference. Through the group, members w ­ ere implicated in one another’s stories in a way that allowed them to be mutually situated allowing for a shared subjectivity to develop (see Rothberg 2019); this, in turn, generated a sense of personal and collective coherence, if only in the moment of the telling, in that act of repair.27 Dina: Encounters across History At another event of the Niños, I also met Dina Ovsejevich de Lew. 28 She approached me at the organ­ization’s seder and invited me to come to her apartment for dinner. Dina, on the younger side of group members, was originally born in Bialystok, Poland.29 Her f­amily, though, had been fortunate enough to receive a visa from the Japa­nese consul—­a transit visa to Japan—­ that permitted them to leave Poland and cross the Soviet Union, temporarily stopping in Japan on their way to Argentina. Theirs was also one of the last boats to be allowed entry into Argentina, a destination they chose ­because of ­family who had been living t­ here when the war started. Although Dina remembered the beginning of the war as a young child, since she did not see what she felt was the “full impact” of the war—­t he ghettos and the camps—­she often felt on the outside of groups of survivors. This is why she found a place in the Niños, who did not define belonging necessarily



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through how a survivor had lived through the war, but through the impact it had on their lives, w ­ hether they had been in a concentration camp, in a ghetto, or living as c­ hildren hidden in a non-­Jewish ­family’s home. ­A fter we met, Dina invited me to visit her at her apartment to talk more. She lived in Nuñez, a neighborhood just north of Belgrano, and she instructed me very carefully how to take the right bus to get ­t here on my first trip. The colectivo shot up Cabildo Ave­nue—­one of the main arteries of Argentina that is heavi­ly commercial—­a nd I got off at a stop that was more residential. Dina lived in the same building as her ­d aughter Ruti and her ­f amily, and her grand­ daughter Anita was spending the after­noon with her when I arrived. Anita sat perched on the edge of her seat with her arms locked u ­ nder her chin as I asked her grand­mother questions about the past. Dina showed me photo­g raphs and news clippings about her f­amily’s voyage across the oceans and their unlikely stop and sojourn in Japan during World War II. Dina, an architect, showed me t­ hese photos in her home office, photos of her as a young child posing on a boat docked in Kyoto, of the Japanese mountains and w ­ ater, of the landscape so dif­fer­ent from that of Bialystok. This was part of her history—­something which made her story stand out from many ­others from that time. Since Dina was a child when the war came to Poland, it was striking how much she was able to remember. She was born in 1932 and remembered when the Germans entered Bialystok in 1939. Immediately, she said, her m ­ other sent her f­ather on a train to Vilnius, Lithuania, b­ ecause during World War I the men had been sent to forced ­labor camps and she wanted to protect him. From that point, Dina and her m ­ other w ­ ere separated from her f­ather. Eventually, he was able to get a visa to go through Japan to Buenos Aires. These ­were special transit visas or­g a­n ized by a Japa­nese diplomat, Chiune Sugihara, stationed in Lithuania, who issued thousands of visas to Jews while he could. 30 But reuniting with Dina’s f­ather proved very difficult, and she recounted the history vividly during our interview. Her ­father knew the hours when the border guards changed shifts, and he paid them off to allow Dina and her ­mother to pass. It took several attempts before they w ­ ere successful. Three times they w ­ ere caught by the guards and sent back to Bialystok. “On the fourth try,” Dina told me, “we ­were able to get to the Lithuanian side. But of course, the Lithuanian soldiers detained us. My ­father told me he could see what was happening, but he ­couldn’t get close to us.” The soldiers held Dina, her ­mother, and her ­sister for several days before sending them to the part of Poland occupied by the Soviets. She described what happened: This is the time I remember the most ­because we had to cross a large stretch of land [like a no-­m an’s-­land], an area that could not be touched by ­either Lithuanians or Rus­sians. They ordered us to walk, and t­ here was

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a bridge over a river. ­There was a stretch of land, then a bridge, then another stretch of land, and ­t here, the Soviets ­were waiting for us. On that bridge, my ­mother had a crisis of nerves; she wanted to throw herself into the river. But someone who was walking with us—­a relative of my ­father’s, his cousin, [who] was only twenty, twenty-­something years old, young—he helped her, and we w ­ ere able to keep on ­going. They then ­were put in what Dina called “a real prison.” She described the cement floor and the bars: “I was still only seven years old, about to turn eight, and my ­sister was four. And we ­were ­there for a month. Bread and ­water. Black bread and ­water. They would go with us to the bathroom, we had to go outside and go down a set of stairs, and a soldier would go with us, and then a­ fter a month, they put us all on trucks that w ­ ere bringing all the p­ eople to Siberia.” It was again a m ­ atter of luck that Dina and her f­amily w ­ ere able to be saved, told to stay b­ ehind instead of getting on one of the trucks. She also remembered what had happened to her ­f ather’s cousin, who was also ­there: “That boy went to Siberia in one of ­those trucks. ­A fter the end of the war, he went to Israel and studied ­there and became a biochemist. But in our case, they told my mom to stay. An official came and gave her documents and money to buy a ticket to return to Bialystok. Someone de­cided that this w ­ oman and her two ­little d­ aughters should not go to Siberia.” They returned to Bialystok, and ­here Dina referred to dates she had written down. On June  17, 1940, the Soviets occupied Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia, and Dina’s m ­ other then arranged another trip. Dina remembered the details clearly: “We spent a night in a barn, they put us in a car, they covered us with something, and we crossed the border and fi­n ally joined my dad.” From ­t here, by train, they went to Moscow and took the trans-­Siberian train to Vladivostok. She remembered many details from that train trip and from the brief stay in Moscow, such as bridges and being ­stopped on the street and asked who they ­were. In Vladivostok they took a boat to Kobe, Japan, and stayed ­there for a month, eventually getting on a cargo ship, the Africa Marú, to Argentina. They went through several ports, and then she remembers vividly stopping in Brazil, in Santos, where they bought one or two bunches of bananas: “I knew we ­were close to Buenos Aires already. And I had never seen anything like it. I remember in Bialystok when, before the war, my mom would buy a banana, parting it in the ­m iddle, one half for my s­ ister and one half for me.” At that point, Dina’s grand­d aughter, Anita, who was sitting with us during the interview, asked, “And grandma, I want to ask you, when you arrived in Brazil, did you know how to speak Portuguese? How did they understand you?” Her grand­mother responded, “How did we understand each other? I d­ on’t know. With gestures, with some words, words that you learn ­l ittle by ­l ittle. At that time, I spoke Yiddish and Rus­sian, but I ­don’t know if I had anyone to



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speak Rus­sian with. With my parents, I spoke in Yiddish. And then ­later, I lost Rus­sian and Polish.” Their boat arrived in Argentina on July 9, 1941, the last Japa­nese boat to make it ­there before the United States entered the war. Dina reminded me that June  22, 1941, was when Germany invaded Rus­sia. This is how she described her arrival: “July 9, 1941, the Africa Marú enters the Port of Buenos Aires and we arrive. August 1, look, not even a month ­later, was when the Germans returned to Bialystok. They first gathered every­one in the Bialystok synagogue. They burned two thousand p­ eople alive and then built the ghetto, and all of the Jewish population entered the ghetto. So it was very clear that we saved ourselves in the end.” I asked her if her ­family knew about every­thing that was happening in Bialystok while in Buenos Aires or had heard anything about it. “No,” she answered, “­because every­thing that was happening in Eu­rope, no one knew anything. The dates and chronology of events is what we learned through recent publications and the encyclopedias they made, but at that time, we ­d idn’t know.” ­A fter the war ended, Dina’s parents started searching for relatives and friends. While she did not have more to say about what her parents discovered, as an adult, and through the Niños, she did encounter some new insights into the transatlantic connections her parents ­were attempting to make in ­t hose years. She met Mira  Stupnik in the Niños group, and the two became close friends.31 Mira stood out ­because it was the first time Dina had met someone from Bialystok who had stayed b­ ehind a­ fter the war. One day a­ fter they met, Mira called Dina and told her, “Look, I found a l­ittle address book. It’s my mom’s.” It seems that Mira’s m ­ other had somehow known Dina’s m ­ other, which became evident when Mira asked Dina, “Is t­ here [someone with your name] in Buenos Aires who lives on Montenegro Street?” to which Dina replied, “That was us!’ ” That is where Dina first lived with her ­family when they arrived. Mira and her ­f amily remained in Bialystok ­u ntil the year 1968, but it was only through the group Niños that Dina encountered her and could find another trace, another connection to her ­family’s history. In the group, Dina said, it was the first time she had ever met someone from Bialystok who was her age: “I met someone from Bialystok who had survived the war t­ here, and this ­really interested me ­because I was always curious about what happened to all of the ­people we had left, my aunts, my cousins, what happened to them and what happened to ­t hose who lived and stayed in the city, the place we left ­behind.” For Mira and for another friend, Lea Novera, 32 also from the area of Bialystok, Dina was just as fascinating: “Mira asked me, ‘Where are you from?’ and I told her Bialystok. She then opened her eyes very wide, and Lea was at her side, and Lea said, “No! No me digas! (­Don’t tell me!)”

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Dina continued, “­A fter that I told them how I had left, and for both of them [Lea and Mira], they had never heard of someone being able to save themselves from every­thing they had to live through. So they ­were just as impressed by my story as I was by theirs.” In this way, the group not only offered Dina a space to tell her story, but also to find ­these encounters across history that allowed her to form a friendship and have insights into the world her ­family had been forced to leave ­behind. This then helped her to find a space of belonging across space and time. Re situating Me mori e s The Niños group offered an impor­tant space for survivors to have their stories heard and to make connections with o ­ thers who shared their experiences. In this way, it represented a space of “implicated listening.” Returning to the past of the Shoah also allowed subjects to engage their agency as they negotiated their sense of belonging and citizenship in Argentina. They also sought to reframe the meaning of their pre­sent experiences and strug­g les in relation to the histories of the Holocaust, bringing hope for the possibilities of truth, accountability, and, perhaps, survival. Sofía Guterman, for instance, turned to the history of the Shoah in understanding how to approach her own feelings about the lack of justice in Argentina. 33 She described her search for justice as follows: “I, along with other ­family members of victims, I search for the killers. I want ­there to be justice in a country that has no justice. But I work more for memory, ­because I know this is the only ­thing that ­w ill remain ­a fter death.” More than that, she saw memory as transcending in some ways the limits that justice offered, telling me, “I know that memory w ­ ill prevent a definitive death, and that memory ­w ill not allow for p­ eople to forget what happened. Just like memory did not allow the Holocaust to be forgotten, something that happened so many years ago.” The power she saw in memory to sustain an understanding of what happened in the Holocaust became a form of hope for thinking about the memory of her own ­d aughter’s death. ­Others also turned to more specific events in the Holocaust, such as the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, as a way to understand the possibilities for re­sis­ tance and activism in Argentina (see chapter 6). This came up during one of the community-­building events or­g a­n ized by the Niños. One April, Mira’s ­d aughter, Eva, hosted a seder at her restaurant, Babushka. It took a long time to reach the restaurant from the center of the city, as it was in a more residential outlying neighborhood. ­T here, ­tables w ­ ere set with traditional Jewish food, such as gefilte fish and pink ­horse­r adish (hren, in Yiddish and Rus­sian). When she saw me come in, Mira greeted me warmly, “Natashenka!” using the Rus­sian diminutive for my name. This came from her knowledge of Rus­ sian, partly b­ ecause she had stayed in Poland a­ fter the war, during the years when the Soviet Union expanded its sphere of influence. Many other p­ eople I



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had been getting to know more closely ­were also ­there—­Diana, of course, as one of the leaders, and Lea. Mira eventually invited me to her ­t able. I noticed some p­ eople asking what I was ­doing ­there, but Lea explained to all of them, first by telling them where I was born (“Belarus, but then she went to New York, and she speaks Rus­sian!”). I became the “rusa” for them. We sat down to eat a range of dishes, many brought by the ­people gathered—­ vari­ous salads, fish, latkes, matzo, of course. Every­one brought something, and every­one helped out. As we ate, Lea said she made her dish without enough salt so that o ­ thers ­there who might have prob­lems with sodium could eat it. It was so familiar, all of this food tasting very much like food from home. They began talking about food, holodetz, a jellied beef or chicken, a dish my f­amily still made (and pronounced the same in Rus­sian), which I never wanted to even try. But though it was not on the ­table, they remembered it vividly—­how their ­mothers used to make it, how one m ­ other would put it in the refrigerator overnight, and how ­there are fewer and fewer places to find what you need. Once ­people had a chance to eat, the focus went to singing songs, and some p­ eople stood up to give speeches. Lea made a toast for liberty. She spoke about freedom in relation to slavery in Egypt and in Auschwitz. She then said that just now was the anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising and it was also Pesach (Passover)—­a nd both are about freedom. For Lea, this was about honoring ­those who had the privilege of ­dying with dignity and fighting for the liberty that was just on the other side of that wall, the wall of the ghetto. What was striking was how this moment reflected the power of this group to create spaces of other kinds of remembering; not just the pain of what they lived through but also the other ele­ments of their lives, like the food, or even ­music. ­A fter more speeches, ­t here was singing, in Yiddish and in Rus­sian. Lea herself knew many songs, ones that at other times she would sing to me in Rus­sian, like “Tëmnaya Noch” (“Dark Night”), explaining that it was from the war, to help me understand. Yet, I already knew this song, as my own grand­mother used to sing it to me in Rus­sian. Far from where I heard this song in Brooklyn, or where my grand­mother first heard it in Belarus, standing in Buenos Aires, Lea stood up to sing, lifting up her body against the pull of a leg that she could not move as easily, a legacy of what she suffered during the Holocaust:34 “Tëmnaya noch, tol’ko puli svistyat po steppi . . .” (“Dark night, only bullets are whistling through the steppe”). She did not finish the song, which is about a soldier trying to find hope in love, knowing that death may await him. But she did not need to. Lea projected all of this through the few lines she sang, with the power of her voice, still remembering ­every word in Rus­sian. The light in her eyes seemed to bring her back to the child, the adolescent, she was in ­t hose years, traversing and seemingly collapsing the distances of time and space. Yet in many cases, that distance remained in the limits of what can be known and in the absence of what could have been.

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Vidas Truncadas , Truncate d L ive s March 24, 2003—­another anniversary of the coup, twenty years now, the Day of Remembrance for Truth and Justice. I happened to be with Jack that morning. We met at his apartment building and then walked down Juncal Street through the city. As we walked together, passing building ­after building, he started talking to me about his experiences at some Jewish buildings, and specifically, about new security changes. While increasing security ­after two bombings seemed logical in some ways, for Jack it also evoked other histories. He described having gone to the AMIA building ­a fter it had been rebuilt, and not wanting to return again ­a fter that one visit. “They made it like a fortress,” he said, “like a ­castle.” He continued: “Once I said to [security], ‘An old man is like a child. And you ­shouldn’t ask him for his document.’ ” He looked at me meaningfully, saying, “This is something from the proceso era, from the dictatorship, when police would ask for a document and then throw it out and then ask for it again, to detain them.” Clearly ­t hese procedures did not make Jack feel safer, though for many o ­ thers they did. Of course, he understood ­t here was an impor­t ant difference ­here for a community responding to fear and an overwhelming sense of insecurity. Yet Jack was concerned b­ ecause he did not believe that this would help resolve what he felt was at the root of the prob­lem. For him, “all of t­hose procedures would not bring back the lives of t­ hose who w ­ ere lost,” what he called, “vidas truncadas”—­truncated lives, lives that w ­ ere disrupted, cut short. He talked about the “vidas truncadas” of all of the p­ eople who ­were dis­appeared in Argentina, of all of the ­people killed in the Holocaust, and of all the ­people killed in the bombings. It was not only their lives that could never continue, but also, it seemed, all of the lives of ­those who loved them and t­ hose who cared. Vera Jarach This notion of truncated or disrupted lives would become particularly evident for ­those who felt the impact of both the Holocaust and the dictatorship in the lives lost in their families. Vera Vigevani de Jarach originally emigrated with her ­f amily from Italy to Argentina in 1939, escaping fascism and the racial laws that persecuted them as Jews. Her d­ aughter, Franca, was dis­appeared on June 26, 1976. Vera and her husband appealed to national and international institutions, including the Ministry of the Interior, the navy, Amnesty International, the U.S. embassy, the Italian embassy, the DAIA (an Argentine Jewish organ­ ization), and the Israeli embassy. She has also been active with the Madres de Plaza de Mayo–­Linea Fundadora and the Fundación Memoria Histórica y Social en Argentina (Historical and Social Memory Foundation), as well as the Parque de la Memoria (Park of Memory). Vera also testified at the ESMA megatrial (see chapter 2).



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­ ere, she tells the story of her ­d aughter in testimony that appears in the H archive Testimonies of Life, coordinated by the AMIA in conjunction with groups of Jewish schoolchildren: From a young age, [Franca] was a good student . . . ​but she also . . . ​h ad the concept of participating, of fighting for justice. She participated in student government and was a leader. She had her ideas. She had her opinions. But she never was in any group, ­u ntil she felt the necessity and [then] she joined the UES, which was Peronist—­the Peronist left. But ­u ntil the last moment, she was critical of every­thing. . . . ​A nd a­fter an assembly at school, they kicked out fourteen students, including Franca. All of them returned to school, except for Franca. 35 Vera would come to learn that her d­ aughter’s kidnapping took place in a café, and l­ater, that she had been taken to the ESMA. She found this out “from a ­woman who was t­ here at the same time.” Before, Vera was worried for Franca, even asking her to go to Italy. This was “­because we feared for her. And in fact, ­a fter Franca dis­appeared, all of her friends went into exile.” ­A fter her d­ aughter was dis­appeared, Vera joined in the protests of the Madres de Plaza de Mayo, but she also made many formal complaints. During the dictatorship, she and her husband also installed a recording device on their phone, just in case Franca would call. Vera reflected on both the juridical and personal significance of this: Thanks to this, I have proof—­that was [­later] used in the courts in Italy and h ­ere as well [Argentina]. . . . ​ Fifteen days [­ a fter we installed the device], we w ­ ere sitting [in the living room], with my ­sister and brother-­ in-­law, and the telephone rang, and it was Franca. The first t­hing she said was that she was alive. And she says that she is detained in Federal Security, which w ­ asn’t true. The next day, my husband went and she ­wasn’t t­ here. It was winter. [Franca said], “They are giving me food. They are clothing me. They give me medicine if I need it.” And my husband says, “Should I come get you?” And she asks [the authorities] and says, “­T hey’ll tell you.” And she asks, “How is my mom? How is my boyfriend?” ­Things like that. But the ­whole time, they [the authorities on this other end] ­were saying we ­can’t talk—we ­were speaking in Italian—­a nd they told us we had to speak in Spanish. The evidence of this conversation had a lasting impact on Vera. “All of this is recorded,” she said. “And this recording helps ­because while many received phone calls, we are the only ones who have a recording.” Yet even as she can hold onto her ­d aughter’s voice, she knows ­there is a point where she cannot know what happened to her. She described a ­woman who visited her ­a fter being freed from the ESMA and asked how Franca was. The ­woman said about Franca, “She was ­whole.”

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“But they tortured her?” Vera asked. “All of us went through this,” the ­woman answered. But Vera’s questions remained, as did the sense of a limit, of the kind of vacío with which Sofía Guterman also strug­g led as she faced the borders of what she could know about what happened to her ­d aughter. Sara Rus and Natalia Rus Vera Jarach’s testimony resonated in power­ful ways with the experiences of Sofía Guterman, as m ­ others who lost their c­ hildren. Like Vera, other narratives about the dictatorship also articulated with the Holocaust, leading some families to feel the crushing intersection of both the state repression in Argentina and the Holocaust. Daniel Lázaro Rus was twenty-­six years old when he was dis­appeared on July 15, 1977, from his job at the National Atomic Energy Commission. The testimony of his life was told by his m ­ other, Sara Rus (a Holocaust survivor) and his s­ ister, Natalia Rus. Sara also testified at the ESMA megatrial (see figure 3 in chapter 2 for Eugenia Bekeris’s drawing at the trial). In this case, the testimonies of Sara and Natalia reveal the complexities of being a f­amily that survived two genocides and, further, the generational dimensions of trauma and loss. This testimony was collected as part of the Testimonies of Life proj­ect: I am Sara Rus. I am a survivor of the Shoah . . . ​, and I am the m ­ other of a son who was “dis­appeared.” I always wanted to have a son, and in 1950, Daniel was born. . . . ​He finished his university studies in exact sciences [i.e., physics and/or chemistry], and he started working in the National Atomic Commission. But then on July 15, my son never came home. 36 As a ­mother, Sara had tried to protect her son when the dictatorship started in 1976. “Look,” I said to Daniel. “Look, son. I think something strange is happening. Why d­ on’t you go to Uruguay? I’ll take you to Uruguay. B ­ ecause if a friend dis­appears, we ­don’t know what is happening.” “But I am working in such an impor­t ant job,” he answered. “How can I leave it?” For him, work was the most impor­t ant ­t hing. And unfortunately, they took him from his workplace. . . . ​We never heard anything about our son again, unfortunately. Like Vera and many other m ­ others in t­ hose years, Sara started looking for him, turning to the government for information about what happened to him: ­ fter a time, I started walking, g­ oing to ministries, [including the minisA try] of the Interior. . . . ​They w ­ ere just like the Nazis, I always said, who treated us as follows, saying, “Oh, it’s your son? Y ­ ou’re looking for your son? He must have run off with a girlfriend or something.”



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This attempt to erase ­t hose who ­were dis­appeared and to challenge the questions of their parents and f­ amily members was a common strategy of state terrorism. Finding ­others who ­were ­going through the same experience, like the many other Madres de Plaza de Mayo, offered a collective challenge to the narrative of the state. Passing by the Plaza de Mayo, I met more ­people, many ­people who ­were in the same situation as me . . . ​I started walking with the Madres in 1977. I marched with them and put on the white head­scarf. And since then, we have been ­ t here—­ u nfortunately, me, without any other information. Some ­people did have some news of their c­ hildren—­where they ­were, or where they w ­ ere tortured. While some parents received information about their ­children, Sara’s vacío was palpable—­she had no further knowledge about what happened to her son. She was left to won­der and to give her testimony. 37 Her d­ aughter, Natalia, also spoke of her experience, revealing the limits of what she knew, as well as her hopes. She began by saying, “My name is Natalia Rus. I am the d­ aughter of two survivors of the Shoah. And I have a ­brother who was dis­appeared during the dictatorship.” She repeated what her ­mother had said about his work at the National Atomic Energy Commission and how he was dis­appeared. She described the indiscriminate nature of the repression, how p­ eople ­were targeted for something as ­simple as having their name appear in their friend’s address book. And she detailed the same pro­cesses of searching and loss we have seen in the stories of Sofía and other survivors of vio­lence. The day [­a fter Daniel ­d idn’t return home], we went—my husband and my ­father—to the Atomic Energy Commission to see what happened. And his car was parked ­there, and he ­wasn’t t­here anymore. He never came back from work that day; he never came home. And then the search started. We knew that some friends had dis­ appeared. But we d­ idn’t know this w ­ hole format of systematic disappearance of ­people—­you ­d idn’t talk about it. We ­d idn’t know a lot. We had a very close friend of Danny’s—­studying computer science—­a nd the first ­thing he did was come to the ­house and ask about Danny. And he kept coming over, and nothing ever happened to him. She also turned to the importance and value of such testimonies: “We ­don’t have a lot of information about where they took him. T ­ here ­were ­people who saw him, and u ­ ntil now, work [in] security and d­ on’t want to give their testimony before the judges.” Yet she still held onto a hope for more testimonies in the ­future, noting, “All of the testimonies help us a lot in all of the ­trials related to crimes against humanity. So it is an open case—­there are no suspects in relation to the dis­appeared physicists.”

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For over forty years, Natalia and her ­mother Sara have been waiting to find out what happened to Daniel. Through this archival proj­ect, Testimonies of Life, they also had a space to tell their stories within the Jewish community, which was a new development from the early years of silence. The limits of what they ­were able to know about what had happened to Sara’s son or what had happened to Vera’s ­d aughter, did not change what Jack described as the vidas truncadas, that resounding sense of loss distilled in Sara Rus’s words: “My son never came home.” C onclusion : The Po ssi b i l iti e s of Nunca Más So many of the survivors who lived through the Nazi concentration camps, escaped the ghettos of Eu­rope, or lived through the trauma of a child tortured and dis­appeared by the state are left with a profound absence: their loved ones never came home. Yet they also turned to one another, to tell their stories in ways that might serve as acts of repair, even in the face of unfathomable loss. Just as Diana noted in her May 2003 testimony in Memoria Activa’s Plaza of Memory, survivors inscribed themselves into the public sphere through sharing their stories, “We have made ourselves vis­i­ble in a way that would not have happened before.”38 This visibility and move into public spaces also allow for connections across temporalities that may appear disjunctive. ­T here are impor­tant tensions that remain between the experience of the Shoah and that of state repression in Argentina (even if both can be understood as genocide). Losing a child to the vio­lence of state repression is dif­fer­ent from losing a child to terrorism, even though the lack of justice in response—­the impunity—­does connect the experiences. And yet, despite t­ hese differences, telling one’s story in public in this way allows a space to be created for implicated listeners, listeners who have also experienced a trauma and can help the survivor find a way forward, an act of repair not unlike what Halbwachs describes in his social framework of memory (see chapter 4). Such implicated listeners can also be discovered in other community settings, like the Niños group, which created spaces of connection for ­t hose who had lived with vari­ous silences in their lives before. Returning to the idea of imagination, scholars of genocide view it as central to the extreme vio­lence of events such as the Holocaust, which required the Nazis to imagine one group of h ­ uman beings as outside of humanity itself (see Hinton and O’Neill 2009). Yet imagination is also impor­t ant to the aftermath of such vio­lence. Being able to imagine a listener who is implicated in one’s trauma, who can be the audience for articulating your story and testimony, the first step t­oward healing, is precisely what Diana and many o ­ thers found to be so central to rebuilding their citizenship as Jewish Argentines a­ fter the AMIA bombing. Having a public forum for testimonies was also important to Argentina’s ability moving forward as a nation again ­a fter the dictatorship.



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And finding an implicated listener is also impor­t ant to survivors like Jack, and Elsa, and Dina, to rebuilding their lives in a way that needs to be renewed ­every day for many survivors with whom I worked. Thus testimonies, and I would say more specifically, testimonial practices, became articulated in power­ful ways with their citizenship. Even as t­ hese survivors strug­g le with loss, with impunity, with the vacío that may always be ­there, the ability to imagine themselves as part of the social fabric and the nation again may be one of the acts of repair critical to the possibility of survival as a citizen and a nation, and to the hope for “Nunca más.” Yet we also see how certain silences and limits remain—­where Natalia Rus could never know what happened to her b­ rother, and still has not found justice. Or Elsa, never being able to fully know what happened to the rest of her f­amily or to tell her own children everything. Or Dina, a child surviving and remembering details but never knowing what had happened to her extended f­amily. In some ways, as Jack described, ­these are “vidas truncadas”—­the truncated lives of ­those who are lost—­but ­these losses also shape, profoundly, the lives of t­ hose who remain as well. How do they, then, sustain themselves in t­hose liminal spaces? How do they find ways to live on t­hese bound­aries of witnessing?

C hap te r 6

On the Limits of Witnessing, On the Bound­aries of Time

In many ways, Argentina has become a land of memory, with several memorials and actos dedicated to remembering periods of vio­ lence from the past. Moving through Buenos Aires, one can encounter vari­ous sites of memory, parks and monuments dedicated to victims of state repression, as well as the 1994 AMIA bombing and the Holocaust. Actos regularly convene to commemorate ­these periods on impor­tant dates—­every Thursday for the Madres in the Plaza de Mayo, March 24 for the Day of Remembrance for Truth and Justice, July 18 for the AMIA bombing, and April to commemorate the Holocaust, especially Yom HaShoah (Holocaust Remembrance Day) and the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. We have seen survivors and ­family members of victims offer their narratives and testimonies; we have seen them offer their bodies as they stand at sites of memory and even become sites of memory in their own ways. And as ­every year passes, they also feel the bound­aries of witnessing, as what they remember recedes with e­ very year, and they face a society who may no longer care in the way they might need for their ongoing attempts to establish justice and truth. As they move in and out of ­these bound­aries related to witnessing, they reside, in some ways, in a form of perpetual liminality. This also works through the border between their experiences of loss and their pre­sent lives. For some Holocaust survivors, for instance, the AMIA bombing was a shock that brought them back to the time of their experience during the war. This shows the interstitial nature of ­these experiences, and the mutually implicating effect of trauma. One w ­ oman, Ana, had survived the war in Eu­rope and then migrated to Argentina, where she still had f­amily.1 The morning of the bombing, she was planning to do some errands in the city. Her ­d aughter called and said to her, “ ‘Mama, if y­ ou’re g­ oing to the Once [neighborhood], can you go to Azcuénaga where they sell textiles?’ ” Ana then said, “I told her I would go. So, I thought to myself, it’s early, I have nowhere ­else to go, and I w ­ ill go.” As she was on a bus heading to the Once neighborhood, she heard something on the radio about the bombing. At the time, though, she was thinking about something e­ lse and did not pay much attention to what she was hearing. 158



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When the bus arrived at Pueyrredón Street, not far from the AMIA building, she said, “I still ­d idn’t think anything, but I did notice the ­f aces of ­people as I was walking.” As she kept on walking and got closer to the area of the building, t­hings changed: “That is when I saw that the p­ eople d­ id not seem normal. And so I asked a girl passing by, ‘What happened?’ And she said, ‘They bombed a building on the street with the Jews [la calle de las judíos].’ ” That is when the panic set in. “From t­ here, I started to run, I ran directly ­there. It was the first day of winter vacation [for the kids], and I called my ­house. And I kept on r­ unning t­oward the AMIA. I was on Corrientes and I turned on Lavalle. And ­t here, something r­ eally strange happened.” We ­were sitting in a coffee shop as she was telling me this story. Her arms ­were tense on the ­t able as she took me back to that moment: “The street was all full of rubble, cartons, glass, and all of a sudden, me perdí en el tiempo. I lost myself in time.” I was struck by her expression, and she went on, reaffirming to me that this had r­ eally happened to her: “I am telling you the truth. I returned to the war. I was a child, and the war was starting, and I said, ‘Where is the snow?’ ” She continued: “I looked at the broken glass, I was walking on the glass, I walked on Pasteur Street u ­ ntil I got to the AMIA, but I ­don’t know how much time passed, if it was two minutes [or more]. For more than a block, I walked, and it ­couldn’t have been more than two minutes, but I was completely lost. And I started saying, ‘Where is the snow? Where is the snow?’ That was the only t­ hing I was searching for.” Even years ­later, she still could not fully believe what she felt standing t­ here in the rubble of the AMIA building: “It’s incredible to me how, how you can find yourself into a túnel del tiempo—­a tunnel of time—­and one says, no, that does not exist.” She paused, and then continued, “But it does exist ­because it happened to me.” Ana’s account underscores the way in which history has profoundly ­shaped how survivors perceive con­temporary traumas and time itself. Many of the survivors and ­f amily members of victims have detailed their experiences through testimonies, books, public speeches, and interviews. Over and over again they tell their stories—to schoolchildren, to the public—­hoping to resist the oblivion they feel may be inevitable, to push against indifference, to push against the lack of justice, to seek to find some kind of repair. And yet their narratives also speak to the limits of narrative itself—to the inability to reach that meaning, even if they strive for it through their discursive acts. This chapter focuses more centrally on the notion of the limits that define the bound­a ries of understanding and temporality itself. Through ­t hese narratives, we see the strug­g les with coherence that survivors like Sofía also grapple with (see chapter 1), where trauma becomes that which both claims and defies understanding (following the work of Cathy Caruth). Throughout their

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accounts, ­these subjects are struggling—­returning to the sites of their pain, trying to find a way to get closer to histories that may be forever lost, and reaching the limits of witnessing and of language itself. Yet even as they strug­ gle, even if they may never be able to transcend ­these liminalities, t­hese limits, they find opportunities for insight and agency that reflect the power such spaces can have as acts of repair. Conte station s Although survivors like Elsa initially experienced a lack of interest in her story, over time the Holocaust has become part of public consciousness in Argentina. This has to do with the work of the Holocaust Museum in Buenos Aires and organ­izations such as Generations of the Shoah (which grew from Niños), which have launched impor­tant initiatives in transmitting memory. The Proyecto Aprendiz (Apprentice Proj­ect), for example, pairs a Holocaust survivor with a young person. The young person spends time with the survivor to learn their story and then commits to transmitting that story to someone e­ lse. In that way, they expand the space of witnessing and sustain the memory of a genocide they hope never again recurs. Yet despite ­these advances, ­there have also been moments that expose fissures in society, openings that underscore the urgency to continue sustaining memory as they strive for repair. One such moment took place in November 2013. In Argentina, Kristallnacht has come to be known as el pogrom de noviembre—­t he November pogrom. November 2013 marked the seventy-­fi fth anniversary of that tragic night, and the Metropolitan Cathedral of Buenos Aires hosted an interfaith commemoration convened by the archdiocese of Argentina and the nation’s B’nai B’rith. Diana was pre­sent for this event, and expected it to be very similar to previous commemorations. Indeed, they have held such memorials in Argentine churches for twenty years. She told me that, as in other years, the cathedral was full, crowded with representatives of vari­ous Christian denominations, and also rabbis, Jewish community leaders, politicians, and Holocaust survivors. As the event unfolded, a protest erupted, with members of the Society of St.  Pius X (a far-­right religious group with a reputation for antisemitism)2 staging a group prayer to challenge what they called “the profanation of this space.” According to Diana, it started as a murmur of “Our F ­ ather” and other prayers, and then the protesters began chanting the rosary louder and louder. 3 In the images from that night, one sees blank stares in the eyes of ­those praying, the unwillingness to listen or engage in any kind of dialogue at all. Martha de Antueno, who was president of the Judeo-­Christian Argentine Confraternity, told me, “They ­were like machines that ­were repeating ­things, that d­ idn’t know the meaning of what they ­were saying.” It was as if what they ­were saying was “something completely without meaning.”4 Diana told me she felt a sensation of fear, concerned that vio­lence might erupt in a church filled with el­derly survivors. But they surprised her. The



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survivors in the cathedral, she told me, stood their ground “like soldiers,” refusing to leave. “I am not ­going anywhere from ­here,” they said ­l ater. “Ni loca”—­ not for anything—­“would I go.”5 ­These survivors felt a duty to remember and to resist this protest that challenged their right to remember. The danger, though, reflected in this challenge to Holocaust memorialization may not only have stemmed from the protesters themselves, but also from the ignorance and apathy of a society that may not remember at all. This reinforces why the ongoing memorial advocacy of survivors and f­ amily members of victims of vari­ous periods of vio­lence mattered so much to them, and why their attempts at repair, be they personal or collective, ­were so significant. Jack: Th e L i m it s of L ang uag e and th e C ollapse of Ti m e For survivors, such returns, as we saw in the story of Ana, w ­ ere often traumatic. Certain events triggered the memory of past suffering. Physically being in a place or surrounded by certain kinds of material traces of destruction could prompt a temporal collapse, as Ana noted, “a tunnel of time.” This then exposed the limits of language and meaning itself.6 Jack was quite familiar with using language and narrative publicly, having written and reflected quite extensively on the experience of survival. However, during our many conversations, he rarely talked about his experiences during the war. Born in Lodz, Poland in 1924, he was a teenager when the war started, surviving several years in the Lodz ghetto before being transported to Auschwitz, where he lost most of his ­family. He was still a young man when the war ended, and he spent the postwar years in New York, Puerto Rico, and Venezuela, eventually settling in Buenos Aires and forming a ­family with his wife, a French Jew who had also lost much of her ­f amily during World War II. In Argentina, Jack built a life for himself, but at first, he did not speak publicly about his experiences in the ghetto and the camp ­u ntil the 1990s. He then started publishing articles in Página/12 (the leading progressive daily newspaper, which began its publication during the dictatorship), in which he often reflected upon memory, the Holocaust, and World War II. The book he ­l ater published, Tiempo de recordar (Time to Remember), in 1995, consisted of a compilation of interviews with Liliana Isod, along with t­hose articles he wrote for Página/12. In 2006 he published a second book, Dilemas de la memoria (Dilemmas of Memory). Jack lived in a part of the city close to every­thing, which suited him; he liked to take walks and seemed to know every­one in the neighboring area. His apartment was filled with books lining his living room and photo­g raphs of his ­family, drawings by his grand­d aughters, and other gifts and artwork given to him by his many friends and acquaintances.

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On my first visit to see Jack, I thought we would have a formal interview. But I quickly discovered that he ­really just wanted to have coffee. He had white porcelain cups and saucers ready in his sunny eat-in kitchen, the walls adorned by his grand­d aughters’ artwork. Over coffee he continued to speak in an En­g lish inflected with Yiddish and a New York accent that would be difficult to find in ­today’s New York, let alone in Buenos Aires. In many ways, Jack was a man between languages. We spoke in En­g lish, but my presence constantly inspired his recollections of Rus­sian and his Polish. It seemed that my knowledge of Rus­sian and my personal history was as much of interest to him as anything ­else, especially the story of my maternal grand­mother, Berta, who happened to be born the same year as Jack, 1924, just several hundred kilo­meters away from his birthplace of Lodz, across the border in what is now Belarus. Although Berta had a dif­fer­ent story of survival, it seemed that he felt a connection to her and, through that, to me. Jack figured as part of the complex “memory-­scape” that constitutes the Shoah in Argentina.7 I was surprised to learn that before the 1990s, the Shoah did not figure prominently in the public sphere of Argentina.8 During World War II, in fact, Argentina remained po­l iti­cally neutral, although Perón had an affinity for fascism and Nazism and received many Nazis a­ fter the war. The irony of Argentina is the presence of so many Nazis in the country with the largest Jewish population in Latin Amer­i­ca, and then the rise of neo-­Nazi groups indigenous to Argentina, such as Tacuara.9 During the 1990s, the increase in survivor testimonies and accounts in the public sphere included Jack’s reflections, which ­were published in Página/12. Someone ­later described Jack to me as one of the three impor­tant institutions in Argentina related to the Shoah, along with the Fundación Memoria del Holocausto and Sherit Hapleitá. But like many survivors in Argentina, Jack lived much of his life without speaking about what had happened.10 In 2003, he agreed to a formal interview. I asked him about his Holocaust memory, and he began by telling a story about his first trip to Yad Vashem, the museum and memorial to Holocaust victims in Israel. T ­ here, he was struck by the intersections of the sacred and the profane: “The first time I went over ­there, I saw p­ eople eating, taking photos. I could not understand how p­ eople could do that. For me, it was like a shrine.”11 Over time, though, his sense of that place changed. He said, “I studied over t­here a month. [Eventually,] I could have lunch. I could sing songs with the p­ eople who contacted me.” That tension between what he had perceived to be the “shrine” and the ordinary acts of eating food or singing songs, that sense of moving between the mundane and the sacred, the “in betweenness” of it all, reflects the liminality inherent to ­these acts of repair. Though we often talked at length about the Holocaust in general terms, about genocide, about the importance of remembering, he never actually spoke about his experience in Auschwitz during our many conversations and interviews. He



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did, however, talk about the Lodz ghetto more generally, about the loss of 250,000 Jews and a Jewish life that no one could trace. When someone brought him a book about the ghetto, he told me, “It was terrible for me. The day a­ fter [getting the book], I was depressed. ­There are certain ­things I wanted to forget. It was just terrible.” Returning to Poland for Jack also led him to the limits of language and understanding, and it is often language that became the medium for contemplating loss in his case. One eve­n ing that year, in March 2003, Jack invited me over for dinner, with another friend of his. We started talking about language and about Poland, how to say dif­fer­ent words in Rus­sian and in Yiddish. Our dinner that eve­n ing fell during the same week as the anniversary of the coup in Argentina, a day that would soon be officially designated a holiday and called the Day of Remembrance for Truth and Justice. We started talking about the dictatorship, and Jack’s friend told me about ­those years—­how her ­f ather would get the Yiddish newspapers secretly, how they ­were known to be progressive (and therefore dangerous during the dictatorship years), and how scared she was for him. Yiddish was a space of pos­si­ble re­sis­t ance and contestation in ­those years, it seemed. And for Jack, that made him think about the many Yiddish newspapers in New York, in the years when he first arrived ­a fter the war, how ­every newsstand had a range of papers. When ­t here was no common language, Jack said, he turned to Yiddish in foreign countries and could make himself understood. With me, Jack often used En­g lish, exuberantly stretching out syllables with a pronunciation inflected by what sounded like both Yiddish and what I perceived as a 1950s-­era Upper Manhattan accent (perhaps, I thought, they ­were even one and the same for some). This made sense, as he lived in New York in the 1950s before eventually settling in Buenos Aires, meeting his wife, a Jew from France, getting married, and having a child. His ­d aughter, Marianne, lived just a few blocks away from Jack, and his three grand­d aughters ­were all around him—­their drawings taped on the walls of his kitchen, their stories and experiences something that would bring a light to his eyes whenever we talked. I, of course, felt more at home with Jack b­ ecause he spoke En­g lish, but also b­ ecause he knew some words in Rus­sian. I was clearly interested in his story, but during our many conversations, he was just as interested in the story of my grand­mother, who was born the same year as him, not very far from Lodz—­just across a border. How dif­fer­ent their histories would turn out to be in some ways—­Jack, in the Lodz ghetto and then Auschwitz, surviving and then traveling to New York and Latin Amer­i­ca; my grand­mother, Berta, from Borisov, a city outside of Minsk, in the Soviet Socialist Republic of Belarus, surviving the war in Central Asia through evacuation and returning to build a life in Borisov again, marrying my grand­father, who had fought in the war (a detail that also fascinated Jack), having three c­ hildren, and then deciding to

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leave the Soviet Union, to follow her ­children and grandchildren as refugees to seek a better life in New York in the 1970s. Theirs w ­ ere dif­fer­ent lives, and yet they both lost their families. They both lost their youth. And ­here I was in Buenos Aires, having traveled thousands of miles from my home in New York to sit at a kitchen ­table and share my grand­ mother’s story with Jack, who had been born in a city that was just seven hundred miles from where my grand­mother, Berta, had been born. Jack often liked to ask me questions, such as about what it would be like for me to return to Belarus. I explained that I wanted someone to come with me, to explain ­things. But my ­mother simply did not want to return, telling me that she had no interest, except to visit my grand­father’s grave. And he understood that. Jack, however, did return to Poland, bringing his d­ aughter, Marianne, with him. He filmed his own return, clips of which can be seen in a documentary about his life, El Árbol de la Muralla (The Tree on the Wall, 2013). The scenes follow his return to the sites of his youth. ­There he stands, with Marianne, talking to ­people in Lodz, reflecting on his history and what happened to the city he left. In the film, when Jack talks about what this trip to Lodz was ­really like, he says, “It was all the same and not the same at all.” He continues, “The only ­thing that remained was the Jewish cemetery.” From that moment of Jack speaking in his home in Buenos Aires, the film turns to what appears to be a home video of Jack, with the date September 8, 2001, in white lettering over the images. Jack is on a train, looking out the win­dow at the forest passing by quickly as he sits on his way to Lodz. We do not hear anything, except for the sound of movement, the train rushing through the trees. The film then cuts to Jack walking down a small paved road surrounded by tall evergreens. Jack is holding the camera himself and walking, the camera shaking as he moves t­oward the cemetery. He then starts to describe what he sees, beginning in Spanish and then switching to En­g lish, moving in a fractured way from one language to the next, before ultimately settling into the language of his birth, Yiddish. He begins in Spanish, “Ahora, llegamos al monumento principal.” (“Now, we are arriving at the main monument.”) He continues in Spanish, but with a break into En­g lish: “Bueno, I d­ on’t know. Yo no sé. Yo no sé. Yo no sé porque vine aquí.” (“Well, I ­don’t know. I ­don’t know. I ­don’t know. I d­ on’t know why I came h ­ ere.”) He continues in Spanish: “Por la necesidad de sufrir o de recordar. Bueno. Todo está mezclado. Bueno. Uno hace que se siente un momento. Y yo estoy filmando esta tragedia. Como puedo yo ser tan tranquilo y caminar donde caminaron las víctimas del nazismo?” (“For the need to suffer or remember. Well. Every­t hing is confused. Well. You feel something, but I am filming this tragedy. How can I remain so calm and walk in the place where victims of Nazism have walked?”)



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As he finishes that question, he arrives at a monument. He continues in Spanish, but when he encounters the number of t­ hose who died, his language breaks again, turning to En­g lish, then Polish, then En­g lish again, and then back to Spanish: Dice aqui que murieron [Spanish] a hundred sto tisechniya [Polish] a hundred thousand. Uh . . . ​S e me mezcla todas los idiomas. No sé que decir. De verdad, es tan conmovedor. Uno no puede imaginar que en un lugar tan lindo, en el bosque, como se pudo haber cometido tantos crímenes. (It says ­here that a hundred, a hundred thousand, a hundred thousand. Uh . . . ​A ll of the languages are getting mixed up for me. I d­ on’t know what to say. It’s r­ eally so moving. You ­can’t believe that in a place so beautiful, in the forest, that they could have committed so many crimes.) From ­t here he turns from Spanish to Yiddish, saying first in Spanish, “Es algo, me recuerda de Kacharinski, su canción, de Ponary.” (“This is something that reminds me of Kacharinski, and his song, Ponary.”) Jack then begins to sing: “Tsviren vegn tsu Ponarsku . . . ,” continuing the verse in Yiddish, which is translated as “Roads lead to Ponary, with a road of no return. When your ­father dis­appeared, so did his good fortune.” Jack then moves his camera to the forest, holding it himself as he walks through, with a view only of grass and trees. As he walks, he speaks in Yiddish,12 his first language: Di velt a geshvign Di bayme a geshvign Di himel [The world fell ­silent The trees fell ­silent The sky fell ­silent] He asks, “What happened ­here? . . . ​W ho w ­ ill know? Who can understand it?” Still holding the camera, Jack turns it to the tombstones, which are still standing, though surrounded by grass grown tall. We see weeds and wild­ flowers sprouting in the ground, and among the stones. Jack pans over them and says, in Yiddish, “­These tombstones remain as a memorial, witnesses that in Lodz, t­ here was a Jewish life [Yiddish lebn].” He continues in Yiddish, speaking rapidly, without pauses, his language breathless. We do not see Jack, just what he sees, only hearing his voice, moving in and out of dif­fer­ent languages, disembodied. We hear his words [in Yiddish] as the camera pans over the cemetery and a translation of ­t hose words appears on the screen: This is the only proof that remains. The only evidence.

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You can walk for hours in Lodz without meeting a Jew. The events that took place ­here. This is all that remains. If it ­weren’t for t­ hese tombstones, for this cemetery, we ­wouldn’t know t­ here was Jewish life ­here. No one would believe that 200,000 Jews lived ­here. And now, not one Jew walks ­here. ­These tombs serve as testimony that t­ here was once Jewish life ­here. Jack’s camera then pans over the wild shrubs and vegetation as he reflects, “Time and vegetation cover the tombstones and the dead. ­There is no one to clean them. No one is left.” The view seems to be all plants, and yet apparently tombstones are under­neath. “All ­these green leaves cover the tombs. They ­were left covered and hidden, buried like the rest of Jewish life in Lodz.” At this point, Jack’s breathing starts to get heavier as he continues walking and visually documenting what is left of the cemetery. Still in Yiddish, he says, “I c­ an’t speak anymore. T ­ here is nothing left to say. I c­ an’t believe this. I ­can’t believe this.” He chants: Ikh ken nisht gloybn. Ikh ken nisht gloybn. Ikh ken nisht gloybn. He reaches the limits of understanding and belief. El Árbol de la Muralla shares Jack’s return to Lodz and to the cemetery and spaces of death and loss that for Jack reflect not just the vio­lence of genocide, but the vio­lence of the aftermath—of the absence and erasure of Jewish life and all of that which is not marked. What it also depicts, though, is Jack’s strug­g le with language and narrative, with facing this loss. We see this when he goes to the cemetery and encounters the graves, half-­broken stones, and weeds growing all around; the way his language displays fractures and breaks as he shifts from Spanish, to En­g lish, to Polish, and then fi­nally Yiddish. The pain of what he sees—of the loss of t­hese ­people’s lives and the loss of their memories—­exceeds his capacity for language. Yet though ­there may not be an answer to his question of how to make sense of this all, in this case, perhaps the ability to even articulate a question to an ­imagined viewer represents the gesture ­towards repair Jack may have needed. What May Not B e Re m e m b e re d Some of the strug­gles with this past, of course, hinged on fear, which s­ haped how some survivors and their families experienced the prospect of return as they hovered on the bound­a ries of witnessing. Jack invited me to visit him one day when he was receiving students who had traveled to Poland with the group Marcha por la Vida (March of the Living). Two of them w ­ ere university



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students, and three ­were high school students, who ­were also joined by their teacher that day. The Marcha por la Vida begins their trip in Poland, with visits to Auschwitz and the camps, and then from ­there, the group travels to Israel. It is scheduled to coincide with Israel’s national holiday and is meant to be a “march of the living” that directly contests the death marches that took place during the Holocaust (see Weissberg and Neile 2015). We sat down for coffee that Jack made carefully by boiling ­water, putting the ground coffee beans into a filter that he held over a special pot, and pouring that w ­ ater over the grounds u ­ ntil the coffee was ready. This was not the typical Argentine coffee, which is espresso. But it is the coffee I imagine Jack knew from his days in New York ­a fter the war. Jack liked to tell me he was making the “good American coffee.” Jack then started asking the students questions about their experience and ­whether they thought it was worth it to go. They did feel it was worth it, even though the Israel portion of the visit had been cut out that year for security reasons. But seeing the concentration camps in person had left an impression on them. Now they said they felt like they had the obligation to go to schools and to educate other ­people, including non-­Jews. The students then turned to Jack to ask him questions about what happens when he goes to schools to talk. I was a bit surprised by his responses ­because I always thought he enjoyed it. But he said he did not ­really like ­going anymore and that he was not even sure if it was worth it in the same way. (He would ­later elaborate on that with me, worrying about what it meant to the students, ­whether they listened, ­whether it made a difference.) But he said that when he does go, “I ­don’t talk about me, ‘Yankele Fuchs,’ or how I was in the Lodz ghetto, or how I was in Auschwitz, or how my ­family died. Instead, I talk about the Nazis and how they came into power. I talk about World War II.” He continued: “What’s impor­t ant is to make it relevant to other ­people, so it has an impact on them.” Jack then asked this group of young students a provocative question, as he tended to do: “Why is it that we remember the Shoah but not the proceso [i.e., the dictatorship]? What was more important to them?” All of t­hese students, all young w ­ omen, ­were born in the midst of the dictatorship, or in the first years of democracy. This was very much their history. One of them, Rosi, then answered, “I was thinking about making Aliyah [i.e., emigrating to Israel], and that is when I thought I should find out more about Argentina, ­because I realized that I ­d idn’t know anything, that I knew more songs in Hebrew than in Spanish. I then bought the book Nunca Más and started learning about the history h ­ ere.” She continued: “It’s just that when you go to Jewish schools, and the club, and every­thing, you d­ on’t ­really have the connection to the rest of Argentina.” For Rosi, this stronger connection only happened in the university. And ­t here

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she encountered her first questions from non-­Jewish classmates about Jewish holidays, about the Shoah, t­hings that every­one e­ lse she had grown up with all took for granted. As we kept on talking, Jack asked, “Para que sirve la memoria?” What good is memory? I suggested that maybe it is to plant the seeds of tolerance. Or that it may not be pos­si­ble to have one answer to this question, ­because ­people remember for dif­fer­ent reasons in dif­fer­ent times. But Jack reminded us of all the ­t hings we ­were not remembering. We ­were not remembering the Spanish Inquisition. We ­were not remembering what had happened in Cambodia in the 1970s. We w ­ ere not remembering the August 12, 1952, massacre of the Jewish writers in Moscow. “As generations change, so does memory,” he said, agreeing with many scholars of memory in that s­ imple sentence. Rosi said that when she thinks of the idea of “Never again,” she thinks about Poland, but then also about the proceso, and then again about the AMIA, and at some point, ­a fter hearing “Never again” so much, it begins to ring empty—­ “me suena vacío.” The void of meaning is experienced in a dif­fer­ent way for this generation than it is for t­hose who lost someone, like Sofía, or Jack, or Carlos Susevich, or Sara Rus, or Vera Jarach, or any of the other ­family members of victims. ­A fter they left, Jack talked to me about how difficult he found talking to younger generations. He said he does not always know how to talk to his grand­ daughters about this past. In their school, they say that their grand­f ather was in World War II. He does sometimes talk to his ­d aughter about it. For the younger generations, he feels like it is ancient history, whereas for him, “it is something of t­oday.” That time feels very much pre­sent. Ro si: E mbodi e d Return s to Dang e rou s Pasts I was so interested by what Rosi shared at Jack’s ­house that I followed up with her so we could talk more. We met on a sunny Friday after­noon in one of the libraries of the Medicine Faculty of the University of Buenos Aires, where she was studying. She was t­ here with her books and her mate gourd, a traditional way Argentines (along with other South Americans) drink yerba mate. They fill the gourd with mate tea, and then also bring a thermos with boiled w ­ ater to pour into the gourd, using a special metal straw to sip the tea and pass it to friends. The library was just a meeting spot for us, though, and we ended up taking off to walk to a local coffee shop. ­A fter finding a place to sit, Rosi told me her story.13 She was born in Buenos Aires, as w ­ ere her parents. Her grandparents had migrated from Eu­rope, Romania and Poland—­a round 1919, she thought. Her maternal grand­father had tried to bring all of his f­amily over to Argentina, but when the war started and the border closed, he was not able to get every­one ­here. That was always very difficult for him, she said, and they s­ topped talking about Eu­rope ­a fter that.



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Rosi told me she started learning about Eu­rope (and by that, I found she meant the Holocaust) in the third grade. She went to a Jewish school, and they lit Yitzkhor memorial candles on Yom Kippur. She remembered being eight years old and starting to cry, and then getting upset. “What’s the point of making us cry all the time? You d­ on’t have to keep on telling us about the Shoah,” she told her teacher. “We already know.” Her teacher tried to explain to her that it is very impor­t ant not to forget. “But I’m not ­going to forget,” Rosi told her. ­A fter that, she said, she shifted her perspective on the importance of remembering. As she learned more and grew older, she told me that she felt as if ­there ­were two dif­fer­ent Polands—as if they w ­ ere not in the same space, as if they ­were in dif­fer­ent places. T ­ here is the modern Poland, she said, “with colors and McDonald’s,” and then ­t here is the Shoah. And she had to learn much of this from books, as her ­family did not have a lot to tell her. She wanted to learn more and so she took the initiative to go to the Polish embassy in Buenos Aires, where they told her that maybe the Polish House would have something for her. But when she went ­there, she described it as “strange.” She described being afraid, but she was not sure why. “I knew it ­d idn’t make much sense.” She continued: It was 1999, and I was in Buenos Aires, in the neighborhood of Palermo. But t­here was just something about it that I d­ idn’t like. T ­ here was a metal gate that closed ­behind me, and I had to go up the stairs. I d­ idn’t like it. And then their flag with the ea­g le on it. I was d­ ying of fear. I d­ on’t remember ever being that afraid. I ­d idn’t have enough air to breathe. And then, when I saw they had an open patio, I fi­nally felt I could breathe again. And the library itself had a white light—­even better. Of course, she rationally understood the distance between this space and the Poland of the Holocaust. But her body reacted with the fear based on what she was thinking: “It’s silly, but I thought, [looking at the p­ eople t­ here,] where ­were you when you ­were young?” Of course, she was wondering about what they ­were ­doing during World War II, and she began to feel dif­fer­ent for being Jewish: “I had a backpack from Macabi [a club] with a Jewish star on it, and I have chai earrings. I just turned the bag inside out [so no one could see the star on it], and I got goose bumps. And I never did that before.” Eventually, as she got used to the space and got to know the p­ eople who worked ­t here, it changed. She found out that one Polish employee had grown up in ­England, and that another person who worked ­t here was Jewish. “But I still have the memory of that fear,” she said, “of the first time I went in.” At that point, she also knew she was ­going to visit Poland herself, in the group that traveled with Marcha por la Vida in the year 2000.14 Yet she also experienced ambivalence about ­going. For her, she said, “Poland was all black and white, but in real­ity, Poland is not black and white.”

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She described the feeling of encountering this other Poland when she was ­there—­a ll of the cemeteries, the Yiddish theater. She had read about all of ­these t­ hings, but she felt differently about actually ­going to be ­there in person. Before making the final decision to go, she had a lot of concerns, ­really struggling with the decision. Several t­ hings then led her to change her mind. First, she had a dream. Even though she was living with her ­family in the Villa Crespo neighborhood, in her dream they had a ­house in the Once (the same neighborhood as the AMIA building). “I dreamt that ­there was a train looking for Jews in Villa Crespo,” she described to me. And I knew that they ­were coming to Once. I had 100 pesos and needed to give it to [Charlie] Chaplin. Chaplin was in Villa Crespo. And my mom told me I had to return the money, b­ ecause he needed it to go to Eu­rope. But if I go, they could take me on that train, and I was afraid.” She woke up very scared. Although she was twenty years old, she woke every­one up in her ­house and could not stop crying. They tried to calm her down by reminding her that the Holocaust already happened. And she said, “Yes, it happened. But you ­can’t assure me that it ­won’t happen again! We can try and hide, but in Eu­rope, they tried and it d­ idn’t ­m atter.” She said ­there was no way to calm her down. What struck me about her voice in that moment was how much it sounded like Diana’s, when she expressed to me the panic her m ­ other had felt when she heard the AMIA had been bombed, a feeling that they w ­ ere being pursued again, that they ­were no longer safe. Eventually Rosi de­cided she would go to Poland, where she would be able to experience the country with her own eyes and her own body. But the fear she felt so palpably in her experiences in the Polish House as well as through her dream reveal something about what Marianne Hirsch termed “postmemory”—­ how something that she had not gone through herself had nevertheless left a power­ful imprint on her. Every­thing Rosi did—­her returns to this past, her travels to Poland, and her breaking through the fear to go to the Polish House—­ helped her transcend the bound­aries in which she lived. Through that, she could also engage her agency more fully and find a mea­sure of repair in response to the trauma so clearly embodied. O n the Limit s of R eturn Rosi’s story shows us the significant legacies of past vio­lence. Clearly, the Holocaust had an impact on ­those who survived as we saw in Jack and Ana, as well as Elsa and others in earlier chapters. T ­ hese survivors continued to reckon with that past through their narratives and other acts of repair. But ­these strug­ gles also existed for many Jewish Argentines who ­were not themselves survivors of the Holocaust but whose families had survived or had been killed in Eu­rope. It turned out that Benjamín, whom I had met through Memoria Activa and who spent many Mondays with me at the Banchero coffee shop a­fter ­those



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actos, also had a story of return. One day, Benjamín invited me to go with him to a book fair, a large event. We walked up the street Boulogne Sur Mer, ­toward Córdoba, a larger ave­nue. As we walked, he spoke with me about his ­family and his history. He told me about his d­ aughter and his grand­d aughter. We talked about the recent actos related to the AMIA bombing. At Córdoba, we de­cided to take the subway, from the Pueyrredón stop. I did not know that much about his personal history at that point, so when I asked if his ­family was from Poland originally, he replied that they w ­ ere from Lithuania. As we traveled through the under­g round, emerging at Plaza Italia, he told me more—­about how his ­father had six b­ rothers and about how, eventually, he de­cided to go to Amer­i­ca. He then smiled as we walked, pointing to me and saying, “Amer­i­ca,” and then pointing to himself and also saying, “Amer­i­ca,” but this time shaking his head from side to side. I guess his f­ather thought that he was ­going to North Amer­i­ca, but he ended up in Argentina. This was in the 1920s. Though he was able to bring his young wife over as well (this was Benjamín’s ­mother), he lost touch with his b­ rothers. “What happened to them?” I asked. He told me it was a very ugly story, very cruel. In the town where his parents ­were from in Lithuania, the Germans came and surrounded all of the Jews, then dug large pits with machines and buried them. “It was such a painful story,” he said. I did not ask him how he knew, or to name the date or the town. In that moment, what mattered was that this was how he understood his ­family’s history. And yet he wanted to go back to Lithuania. His dream was to go back where his parents had originally met. A Holocaust survivor, Charles Papiernik, had told him to do it—­t hat he should not let anything stop him. So he de­cided to go. On a trip or­g a­n ized by the Hebraica Club and the Fundación Memoria del Holocausto (Holocaust Memory Foundation), he went to Poland. I found out ­later that this was through Marcha por la Vida. But instead of continuing on from Poland to Israel, which would have been the next leg of the trip, he de­cided to go to Lithuania. Just like Diana, he chose this trip to both remember the Holocaust and to return to his own ­f amily history. He told me he took a train, not knowing anything but Yiddish and some German. He was able to realize what he called his “dream”—to return to the place where his f­ amily was from. ­These returns became power­ful opportunities for Benjamín to repair the distance between him and his lost f­amily, between his life in Argentina and their history in Eu­rope. Th e War saw Ghet to Even for ­t hose who may not have been able to physically return to Eu­rope, the history of the Shoah, including the activism and re­sis­tance of Jews in the face of Nazism, continued to be an impor­tant touchstone in Argentina. The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising in par­tic­u ­lar was a moment that created a sense of

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shared belonging across the vari­ous commemorative practices, serving as an impor­tant way to link the past and pre­sent. Of course, this is not the only form of re­sis­tance that existed during the Holocaust, and yet it has become an impor­tant site of memory, even if it extends beyond the bound­aries of witnessing for many who participate in the commemorations. A formal acto took place on the occasion of the sixtieth anniversary of the uprising, April 20, 2003, or­g a­n ized at the Peretz School in the Once neighborhood. The Coro Guebirtig performed, singing songs from the composer for whom they ­were named, Mordechai Gebirtig, using his words to help reflect on the per­sis­tence of life despite the death and destruction of the camps. Reizl Sztarker founded this choir in response to the AMIA bombing (see chapter 3), turning to the Yiddish of the past and the Shoah to help frame the ways to connect to the pre­sent and engage their po­l iti­cal agency through m ­ usic (see Zaretsky 2008b). ­T hose gathered for the commemoration of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising that eve­n ing described the “rebellion that lasted three weeks.” They then reflected on the importance of remembering: “We w ­ ere killed for something we could not stop being. O ­ thers collaborated, be it through what they did or through their indifference. And in Argentina, too, ­there was antisemitism: acts of aggression in 1962—­Eichmann. And then the sad honor of having had two attacks, the worst since the Shoah—­the 1992 Israeli embassy bombing and the 1994 AMIA bombing. More than 200 victims, between t­hose wounded and killed.” What is in­ter­e st­ing to note ­here, along with the intersections of history, are the silences; at the time of this acto in 2003, the dictatorship was not mentioned explic­itly (though this would change over time in community events). And yet, implicitly, the link was t­here, through the invocation of the idea of “never again.” The speaker ended by reading from a letter written by a Holocaust survivor, who talked about his purpose as being “para que la Shoá sea un nunca más”—so that t­ here would never again be a Shoah. This idea of turning to the past as a way to ensure a “never again” through memory and activism also informed the actos in the Plaza of Memory. The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising was a key moment memorialized in the community, a moment that represented re­sis­tance to oppression that also coincided with much of the activism in Argentina, both in response to the dictatorship and to the AMIA bombing. That year, on April 21, Memoria Activa focused the acto on the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, and that morning, the plaza was filled with more ­people than usual. I arrived by subte (subway) that morning, quickly ­running up the stairs to the street, marveling at the light and how sunny it was that morning. This would be a slightly dif­fer­ent acto than usual, one that would not begin with the shofar. I noticed Bernardo ­there in a black suit, black shoes that w ­ ere obviously worn but shined, a light blue sweater vest, and a shirt and tie. It seemed like a



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long time since he was t­ here at the plaza. He had been hospitalized a c­ ouple of weeks e­ arlier ­because of his heart, so I was glad to see him up and about. It turned out that Bernardo was ­going to give his testimony that morning, which as one of the Memoria Activa organizers noted, would be on the sixtieth anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. Bernardo was introduced as a citizen of the plaza, very committed, and instead of the shofar, ­there was just a moment of silence. He talked about his time ­in the plaza, about the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, about his f­amily and health. In some ways, though, what was the most significant part of his testimony was his very presence t­here, on that Monday and all of the other Mondays. A young student spoke next, describing the “eternity of the moment of re­sis­tance at the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising” the “eternity of the shame and impunity of the Palace of Justice,” and the “eternity of Memoria Activa, fighting for justice.” Through memory, they connected t­hese acts of re­sis­tance, thereby challenging the very finite nature of time, suspending ­these moments in a kind of liminality that could perhaps repair the kind of fractures they ­were feeling. Only ­after that testimony did Enrique, one of the organizers, come up to say it was time for the shofar, which was almost like a testimony of its own. Its sound rang out across the plaza and connected this moment, too, to all of the other Mondays shared in the plaza and all of the ways in which the Shoah figured into the con­temporary strug­g les with agency, citizenship, and loss. A Wit ne ss to the Wit ne ss While Rosi felt the trauma of the Holocaust and the Jewish experience in Poland quite powerfully, she also experienced limits to what she could witness. Even as citizens invoke the past of the Warsaw ghetto, or find pathways of return, as Benjamín, they also experience bound­aries and challenges to what they can know of that past. We have found such limits throughout the lives of the subjects profiled in this book—­for example, the limit to what parents can know of their child’s experience who was dis­appeared during the dictatorship or killed in a terrorist attack, and the limit of knowing what happened to loved ones who ­were separated from their families ­because they ­were hidden with other families, as in Diana’s case, or ­because they could never be known, as in Dina’s. ­T here is also a limit to language itself—to its ability to fully cohere or express trauma and loss, as evidenced in Jack’s return to the Lodz cemetery. Despite ­these limits, what persists is a desire—­a desire to bear witness, which through ­these very attempts can serve as an act of repair. This ­doesn’t necessarily have to operate through language. As we saw in chapter 2, Eugenia Bekeris used art to bear witness and tell her story. Eugenia’s f­amily fled Hungary during the war years and lived in Bolivia before settling in Argentina. She developed several impor­tant artistic proj­ects related to the Shoah, including El Secreto (The Secret; 1995) and a series of portraits of survivors.

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More recently, when the ­trials for crimes against humanity began, ­there came a call for artists to illustrate and bear witness to the proceedings, since taking photo­g raphs or videos was prohibited. (As we saw in chapter 2, Eugenia explained to me that this had to do with Julio López, a witness set to testify in one such trial who was dis­appeared in 2006.) The group H.I.J.O.S. then made a proposal, an open call: “Come draw genocidaires in Comodoro PY [i.e., the trial location]—­come draw a live model for ­f ree.”15 The call was ­simple—to arrive with an ordinary notebook and a pencil. That is how Eugenia started, and she continued using the same method for all of the drawings she completed as a part of this proj­ect, chronicling those who testified along with a team of other artists that included her colleague María Paula Doberti. Part of the thinking of this group, Dibujos Urgentes (Urgent Drawings), as Eugenia told me, was that t­hese notebooks w ­ ere ordinary and the pencil marks so ephemeral. ­T here was something about this that felt very true to the ways in which memory works. This would not be the first time Eugenia had worked with visually representing subjects who had experienced trauma, as she had previously worked with Holocaust survivors. Yet Eugenia told me she strug­g led with her first illustration: “The first drawing I made was of a ­woman who was taken to the ex-­ESMA. She said that when she entered with her friend, they hugged and they said goodbye. . . . ​She ­later learned he was a victim of the death flights.” This w ­ oman’s friend was one of the many dis­ appeared thrown into the River Plate to die, one of the extensive crimes committed by the state during the dictatorship (Verbitsky 1996). While this w ­ oman told her story at the trial, Eugenia said that t­ here ­were not a lot of ­people in the audience. But Eugenia went ­t here “with [her] heart in her hands.” All she could say about what it felt to be ­there witnessing this testimony was “Que tremendo. Que tremendo.” (“How horrible.”) Of course, she had a purpose—to chronicle ­these witnesses by drawing their likenesses and also jotting down words or phrases from their testimonies—to leave an imprint of that day, a register of sorts (see figures 2 and 3, chapter 2). Eugenia also extended this work to the AMIA trial that began in 2015, since it was also taking place in Comodoro PY, the same location as the ESMA megatrial. She then used the same guidelines and format as with the other drawings. She told me, “The drawings are called ‘urgent,’ and they have an aesthetic quality that we re­spect—it is done rapidly, and we do not touch them. . . . ​We are trying to capture this image from the trials, so it has to be quick. We also include fragments from the testimonies.” Yet she also understood that, more than her drawings, what mattered was her presence. I asked what it felt like to bear witness in this way, through her art. She started by saying, “The truth is that to be a witness of witnesses is . . . ,” and then she paused and told me a story about reaching out to one of the witnesses and asking to meet. Over coffee, she asked her if her drawing did justice to that person’s experience. She worried that it may not have fully



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represented it, or perhaps, that it was too painful for the person to see. The subject of her illustration answered, “We are not interested in the drawings. What ­matters to us is that you are ­there.” Being t­ here and bearing witness to witnesses also extended to the AMIA trial. As we sat together in 2018, she reflected on the vast scope of destruction and the expanses of time that have also passed: “Eighty-­five victims. Twenty-­ four years without justice. And all of the ­family members seeking justice—­the truth is, it is tremendously violent.” Despite that tremendous vio­lence, as she put it, or perhaps precisely b­ ecause of it, she also found a g­ reat value to her presence. She continued, saying, “But it’s good that we are ­there. They need us.” Indeed, Memoria Activa has posted t­hese “dibujos urgentes” on their website and shared them via social media, a way to expand the space of the witness.16 Not every­one could go to actos in plazas, not every­one could attend the trial; many may not have even been aware of this trial, or perhaps the AMIA case and its impunity had receded from their consciousness. Through her drawings, then, Eugenia created an opportunity for more witnesses to join. What Memoria Activa and other ­family members of victims and survivors needed, Eugenia felt, was her presence as a witness, which became her act of repair. Rememb e ri ng as R e pai r Eugenia’s experience speaks to the power of the witness, of the one who sees and acknowledges a person’s history and the vio­lence they have survived. Survivors, however, also strug­g le with the silences that develop over time, experiencing an abiding fear of indifference. Some of the silences Jack would lament w ­ ere historical, the public silences about other tragedies and moments of vio­lence. Jack would often talk to me about the Soviet Jewish writers who ­were killed u ­ nder Stalin, a history he worried would not be remembered and that he felt ­people should know about. This, of course, touched me very closely ­because of my own ­family’s history in the former Soviet Union, and Jack would ask me about how my own ­family remembered, and what happened to memory in a state that systematically sought erasure of that history.17 Though I had heard about it before, it was ­because of Jack that I felt compelled to attend a special event remembering the Soviet Jewish poets killed ­u nder Stalin, convened on August  12, 2002, in the AMIA. I went with an Argentine friend who helped relieve my concern over forgetting to bring my passport, which I usually needed to enter the building and pass through the security procedures, which w ­ ere necessary to enter into many sites of memory, as we saw in chapter 4. At the acto, Eliahu Toker gave a moving talk about the history of the persecution and brief glory of Soviet Jewish writers, along with ruminations on what kind of utter loneliness they must have experienced. He also read materials in both Spanish and Yiddish and then ended on the joy he felt at knowing

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that the son of one writer was now in Israel writing in Hebrew. Saul Drajer then spoke about the Jewish doctors who w ­ ere also targeted ­u nder Stalin. He gave several names, but Lina Shtern (also spelled Stern) stood out to me. I was thinking about my grand­mother at that point. Her name was Berta Klimkovich (born Berta Merzon). When she was seventeen, the front came to Belarus, World War II clamping down on the borders and preventing my grand­mother, who had been visiting her aunt in Moscow, from g­ oing home. It was June, and she tried to return to Borisov, where her parents had remained, but the authorities would not let her cross the border from Rus­sia into Belarus. Both of her parents would be killed in the Borisov ghetto, and she survived only ­because of the accidents of history that left her on the other side of the border, eventually evacuating to Central Asia. ­A fter the end of the war, she went to medical school, got married, had a ­f amily, and became a pediatrician, settling again in the small city, Borisov, where she grew up and where her parents ­were killed. So as they w ­ ere remembering in Buenos Aires about what Stalin did to the writers and the doctors in the 1950s, I was thinking about my own grand­ mother, a Soviet Jew who was becoming a doctor in that era. A ­ fter the discussions, several p­ eople pre­sent also stood up and gave their stories, their experiences, their connections to this history. And I did too. ­A fter the event, I went back to my rented apartment in Buenos Aires, and the first ­t hing I did was to call my grand­mother, home in Brooklyn. I told her about this event and asked her about it. (It may seem strange to have asked her this, as of course, she must have known. But I felt I had to ask b­ ecause it is not something she ever talked about to me; all that she would say is that Stalin was terrible.) She remembered all of it, of course. And she then asked me, Did they mention Lina Shtern? This ­woman was her professor. Yes, I told her, they did remember her. Though she ­d idn’t share much more with me that eve­n ing, by knowing that o ­ thers remembered this, too, perhaps it offered a small mea­sure of repair to my grand­mother as well. S urviving Lo ss So many of t­hese movements and organ­izations are founded in ­family— mothers who have lost ­children, ­children who have lost parents, grandparents seeking their grandchildren, f­ amily members mourning the loss of their s­ isters, ­d aughters, husbands, b­ rothers, and friends, too. They speak to a profound desire to find t­ hose they have lost, even if it is through memory. Yet in other cases, survivors strug­g led with sharing their histories with their families. We have seen this with Jack, who described the difficulty of talking about his experience with his own f­amily, specifically his ­d aughter and grandchildren. In chapter 5, Elsa also found it challenging to share the vio­lence of her history. Yet survivors found that they could connect to ­others who ­were struggling with the same difficulties in telling their stories.



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During my time with the Niños, I went to a screening of a documentary about some of the group members, Aquellos Niños (­T hose ­Children), directed by Bernardo Kononovich. Kononovich made this film to chronicle the lives and experiences of child survivors of the Holocaust. The screening was arranged to take place at the Iglesia Santa Cruz, a Catholic church where Madres de Plaza de Mayo used to gather. This is also where a group of Madres and two French nuns w ­ ere dis­appeared in December 1977. That eve­n ing, ­t here was a mix of members of the Niños group, including Diana and o ­ thers, along with congregants from the church and some Madres. Gabriel, who had helped or­g a­n ize the event, had also made a documentary about Irish priests repressed during the dictatorship, and he showed me the place in the church from where the Madres and the French nuns ­were abducted during the dictatorship. Though I could not see a plaque or monument in that moment (something I may very well have missed), it seemed that every­one knew what had happened ­t here and that perhaps such a material reminder was not even necessary. ­A fter the mass, we went into a smaller room for the screening. The priest spoke first, saying that we w ­ ere ­there to witness “a history of humanity.” Diana then spoke about how suffering and injustice had no religion, no nationality, no color, no face. She emphasized that this was not just a Jewish story, and that “pain is an entire world unto itself.” The film focused on p­ eople’s stories, emphasizing how their experience left other kinds of traces—in their silences, on their bodies, on their hands. As we w ­ ere watching, in the m ­ iddle of the film, a w ­ oman abruptly got up and left. Some ­people went ­a fter her to find out what happened. ­L ater, a­ fter we gathered in a circle to discuss the film, Diana explained that the ­woman who left was ­really moved by what Lea, who was featured in the film, had been saying about watching the c­hildren being marched to death at Auschwitz, b­ ecause she works with ­children. She was crying quite intensely and could not bring herself to come back in to watch the rest of the film. ­There w ­ ere many questions. Many child survivors had been hidden during the Holocaust in Christian homes (and often had to pre­sent themselves as Christian to avoid being captured). Much of the discussion focused on what that meant, to be living with an identity that is not your own. One member of the Niños, described the moment when her parents came to get her from where she was hiding, and that she did not want to give up her cross ­because she felt it was hers. She also described the difficulty of seeing her parents and not recognizing them, except for one detail on her ­father’s face, that allowed her to know that he was indeed hers too. Laura Bonaparte, a member of the Madres de Plaza de Mayo-­Línea Fundadora, was also ­there, a ­woman who had also attended the Monday actos of Memoria Activa. Laura carried a laminated page with photos of her c­ hildren and husband who had dis­appeared, something she wore on her chest almost

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like a part of her body. The story of the Niños member being re­united with her ­family led Laura to talk about what it meant to be re­u nited with ­family lost. Her grand­son had been taken out of Argentina by a ­family member, and she talked about the power of the experience of his hugging her when they w ­ ere re­u nited. He was only a few months old when he left Argentina, so Laura did not think he actually recognized her but that he must have confused her with his m ­ other. This led another ­woman, part of the Niños group but who seldom spoke in the meetings I had attended, to share how her own ­children had reacted to her experience. She had never mentioned what happened to her during the Holocaust. She only told them that she lived through the war ­there, but they did not know what she actually went through. She felt it was something so far removed from their own experience, it would be difficult for them to understand. It was hard for her, she said, to hear her ­d aughter say in passing that her mom is a survivor. She asked her ­d aughter to watch the film, but her ­d aughter could not do it, she could not get so close to her ­mother’s suffering. Her son did see the film but only said, “Era duro, eh?” It was difficult, right? Perhaps they just needed more time, or just w ­ ere not ready to talk to her. But that space between them, the inability to share or have them understand—­perhaps that is another kind of vacío. And yet that inability to talk, the kind of silence that this ­woman described, is not unusual for survivors (see Kidron 2009). Others spoke about the difficulty some had at first to talk about their experience ­because they did not ­really see themselves as victims or survivors. They ­were ­children, some of whom ­were hidden in non-­Jewish homes, and ­were not in the concentration camps necessarily (though some ­were). Finding a space to tell their stories, a space that was generated in the aftermath of the AMIA bombing, that allowed them to create ­these dialogues with other survivors of loss, like the Madres de Plaza de Mayo, other implicated listeners, represented a form of agency, an impor­tant gesture, an act of repair. Dialog ic Conne c ti on s We see such forms of dialogic connection and repair in the ability to have conversations that transcend periods of vio­lence and loss. Jack would have many such discussions with vari­ous interlocutors, including younger generations, and o ­ thers whom he would invite generously to his home to try to find a shared space of understanding. But for him, ­there was nothing like being able to speak to someone with whom he did not even have to necessarily say anything at all. This silence of an implicated listener, who already understood what he experienced, was incredibly power­ f ul. All he needed was their presence. In the documentary about Jack, El Árbol de la Muralla, Jack mentions the importance of this with Elsa Oesterheld, who lost her f­ amily in the dictatorship.



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Elsa had said to him, “Jack, you are the only person I can r­ eally talk to. You are the only person who can understand me.’ ”18 Both had experienced loss—­ for Elsa in Argentina with the dictatorship, and for Jack with Auschwitz. Jack continued: “We both had something parallel happen in our lives that was very tragic.” They filmed this interview in Jack’s apartment, with Elsa sitting down in Jack’s sunny book-­lined living room. When reflecting on the connections between them, she said, “Without realizing it, he and I ­were living the same story. And when we started talking, I had the feeling that I had known Jack all my life.” As she talked, Jack sat quietly, pensively. The documentary shows him holding the side of his face with one hand, his eyes moving with what seems to be a look of worry. In that moment, being the listener was just as impor­ tant, perhaps, for Jack. Elsa continued: “Instead of feeling like we had lived through a tragedy that was irreparable, I think we took it from a philosophical perspective.” In the film, Jack then mentioned something she had told him that he said “left a big impact” on him. She had said, “Jack, I’d like to know what the last hours ­were like for my ­d aughters.” Jack said, “I also wanted to know what t­he last hours were like for my ­family, before they ­were killed, in Auschwitz.” Part of grappling with the tragedy for Jack, then, was being able to know that someone e­ lse understood the questions that he had, the questions that he could never answer, the limits of what he could possibly know. C onclusion The other limit for Jack was the prospect of indifference, the feeling that ­after every­thing he and o ­ thers had suffered, no one would remember. He worried that the “Never again” was not pos­si­ble ­because p­ eople would forget or simply would not care. When the protest over the memory of Kristallnacht took place in 2013, Jack told me that he was less concerned about the protesters than he was about the ­f uture of Holocaust memory in general. “What value does lighting a candle have for survivors, who are now very old?” he asked.19 Can an act of memory ­really impart an understanding, an understanding necessary for the tolerance that would challenge the likes of ­these Society of St. Pius X protesters? Jack continued: “I ­don’t know what is more dangerous—­denying the existence of the Holocaust or not knowing anything about it at all.” In this chapter, we explored the ways in which vari­ous survivors and ­family members of victims strug­g led with the limits of witnessing and the very bound­a ries of time. In some cases, they could not possibly know what happened to their loved ones, only having the impressions of that past, in the way Marianne Hirsch has described postmemory. The power of that past,

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however, has compelled them to travel to Eu­rope, to visit Poland and Lithuania and other sites that have allowed them to be fully pre­sent in the spaces of their past. ­Others, like Eugenia, understood t­here was a boundary to what they could access, and they continued to find ways to bear witness, recording that which might other­w ise never have been seen or witnessed and being a part of the history by being t­ here. And yet as they turned to their memory, they also found possibilities for connection across periods of vio­lence, as survivors of the genocide of the dictatorship and the genocide of the Holocaust, as we saw with the Niños and the Madres, or with the conversation between Jack and Elsa Oesterheld. ­These articulations can also feel unsettling. As Ana noted, certain moments can make her feel like she is in a “tunnel of time,” collapsing the boundary between past and pre­sent. For o ­ thers, though, connections can offer solace. As the Madres and Niños faced the loss of their ­family, as they faced their suffering, they also found ways to bear witness to one another. Yet even as they engaged in t­hese acts of remembering, the liminality of their existence remained, amplified by the kind of indifference and even denial that persists in society. From that perspective, ­ t hese conversations between survivors, like Eugenia’s “dibujos urgentes,” may appear ephemeral, like gestures pushing against what seems inevitable. Yet, again, if we look at liminality for its power of insight and transformation, then, perhaps the very contingency of ­t hese moments created opportunities for agency for ­t hose who survived loss and t­ hose who w ­ ere t­ here as their interlocutors. Sofía also feared the limit of witnessing and the challenges of time. She understood her own mission in remembering her ­d aughter as resisting what she saw as the “definitive death” that awaited if she ­were to be forgotten. She could only bear to have her d­ aughter “die once,” she told me.20 And for her ­d aughter to remain alive in her memory, she needed o ­ thers to help her remember. She needed them to help her bear witness. She needed them to be part of her acts of repair.

 Conclusion T h e L i m i na l i t y of R e pa i r As much as Jack wrote and published and gave testimonies at vari­ous schools and in other settings, his eternal questions about humanity hinged on the same concerns voiced by Primo Levi: What happens when someone looks at you and cannot see you as fully h ­ uman? Jack spoke En­g lish with a 1950s New York accent, his language bearing the traces of his time living t­here in that era, and also of the Yiddish that was his first language. Though he returned to Poland several times, over the years I knew him, no ­m atter how many times I asked him to visit me in New York, he did not want to go. I would never find out if it had to do with having to face his history ­there—­those first post-­Holocaust years and t­ hose early memories. Sitting in his Buenos Aires living room, Jack told me, “When I came to the States, they took me to the doctor for a check-up. I still remember—on Park Ave­nue. ­There was a secretary. I ­d idn’t speak any En­g lish. So the secretary spoke to me. . . . ​Once she talked to me, she started to cry. And I d­ idn’t say anything.”1 He gestured to his chest. “I ­d idn’t say anything,” he continued. “I ­d idn’t say anything to anyone about my life. She just asked me where I came from, and I said, ‘I came from Germany.’ [She said], ‘You w ­ ere born in Poland.’ ‘Yes.’ And she started to cry.” As we sat together, Jack opened his palm and slowly shook his head. He understood that ­people saw him as perhaps more than himself—as perhaps more than ­human—­t hrough his survival. “­Because if somebody goes through what I’ve gone through, and to be normal, he must have the answer to every­t hing,” he laughed. “So ­people ask me, what do you think? ­Will ­t here be another war? W ­ ill t­ here be another Shoah? They ask many t­ hings that I’m supposed to have the answer for.” He smiled pensively, tracing the outline of his beard as he reflected on ­these questions that he felt reveal more about the persons asking—­their own worries about what they would do if they faced what Jack had faced.

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“­People ­don’t know what they are capable of surviving, how much pain and how much suffering a person can go through,” he continued. “It remains a mystery for a lot of p­ eople, and I can imagine why. Is it pos­si­ble to live again? To feel again?” ­A fter giving me a moment to pro­cess the questions, he answered himself: “Apparently, it is.” What does living mean, though, in the face of vio­lence and loss? This question has been at the heart of the strug­g les for repair chronicled in this book. Parents who have lost their ­children to terrorism and state vio­lence turned to po­liti­cal protests, commemorations, and their own testimonies—to memory—as a way to search for some kind of coherence and meaning in the face of vio­lence and loss. ­Children who lost their parents in the dictatorship turned to the streets to disrupt the possibility of injustice and the slow erosion of truth through impunity. Survivors of the Holocaust and other vio­lence strug­g led with silence, and the bound­a ries of witnessing and the ongoing vacío in their lives. ­Family members of victims of the bombing also turned to memory, through protests and testimony, without knowing w ­ hether it ­w ill ever achieve the justice or the memory so desired. And yet, they returned to ­these practices, as acts of repair, as gestures ­towards truth and justice. Indeed, ­these strug­g les can be found in many other communities and nations confronting genocide and crimes against humanity, who have turned to truth and what Susan Coutin calls “re-­membering” (2016) as a response to vio­lence. We have seen the power of such memory in Argentina, which despite the many challenges noted, functions dialogically in the testimonies presented in ­trials. We have seen the ways in which transitional justice mea­sures complicate linear notions of pro­g ress and time, and point to the ways in which citizens rebuild justice and truth from the ground. Through commemorations and public protests, we also see a reshaping of public space. This disruption situates subjects in times past in order to reinscribe t­ hese spaces with that history, attempting to resist the forgetting that may other­w ise unfold. And we also see the ways in which periods of vio­lence—­the dictatorship, the Holocaust, and the AMIA bombing—­can find points of articulation, along with fissures and disjunctures, as Argentines seek some form of personal or collective coherence and meaning. Yet even as they strive for repair, the limits they face— in their strug­g le to witness, in the silences they encounter, in the kinds of indifference and denial that may exist, in the inability to know the truth or find justice—­a lso shape the pervasive liminality that informs their experience. For many, the vacío remains, rendering any moments of repair ephemeral, the loss and the pain per­sis­tent. As we have seen, though, repair and recovery are not necessarily linear, despite the implicit logics of transitional justice frameworks. If we consider the pathways of recovery and survival as moving dynamically, and even dialogically, then the value of liminality emerges precisely for what it can offer to

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help grapple with the vacío. More than a stage of transition, liminality yields openings for new insights and transformation. Victor Turner writes that liminality is “a realm of pure possibility whence novel configurations of ideas and relations may arise” (1967, 47). Further, he suggests a certain potential to that space as such, apart from its role in the passage to something ­else, describing the liminal stage as involving an “undoing, dissolution, decomposition . . . ​ accompanied by powers of growth, transformation, and the reformulation of old ele­ments in new patterns” (49). Through liminality, Argentines can use ­t hese pro­cesses of memory to reimagine their communities, their nations, and themselves Acts of repair, then, may be inevitably liminal, but such liminality also allows for a transformation and agency I argue have become just as critical for personal and social recovery. Of course, Argentines may never arrive at the coherence they seek. They might remain in a state of perhaps perpetual transition, seeking a truth or justice that may never materialize. And yet, this does not mean that they are merely stuck in an in-­between stage. This book argues that t­ hese acts of repair may very well be profoundly liminal, but through that liminality, they also carve out spaces for citizens to engage with their world and one another in ways that help empower them as they face tremendous loss, trauma, and impunity. If liminality carries the possibility for insight and transformation, then, through their testimonies, their actos, their monuments, their protests, through their acts of repair, Argentines can develop a kind of agency just as vital for their survival. Even if they do not find the truth or justice they so desire, their practices—­their testimonies, their monuments, their actos—­have become about more than transitioning to something e­ lse. They have become ways to help them arrive at a bearable pre­sent, one in which they can hold on to the possibility for a better f­uture, and through that act of imagination, reclaim the agency that makes liminality such a power­f ul space of repair. 2 018 On my most recent trip to Argentina, I learned that the Ciudadanos de la Plaza no longer convened ­every week on Mondays. But the trial was ongoing, with Memoria Activa and A.P.E.M.I.A. acting as plaintiffs and actively observing the trial. The chance for a broader juridical accountability, however, was marred by the 2 × 1 ruling, one of the beneficiaries potentially being Jorge Luis Magnacco, the obstetrician at the ESMA torture center. As noted e­ arlier, Magnacco participated in the ­labors of pregnant ­women detained ­t here and formed part of the systematic appropriation of t­hose babies, who w ­ ere ­later given new names and who lived u ­ nder other identities. Magnacco had received vari­ous convictions for his role in the repression. The 2018 escrache convened to protest Magnacco generated a feeling of collective agency, a power­f ul desire to repair the injustice of this 2 × 1 ruling,

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of the idea that this perpetrator of crimes against humanity can simply live peacefully as if nothing had happened. What they w ­ ere resisting was not just impunity but also a certain kind of silence and forgetting—­t he erasure of the history of vio­lence. This vio­lence was also predicated on an imaginary of difference—of normalizing vio­lence against ­those ­imagined as “­others.” So this escrache, and the ongoing call for “Nunca más” was not just about the possibility for justice; the vari­ous memorials and protests related to the AMIA bombing w ­ ere not just about the memory of the victims. ­T hese acts of repair also intended to resist the very erasure of that experience, of that history, so vital to the possibility of building and maintaining a civil society. For this time, the “Never again” was not just about never disappearing ­people again, but also about not disappearing their history through the secondary vio­lence of impunity and the slow erosion of forgetting. And ­these moments of collective gathering, of demanding justice, of telling one’s story and listening to another’s, of attempting to understand and know, even if you reach the limits of experience—­a ll of ­t hese acts of repair also reaffirmed a new imaginary. Such an imaginary, I argue, values the voices and subjectivities of survivors—­and this imaginary might give them a chance to achieve a real possibility for “Nunca más.” I have returned to the plazas and streets of memory many times since my very first trip to Argentina in 2001. Over t­ hose years, I joined in listening and thus became part of the social practices in the Plaza of Memory, on Pasteur Street, in the Plaza de Mayo, in the Park of Memory, and the other memorial spaces that emerged in response to the 1994 AMIA bombing and the dictatorship. Even as the po­liti­cal and economic landscape shifted dramatically from 2001 to 2018, the year of my most recent fieldwork, the presence of the listeners and citizens who continued to gather in the plazas and streets underlined the significance of listening as a form of po­liti­cal agency and citizenship in response to vio­lence. Such listening became critical to the strug­g le for personal coherence experienced by ­those who lost their ­family members in the bombing, who lost their ­children and loved ones in the dictatorship, who lost their families in the Holocaust, and who survived. They needed empathetic listeners and fellow citizens to rebuild a sense of personal and collective coherence, a coherence which had been fractured by vio­lence. Through their acts—­their testimonies, their activism, their attempts at making sense of that which evades meaning—­they established a sense of mutual belonging and accountability from the ground, even if they never would be able to achieve the justice or the truth they so desired. As Victor Turner described it (1967), the experience of liminality can be unsettling—­ isolating, turning social worlds upside down—­but it also can yield the ability to reimagine the way t­hings are. I argue that the ongoing significance of memory in Argentina derives precisely from what it offers as a tool for such reimagining, becoming a pivotal space for agency, citizenship, and repair.

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Rive r s of Ink I was preparing to leave Argentina in 2003 a­ fter living t­here for many months. I would return, of course, but at that point I was not sure when that would be. I ­wasn’t sure what to expect for my final visit to the plaza before my flight. I had already spoken in the plaza in May, giving my testimony through tremendous nerves. I was surprised, then, to learn that Memoria Activa officially invited me to give my testimony a second time on December 22, the same day I would be flying home. I arrived that morning to the plaza as I had on many Mondays. A ­ fter the shofar was blown, I was invited to approach the microphone, and I began my testimony. I had prepared my remarks in Spanish, and ner­vously stood in front of the citizens who w ­ ere ­there with me, listening. I reflected on all of the Mondays I had been t­here and wondering aloud what more I could add that day to every­t hing that had already been said, which seemed overwhelming: Recently, as I spoke with someone about the amount of material written about the bombing, they used a phrase that ­really stood out—­they said ­t here ­were rivers of ink, rivers of ink for all of the words that ­were printed and written and thought and felt a­ fter the bombing. In this plaza, we also find rivers—­r ivers of words—­a ll of the words, spoken and shouted, all of the words that we bring ­every week and that can fill rivers and seas, t­ hese words that confront the senselessness of vio­lence, of the two vio­lences—­ that of the bombing and that of impunity. But I also wanted to address that morning the other t­ hings I had seen, the seemingly small ­things that, as Jack always remarked to me, are impor­t ant to notice. One of t­hose details that frequently struck me throughout my Mondays in the plaza was the amount of sunshine. I continued in my testimony: For some reason, most of the Mondays I had attended actos ­were days filled with sun, pure blue skies, that ­d idn’t seem quite real given the reason why we w ­ ere standing ­there. September 11, 2001, was also that kind of day—­a day of sunshine, still feeling like summer. That was a day when every­thing changed, but nature continued its course, as it always does, indifferent, dissonant with what ­human beings ­were suffering. Even as I stood t­here as someone who was a listener in the plaza for many months, I also felt it necessary to situate myself within the histories of vio­ lence they also experienced, that we shared. I then turned back to the power of the community that had developed in that space: But of course, not e­ very Monday in the plaza was sunny. T ­ here ­were also Mondays that ­were cold, Mondays with storms. And just a few weeks ago, we had a Monday filled with rain. It was raining and raining, and we

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huddled together ­because of that. I watched as every­one stood ­u nder umbrellas, trying to listen, u ­ nder the cold rain falling. I saw how someone stood, holding up a large umbrella over the heads of the speakers, so that they could continue reading their words on a day that transformed t­hose words into rivers of ink, ink that fell from their page as they ­were speaking them into the crowd, escaping our hands and our mouths—­a lmost as if to comment on the very impermanence in which we all stood. I finished my testimony, reflecting on the many p­ eople who had stood ­t here—­how I could not help but look down on that rainy Monday and see all of the feet standing ­t here, who Monday ­a fter Monday get on and off buses and subways, who mark their path to come h ­ ere, despite the challenges of distance, of time, of age. I remembered ­people who had stood in this place but ­were no longer ­there, such as Bernardo, who, I said, “like so many ­others, as long as he was able to, would always come to this plaza. And all of ­t hose feet, standing, even without words, also tell an impor­tant story, are also a form of testimony.” I then concluded, reflecting on our presence: “Perhaps all of us standing ­here are what ­w ill last, what w ­ ill remain, t­hese feet standing for all of t­hose who c­ an’t. And it is from this foundation, from this that it may be pos­si­ble to resist indifference and to continue demanding justice.” With t­ hese words, I finished my testimony and rejoined the crowd, returning to another Monday in the many hundreds of Mondays they had been ­there, adding my words to ­those rivers of ink. White But te r f l i e s Sofía Guterman was born in the town of Moisés Ville (Mosesville), one of the most famous Jewish agricultural colonies settled in the late nineteenth ­century during the first waves of Jewish migration. It was well-­k nown as a center of Yiddish culture—­w ith theater groups traveling from New York to perform t­ here. It also had a reputation as a vibrant Jewish community that was welcoming to ­others. Sofía’s parents ­were from Odessa, Ukraine, and I always felt a certain kinship ­toward her, as I was born in the former Soviet Union and have many friends and some f­ amily from Ukraine as well. It at first did not seem possible that given her prominence as an activist and m ­ other of a victim of the AMIA bombing, she would also be from this town, which was so iconic in the Jewish Argentine imaginary. She had not returned to Moisés Ville since she departed in 1963 to study in Buenos Aires, where she eventually settled. In talking about this return trip and her own history ­t here, she told me, “I won­der ­whether I should have ever left the town.” I i­magined she wondered what would have happened if she was never in Buenos Aires in the year that the bombing took place.

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We took a bus for many hours from Buenos Aires to this town, my first trip outside of Buenos Aires during my time in Argentina. Along with my friend and assistant Laura, who also knew Sofía and traveled with us, we spent the trip talking about this small town as we approached. ­A fter fi­n ally arriving, we ­were met by a car who drove us the rest of the way to the town from the bus stop. T ­ here w ­ ere no h ­ otels ­there, so we stayed in a guest­house run by a ­woman who helped host visitors but also knew Sofía as one of her own. Sofía had been invited to dedicate a memorial plaque to the victims of the bombing and to speak to schoolchildren and the community about the 1994 attack. ­A fter giving her talks, Sofía gave Laura and me a joyful tour of Moisés Ville. All of the roads seemed dusty and unnaturally still. As in many small towns in Argentina, late after­noon is a time of siesta, a time of rest. The sun was blinding, and the streets ­were empty as the three of us walked. It seemed that we may have been the only ones walking in the late-­d ay sun, clearly not the usual residents. We started in the central plaza of the town, sitting quietly by a monument, surrounded by a silence that was not quiet at all. Birds and other small animals filled the air with their noises. The wind blew, uninterrupted by ­people or cars. I pointed out a man in a horse-­d rawn carriage, like a vision from another time. Sofía laughed. Yes, this was normal h ­ ere. In fact, for the entire nearly seven-­hour bus r­ ide from Buenos Aires to the province of Santa Fe, where Moisés Ville is located, Sofía regaled us with stories of her childhood in this small town, where Yiddish was spoken on the streets and where, she said, even the Catholics learned Yiddish ­because they needed to. She spoke fondly about dressing up on the weekends to walk around the plaza, to stroll with her friends, and about the dances in the nearby town of Rafaela and all of the joy and frivolity and the very lightness of being young and carefree. As we walked around her town, she wore sunglasses, and yet her face still lit up with the past as we made our way through the streets. Her memories ­were palpable, and she used her entire body to help make ­those visions feel more real. As she spoke, she stretched out her hands and arms to sketch out the outlines of that past—as if she w ­ ere reaching her fin­gers back in time to help make it real, to perhaps draw it into the pre­sent a bit, even if it would not last. “­There is the bench where the dentist used to sit with his wife,” she told me. “This is where we would gather e­ very eve­n ing in small groups ­a fter a day of walking around this plaza forty, fifty times, and then we would go to someone’s ­house and dance.” She described it as a peaceful time, a happy youth. She understood that the town from the outside may not pre­sent or display all of this history. But, she said, touching her heart, “the town is what I carry ­here—­not what is on the outside.”

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As we walked, she saw someone she knew shouting out hello from across the street. Without looking to see if a car was coming, she crossed, and I followed, walking to the other side of this empty road. She introduced me, saying, “This is a ­woman who used to teach with me,” and then they caught up, sharing stories. Despite t­hese joyful encounters I witnessed, she told me she was ner­vous before returning to this town—­conflicted. She said, “I was returning to face my roots—my past and my ghosts, b­ ecause no one is left ­here. And I was also returning to speak of such a difficult topic, the AMIA bombing.” Yet she told me she was happy that she came. This was clear as we walked and she pointed out the theater, the library, the market. But she was also telling me all about the p­ eople—­the ­people who ­were no longer ­there—­the ghosts, the fantasmas. We continued walking through the town together. The streets w ­ ere filled with sunshine and a profound silence. This felt so far from Buenos Aires, almost as if we had entered another time, outside of time itself. As we walked, the sound of a single motorbike, a single car, would disrupt the other­w ise peaceful flow of air, of birds, of the sound of late after­noon in a small town. ­A fter showing me the main buildings, Sofía took me to the ­house where she grew up, explaining how she would walk through the small alley near the building, sharing ­these everyday details of her youth, moments from the past she still remembered so vividly. She then ­stopped on the sidewalk and remarked, pensively, that she had just noticed something: “Standing h ­ ere in front of this h ­ ouse, right in front of us, I just saw a white butterfly flying by.” I looked around slowly at the blue sky. Nothing was moving. I did not fully understand the significance of this at first, but Sofía explained, “From what I know, white butterflies represent ­children who have died.” I stood by her side, listening. She continued: “I was ­here walking with you, and I was looking at the butterflies. This one came in flying, fluttering along with us for the w ­ hole block, right in front of us.” Her voice ­gently ­rose, as she said this. Sofía paused. Standing next to her, I remained as still as I could, placing my hand on her shoulder. Not wanting to interrupt, but just to stand with her, listening. Softly she said, “Maybe it i­sn’t anything more than a butterfly. But you have to won­der. You think to yourself. . . .” She did not finish her sentence. She just put her hand over her heart, and she kept on walking, slowly moving ahead into the path before her.

Ac k nowl­e dgm e nt s

This book has benefited from the support of a range of individuals and institutions who have helped facilitate vari­ous stages of its evolution, from the initial research to the ongoing conversations that have been essential to the development of the ideas represented h ­ ere. It is the result of many of t­hese conversations—­w ith ethnographic and academic interlocutors—­a ll beginning with my fieldwork in Argentina. My research was supported by generous funding from the Fulbright IIE program, the Prince­ton University Gradu­ate School, the Prince­ton University Program in Latin American Studies, the Prince­ton University Council on Regional Studies, the Prince­ton University Program in Judaic Studies, and New York University. I also thank the Association for Jewish Studies for its Subvention Grant for First Books, which I used for the final stages of the manuscript pro­cess. Much of the thinking that has informed the central conceptualizations in the book evolved during my time as a visiting scholar at the Center for the Study of Genocide and ­Human Rights (CGHR) at Rutgers University, where I benefited from the tremendous support of every­one in the program. I would like to thank the directors of the program, Alexander Hinton, Nela Navarro, and Stephen Bronner, for offering such a welcoming home for me. I would especially like to thank Nela Navarro for her overwhelming support in our work at the Truth in the Amer­i­cas program, which has been so impor­tant to my evolving thinking about memory in Argentina. Our many rich discussions and events have been central to the development of my ideas. I would also like to thank other colleagues with whom I have worked closely during my time at the CGHR, including Humberto Schettino, Federico Gaitán Hairabedian, Laurie Cohen, and the collaborations with Emmanuel Kahan of the Nucleo de Estudios Judíos ( Jewish Studies group) at the Instituto de Desarollo Ecónomico y Social (IDES) in Argentina, especially the Diaspora and Genocide proj­ect (2017–2018). I am grateful to Alexander Hinton for being such a supportive interlocutor and mentor in my thinking about genocide and transitional justice, and especially the Rethinking Peace Studies symposia and the many colleagues ­there. His insights into genocide and transitional justice have inspired much 189

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of my thinking in this volume. A large part of the writing of this book took place in relation to the conversations held during the Rethinking Peace Studies Memory seminar in New York (2015) and conference in Tokyo (2016); I especially would like to thank Stephen Bronner, Danielle Goldberg, Carolyn Forché, Paul Hastings, Alexander Hinton, Nela Navarro, Makiko Oku, Leigh Payne, Giorgio Shani, Nitin Sawhney, Marita Sturken, Wilhelm Vosse, and Yael Zerubavel. Thank you also to Paul Hastings and the Japan ICU Foundation for their support of the Rethinking Peace series. Another impor­tant stage in the development of this research took place during my postdoctoral fellowship as an Aresty Visiting Scholar at the Joan and Allen Bildner Center for the Study of Jewish Life at Rutgers University. In par­t ic­u ­lar, I would like to thank Yael Zerubavel for her vision and leadership of the Contested Memories Seminar (2013–2014), which proved invaluable to my examination of memory as a cultural pro­cess. My research and writing benefited greatly from my time ­there, and I would like to thank the other participants as well, whose engaged discussions helped push my thinking in impor­tant ways; they include Ethel Brooks, Hillel Cohen, Belinda Davis, Ziva Galili, Judith Gerson, Paul Hanebrink, Galit Hasan-­Rokem, Jan Kubik, Edna Lomsky-­Feder, Freddie Rokem, Orna Sasson, Paul Schalow, Carol Zemel, and Eviatar Zerubavel. I also thank Karen Small and Arlene Goldstein of the Bildner Center. This work originated during my doctoral studies at Prince­ton University, and I would like to thank Carol Green­house, the chair of my committee, for her inspiration to critically engage questions of agency and democracy, as well as her sense of the significance of the anthropological imagination. I would also like to thank my other committee members: John Borneman, whose work on belonging in the aftermath of vio­lence greatly inspired many of my original questions, and James Boon, whose insights into Bakhtin and dialogism continue to inform my work. I am also grateful to the outside reader for my dissertation, Leo Spitzer, who first inspired my studies of memory as an undergraduate in his freshman seminar at Dartmouth College. During my time at Prince­ton, I developed many of the ideas about culture, memory, and vio­lence I explore h ­ ere through discussions with ­others, including with my cohort, Michael Oldani and Eugene Raikhel, as well as Leo Coleman, Richard  J. Martin, Nathalie Peutz, Chris Garces, Ian Whitmarsh, Elizabeth Hough, Peter Locke, Maria McMath, Arion Melidonis, Rachel Newcomb, Jamie Sherman, Riaz Tejani, and Susanna Trnka. I am also grateful for conversations with João Biehl, Jeff Himpele, and Carolyn Rouse in the early stages of this research. I would also like to thank other scholars who have been my interlocutors over the years in the world of anthropology, memory studies, Latin American studies, and Latin American Jewish studies, specifically Edna Aizenberg, Ruth Behar, Adriana Brodsky, Matti Bunzl, Marcy Brink-­Danan, Jennie Burnet,



Acknowl­edgments

191

Malena Chinski, Evelyn Dean-­Olmsted, Alejandro Dujovne, Karen Faulk, Fernando Fischman, Parvis Ghassem-­ Fachandi, Daniel Goldstein, Katrin Hansing, Emmanuel Kahan, Misha Klein, Erica Lehrer, Annette Levine, Noelle Molé Liston, Ellen Moodie, Javier Pelacoff, Raanan Rein, Christophe Robert, Christopher Sabatini, Debarati Sen, Susana Skura, Jennifer Thompson, Karine Vanthuyne, and Lillian Wohl. Some of the key concepts I engage (such as disruption and liminality) benefited from early conversations with my colleagues, especially Leo Coleman and Noelle Molé Liston. Annette Levine in par­tic­u ­lar has been a wonderful collaborator and friend, with whom I edited my first major book proj­ect, Landscapes of Memory and Impunity (Brill, 2015). I would also like to thank Marcy Brink-­Danan, Matti Bunzl, and Daniel Goldstein for feedback on early versions of the development of this proj­ect into a manuscript. This book also benefited from dialogues that developed during my visits to other institutions, and I would like to thank my colleagues who welcomed me to their universities to discuss the themes that would eventually shape how I would write about ­these questions, including Adriana Brodsky, Federico Finchelstein, Sergei Kan, Rebecca Kobrin, Annette Levine, and Jennifer Thompson. Additionally, my sense of the intersections of memory and trauma ­were developed during my time working with the organ­ization Sound Potential, in par­tic­u­lar, the violinist and composer Ittai Shapira. Every­t hing ­here, though, begins and ends with the p­ eople who so generously allowed me into their lives in Argentina. I am therefore tremendously grateful to the following p­ eople who opened their homes and their lives to me during my time in Buenos Aires, and who served as constant inspirations, personally and ethnographically. Jack Fuchs has been an incomparable friend, who shared his coffee and food with me from our very first meeting and always made me feel at home—­t hrough his encouragement, his love for intellectual debate, his curiosity, and his humor. Jack unfortunately passed away in 2018, and he w ­ ill be greatly missed. Sofía and Alberto Guterman have been incredibly warm and open from the beginning. I have spent so many hours with Sofía, who has always inspired me with her extraordinary and profound grace in the face of so much tragedy. Diana Wang, from our first coffee, has been an intellectual inspiration; her ability to bring ­people together and to inspire them to deeply explore their histories has been a privilege to watch up close. ­Others who have generously spent so much of their time with me, to help me better understand the questions at the heart of my research, include Eugenia Bekeris, José and Sara Blumenfeld, Isidoro Bronstein, Moisés Dulfano, Marianne Fuchs, Laura Ginsberg, Bernardo and Fanny Gruman, Pablo Gitter, Benjamín Guz, Federico Gaitán Hairabedian, Mirta Kupferminc, Dina Lew, Lea Novera, Elena Pavlotzky, Adriana Reisfeld, Elsa Rozín, Mina Fridman Ruetter, Rebeca “Tita” Sakolsky, Marcos Scherlis, Adriana Schettini, Mira Stupnik, Carlos Susevich, Samuel Sylberberg, Eugenia Szejer, Reizl Sztarker,

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Ester Szwarc, and Sergio Widder. (I am saddened that José and Sara Blumenfeld, Bernardo and Fanny Gruman, Dina Lew, Elsa Rozín, Mina Fridman Ruetter, Rebeca “Tita” Sakolsky, Mira Stupnik, Carlos Susevich, Samuel Sylberberg, and Reizl Sztarker are no longer with us.) In addition to the protests I participated in with the Madres and the H.I.J.O.S., I would also like to thank the following groups for allowing me to participate in and observe their activities: Memoria Activa, Familiares y Amigos de las Víctimas, A.P.E.M.I.A., Coro Guebirtig, the Niños de la Shoá (now Generaciones de la Shoá), and the Ciudadanos de la Plaza. I would also like to thank the following p­ eople for sharing their experiences with me: Mario Ber, Rabbi Sergio Bergman, Nora Blaustein, Rosana Blejter, Solomon and Teresa Bojarski, Marcelo Brodsky, Enrique Burbinski, Jorge Burkman, Ana Cahn, Silvina Chemen, Abraham Cukierman, Fanny Cukierman, Luis Czyzewski, Gustavo Dejtiar, Pablo Dreizik, Raquel Efter, Aída Ender, Clara Feinsod, Jutta Fleischer, Karina Flomenbaum, Diego Fridman, Celina Fuks, Vera Gerchunoff, Judit Blumenthal Gerson, Belja Rubin de Goldman, Rabbi Daniel Goldman, Clara and Enrique Goldschmidt, Susana Grushka, Claudia Guebel, Hélène Gutkowski, Erick Haimovich, Nehama Hansman, Abraham Huberman, Hanka Jakubowicz, Vera Jarach, Ariel Jenik, Graciela Jinich, Elio Kapzuk, Kati and Tomi Kertesz, Sergio Kiernan, Cynthia Kobrinsky, Bernardo Kononovich, Jacobo Kovadloff, Malke Langleib, Sofía Lasky, Miriam Lewin, Rabbi Tzvi Lipin­ski, Mirta Lipsyz, Eugenia and Moisés Lisak, Carlos Mañón, Magalí Milmaniene, Elisabeth  M., Gerardo Mazur, Beatriz Moszkowitz, Regina Muz, Natalio Noyjovich, Charles Papiernik and ­family, Enrique Pechtner, Rabbi Baruj Plavnick, Diana Raznovich, Gerardo Rodriguez-­Bruzzesi, Jana Roitemberg, Eva Rosenthal, Rosi Rotenberg, Luisa Rubino, Alicia Segal, Mario Shapochnik, Herman Schiller, Darío Schvarzstein, Felisa Sendler, Silvina Smetiansky, Eleonora Smolensky, Natalio Steiner, Eva Stupnik, Silvina Szmuk, Shirle Tarlovsky, Diego Taube, Herty Taubenfeld, Anita and Libertad Thaler, Jaique and Leo Till, Gloria Trajter, Naúm Vainer, Tamara Weiss, Rabbi Felipe Yaffe, Noelly Zalgham, Cecilia and Jacobo Zilbersztain, Luciano Zito, and Judith Zylberberg-­Suraski. During my research in Argentina, in addition to my fieldwork, I was also grateful to have intellectual community. I would like to thank Elizabeth Jelin for warmly welcoming me into the Núcleo de Estudios sobre Memoria (Memory Studies Group) at the IDES (Instituto del Desarollo Económico y Social), which provided me with an office space in Buenos Aires and wonderful inspiration from the colloquia and community of scholars working on memory in the Southern Cone. I am also grateful for institutional support in the early stages of my work from Ester Szwarc and the IWO of Buenos Aires, where I studied Yiddish. The Fulbright Office—­e specially Laura Moraña—­ were also very supportive during my grant period. In more recent years, I am



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grateful for the ongoing collaborations with colleagues in Buenos Aires, including Federico Gaitán Hairabedian, Emmanuel Kahan, and Susana Skura. Several institutions welcomed me and gave me access to their archives: AMIA’s Centro de Documentación e Información sobre Judaismo Argentino Marc Turkow; DAIA’s Centro de Estudio Sociales; and Memoria Abierta. I would like to thank Anita Weinstein in par­t ic­u ­lar at the Marc Turkow Center for her ongoing engagement and support of my research, as well as Debora Figowy, who also worked at the Marc Turkow Center during the years of my research, and Gabriel Feldman who assisted with permissions. I would also like to thank Marisa Braylan and Adrián Jmelnizky (DAIA), as well as Ester Szwarc (IWO) who helped ground my initial questions in relation to the academic study of Jewish life and history in Argentina. I also thank Jeremy Adelman, Rabbi Marcelo Bronstein, Federico Finchelstein, Silvia Hirsch, Peter Johnston, Andrew Lakoff, Kenneth Marty, Karen Radkowsky, ­Will Recant, Adam Weiss, and Marc Zelanko for conversations that helped shape my early understanding of Jewish Buenos Aires. During my fieldwork, I was grateful for the friendship of the Dickinson ­family, Deborah Figowy, Nicholas Fitch, Daniel Grech, Javier Indij, Cecily Marcus, Carolina Petriella, Rebekah Pite, Laura Ponte, Alejandra Riera, Ivonne Wallace-­Fuentes, and Luciano Zito. I would also like to thank Laura Ponte in par­t ic­u ­lar for being such a steadfast supporter of my research, and for transcribing interviews and ­doing the camera work for the documentary filming of the proj­ect. I also thank Alejandra Riera for transcribing interviews. I thank Juan Pablo Chillón and Oliver Schietinger for the photography and filming of ­later phases of this proj­ect. I thank TCS, Inc. for the use of cameras for filming. I would also like to thank every­one at Rutgers University Press for their support throughout this pro­cess. Nela Navarro, one of the editors for the Genocide, Po­l iti­cal Vio­lence, ­Human Rights series, was tremendously impor­ tant in encouraging me and inspiring the manuscript to evolve, especially at critical junctures. I am also so very grateful to my editor at Rutgers University Press, Lisa Banning, for her support of the proj­ect, and the anonymous readers who helped me refine my thinking. I also would like to thank every­ one e­ lse at Rutgers University Press who has helped support the production of the book, including Alissa Zarro and Brice Hammack, as well as Don Burgard and Sherry Gerstein, both from Westchester Publishing, for their support in the final stages. Fi­n ally, my profound thanks also go to my s­ ister, Inessa Shkolnikov, for designing the cover. On a personal note, this book would not have been pos­si­ble without the help and support of my f­amily and friends, including Lane Anderson, Nelli Black, Suzanne Blezard, Sabrina Brooks, Rachel Dickstein, Cori Ehrenberg, Diana Gliedman, Sarah Green, Gisela Insuaste, Rebecca Kostyuchenko, Ali

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Muney, Dina Rabiner, Rozanne Rosenberg, and Julia Samersova; in addition to being wonderful supporters, several friends also gave feedback on ele­ments of the manuscript, including Chris Bamford, Kim Bernhardt, Carol Lee, Nela Navarro, Tanya Pollard, and Maya Seyfer. I also thank Bruce Zaretsky for his encouragement. As I developed this book, I am also grateful for the support and inspiration from my colleagues and fellow writers at New York University. In the last stages, I was also fortunate to have Elise Keppler and Oliver Schietinger offer their reading of final drafts. My partner and husband, Oliver Schietinger, has shared this proj­ect with me from its inception—­from the very first time I began thinking about traveling to Argentina for an exploratory research trip to the final version of this book. My thanks ­here can never be enough to fully reflect the contribution he has made or my gratitude. I would also like to thank my parents, Sophia and Michael Shkolnikov, for their unconditionally generous support of my academic endeavors from the very start. The following f­ amily members have also been tremendously supportive throughout my pro­cess of research and writing: the Gelbinovich/Rosenberg ­family, the Kheyfets/Black f­amily, Carl and Heidrun Schietinger, Erik and Olivia Schietinger, Inessa Shkolnikov, Maya Shkolnikov, and the Shvartsman ­family. Much of this was inspired by my grand­mother, Berta Klimkovich, and I hope it ­w ill inspire my dear Benjamin and Elias and ­f uture generations.

Note s

I ntroduction 1. For more on the Nisman case, see Sheinin 2016. 2. The concept of repair has also animated other forms of activism in the Jewish world. The idea of tikkun olam, often translated as the responsibility to repair or heal the world in some way, has influenced Jewish social justice and community work (see Cooper 2013; Leslie 2016). Although that was not a concept invoked explic­ itly by my subjects during my fieldwork, it clearly resonates with their practices. 3. Portions of this section (The “Dirty War”) and ­later sections analyzing genocide and Raphael Lemkin are adapted from Zaretsky (2017b), appearing ­here with permission of University of Toronto Press. 4. For the military junta in power—­comprised of leaders of the navy, the army, and the air force—­preserving their vision of national order required annihilating anyone they deemed subversive, who they felt could be a threat. This included left-­ wing guerrilla groups, such as the ERP (­People’s Revolutionary Army) and the Montoneros, who had indeed committed acts of vio­lence as part of their po­liti­cal strug­g le (though it would not be accurate to suggest any comparison to the power of the state). The junta also targeted anyone considered potentially subversive—­a large cross-­section of society that included students, psychologists, priests working with the poor, and ­others. 5. According to Nunca Más, the detention centers “worked within the military orga­ nizational structure devised for the anti-­subversive strug­g le,” with centers linked to dif­fer­ent branches of the military. T ­ here ­were also joint actions in “task forces” comprised of personnel from dif­fer­ent branches of the Armed Forces and Security Forces (CONADEP 2003[1984], 245). In addition, it is impor­t ant to note that the repression that took place in Argentina was not just carried out by Argentine forces. Other Latin American nations—­t hrough the Operation Condor—­were involved (CONADEP 2003[1984], 255). For an analy­sis of the significance of prosecuting t­hese crimes for justice and truth in Argentina, see Hairabedian (2018). 6. One of the most impor­t ant h ­ uman rights groups formed at that time, the Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo, has focused its advocacy on locating t­ hese grand­mothers’ biological grandchildren abducted during that time. 7. For a more detailed analy­sis of the significance of language during the repression, see Feitlowitz (1998). 8. Over time, the group split ­because of differences in po­liti­cal strategy and leadership: the Madres de Plaza de Mayo and the Madres de Plaza de Mayo–­Linea Fundadora. In this book, when invoking the Madres, I refer to their presence in the Plaza de Mayo as a social movement. See Bosco 2004 for additional analy­sis of their division. 9. It was also noted in the Nunca Más report as related to disappearance: “At the heart of this policy of total disappearance lay the prevention by e­ very pos­si­ble means of

195

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Notes to Pages 7–9

solidarity being shown by the population in general, with all the protests and demands this would lead to within the country, and the knowledge abroad that b­ ehind the façade of a fight against a terrorist minority lurked genocide” (CONADEP 2003[1984], 234). More recently, Daniel Feierstein argues that what tran­spired in Argentina should be considered genocide, understood as “the deliberate annihilation of h ­ uman groups as a distinctive form of social engineering” (Feierstein 2014, 6), with the group in question being t­ hose considered subversive. 10. See, for instance, Hinton, LaPointe, and Irwin-­Erickson (2013) for critical genocide studies and D. Feierstein (2014) for an analy­sis of genocide in Argentina in par­t ic­u ­lar. 11. In some ways, the idea of “dirty war” has been found to legitimize the actions of the states in ways that other terms (such as “repression” or “genocide”) do not, in that it is seen as somehow suggesting that the military’s actions ­were a necessary response to the leftist threat. This also relates to the idea of the “theory of the two demons,” used to explain the vio­lence of the right as a logical response to the vio­lence of the left. As noted by historian Stephen Rabe (2016), this “ignores historical chronology and trivializes the methodical abuse of ­human rights and the campaign of state terror perpetrated by anti-­Communists in Latin Amer­i­ca” (Rabe 2016, xxxviii). 12. For a historical overview of the desired immigrants to Argentina, see Halperín Donghi (1976). On the question of internal community dynamics, the experience of Sephardic Jews in Argentina offers another impor­t ant insight into the complexities of belonging (see Brodsky 2016). ­T hese tensions over immigration and belonging are also evident in other national contexts in Latin Amer­i­ca, such as Brazil (Lesser 1999). Misha Klein’s nuanced ethnographic analy­sis further reveals how Jewish Brazilians navigate t­hese issues of belonging (2012). A version of this historical background appears in Zaretsky (2013a), reprinted with permission of Brill. 13. See Baily (1982); R. Feierstein (1999 [1993]). For more on Jewish agricultural colonies, see Senkman (1984). 14. See Mirelman (1990, 165–174). 15. See Rock (1975); Solberg (1970). 16. See Sofer (1982, 33–64). 17. For further information about the Semana Trágica, as well as the relationship between nationalism in Argentina and antisemitism, see Deutsch (1986). For an analy­sis of the Semana Trágica, see Rock (1975, 157–179); Avni (1991, 100–101); Mirelman (1990, 61–66); Sofer (1982, 42–48). 18. See Avni (1991). 19. For an analy­sis of the po­liti­cal history of fascism in Argentina, see Finchelstein (2010); Finchelstein (2017). 2 0. See Goñi (2002) for Perón’s relationship to the Nazis. Perón enabled several war criminals to find refuge in Argentina, including Adolf Eichmann, Josef Mengele, and Erich Priebke. See also Gurevich (1998); Warzawski (1998). 21. For more studies of the impact of the Holocaust on Argentina, see Malena Chinski’s historical analy­sis of the role of Yiddish culture ­a fter the Shoah in Argentina (Chinski 2018). 2 2. It is also impor­tant to note the additional context of antisemitism that existed in the late 1950s and early 1960s, including anti-­Jewish graffiti, threats, and vio­lence directed against institutions, as detailed by Senkman (1989). 2 3. See Elkin (2014, 230); Rein (2005a). 24. For further analy­sis of antisemitism in Argentina, see Senkman (1989); Sheinin (2005). The DAIA Centro de Estudios Sociales (Social Research Center) also has published annual reports documenting cases of antisemitism reported to them throughout the year. See Braylan et al. (2000a); Braylan and Jmelnizky (2002; 2004; 2005). See also Germani (1969) for one of the first so­cio­log­i­cal analyses of antisemitism in Argentina. 25. For an analy­sis of the connection between authoritarianism and antisemitism, see Senkman (1995).



Notes to Pages 9–17

197

26. For further statistical distributions of ­t hose who w ­ ere dis­appeared, see CONADEP (2003 [1984]). 27. See Timerman (1981), Strejilevich (2002), and Partnoy (1998 [1986]) for testimonial accounts. For further analyses of the experience of Jews during the Dirty War, see Kaufman and Cymberknopf (1989); Elkin (2014, 233–238); CONADEP (2003 [1984]), 69–75; Braylan et al. (2000b); Simonovich (1989), 312–317; Sheinin (2005). See also Tarnopolsky (1999). 2 8. Another pos­si­ble translation of AMIA is “Argentine Israelite Mutual Aid Society.” The word israelita as one of the ways to name and classify Jews in Argentina reflects the ambivalent position they hold in Argentina. Some of my in­for­m ants indicated that israelita is a more refined way of saying “Jewish,” as opposed to judío. It does, however, indicate an association of Jews with Israel, when the AMIA as a mutual aid society was not created with a link to Israel in mind. The difficulty of placing Jews within classificatory schemes can also be found in the way non-­Jewish Argentines called Jewish immigrants when they first arrived—­r usos for ­those who originally arrived from Eastern Eu­rope, and turcos for ­those who arrived from the Ottoman Empire. The question of being identified with nations and empires as opposed to a religion further complicated the way Argentine society viewed Jews. (See Avni 1991 for a further exploration of the Jewish immigrant experience in Argentina.) 29. Jewish communities outside of Argentina also installed security mea­sures as a result of this attack. 3 0. During the years of my fieldwork, I also filmed interviews and protests for a separate documentary film project. 31. See, for instance, Laub (1992a; 1992b; 1995); LaCapra (2003); Freud (1960); Scarry (1985); Brison (2002); Herman (1992); Suárez-­O rozco (1990); Fassin and Rechtman (2009); Felman (2002); Bal, Crewe, and Spitzer (1999). 32. See, for instance, Bal (1999); Caruth (1995; 1996); Friedlander (1992). 33. ­There have been many impor­tant ethnographic approaches to understanding vio­ lence, including Feldman (1991); Warren (1993); Aretxaga (1997); Daniel (1996); Taussig (1987); Nelson (1999); Das et al. (2001); Goldstein (2004); Robben (2005a; 2005b; 2010); Tate (2007); Trnka (2008); Hinton and O’Neill (2009); Moodie (2010); Kidron (2011); Burnet (2012); Ghassem-­Fachandi (2012); Theidon (2013); Sanford (2003); Coutin (2016). 34. See, for instance, Sturken (1997; 2007; 2019); Jelin (2003; 2017); Connerton (1989); Young (2000; 2016); Spitzer (1998); Hirsch (2012); Shandler (2017); Rothberg (2009; 2019). 35. I use full given names for public figures, such as Sofía Guterman and other subjects (including Jack Fuchs, Diana Wang, Carlos Susevich, and Laura Ginsberg), who have publicly offered interviews and speeches, as well as published their own accounts and books; they have also given me permission to use their names. For interview subjects who are not public figures, I use full names if they requested it and have given me permission to do so. In all other cases, I have changed the names and other identifying details, and indicate as such. 36. Acto is a term that conveys the agency involved in protests and will be used in the Spanish.

Chap te r  1   El Vacío 1. For more on the impact of the economic crisis on social movements, see Epstein (2003); also see Faulk (2012) about these themes in relation to neoliberalism. On the crash in Argentina, see Hershberg (2002). 2. Sofía Guterman, interview by author, Buenos Aires, 2002. All original interviews with Sofía and other interview subjects by the author that appear in this book w ­ ere conducted in Spanish and translated by the author into En­g lish, ­unless other­w ise noted.

198

Notes to Pages 18–21

3. See Daniel (1996); Das and Kleinman (2000); Nordstrom and Martin (1992); Robben and Nordstrom (1995). 4. This question has also been pursued at length about the Holocaust, including the appropriateness of repre­ sen­ t a­ t ion and the impossibility of witnessing (see Van Alphen 1997; Friedlander 1992; Laub 1992b; Felman 2002; Langer 1991). 5. The shared nature of this strug­g le to articulate vio­lence is explored in Das and Kleinman (2000, 12–13). 6. Susan Coutin’s work on “re-­membering” in the case of Salvadoran youth is an impor­tant recent example (2016). The questions of how to grapple with vio­lence also shape many other ethnographies, including Burnet (2012), Moodie (2010), Nelson (1999), Park (2014), Sanford (2003), Tate (2007), Theidon (2013), and Vanthuyne (2008), along with other examples, such as Nordstrom and Martin (1992) and Daniel (1996). 7. The material in the section on trauma and the experience of Sofía Guterman build on and adapt work published in Zaretsky (2015b), portions appearing ­here with permission of Brill. 8. For issues relating to articulation and war remembrance, see Ashplant et al. (2000) and Winter and Sivan (1999); regarding vio­lence, see Das et al. (2001). 9. Robben finds that the dif­fer­ent ways in which groups engage with traumatic pasts lead to what he calls a “polyphonic social memory that changed and expanded over time” (Robben 2005a, 122). For a psychoanalytical lens for thinking through historical traumas and testimonies, see LaCapra (2001); also, on approaching limit events, see LaCapra (2003). 10. See Brison (1999); Laub (1992a; 1992b; 1995). 11. See Winter and Sivan (1999); Jelin and Kaufman (2000); Olick (2003). 12. See Antze and Lambek (1996); for more on the role of listening in the generation of Holocaust testimonies in par­t ic­u ­lar, see Laub (1992a). 13. See Laub (1992a). 14. See Minow (1998); Ross (2001); Borneman (2002). 15. Carol Kidron’s ethnographic work (2011) with the c­ hildren of Holocaust survivors offers an in­ter­e st­ing contribution to the par­tic­u ­lar role of embodied memory and relationships with ­others that generate a “consubjective being,” as noted by Eva Van Roeckel (2018). The notion of finding comfort in trauma is also pursued in Van Roeckel (2020) in her research in Argentina. 16. In addition to the significance of narration to the individual survival of trauma and vio­lence, as noted above, victims’ testimonies have also become central to how socie­ties can move forward from vio­lence, especially critical in situations when justice may not be accessible (see Minow 1998; Hayner 2001). 17. It is impor­tant to note that Rigoberta Menchú’s testimonial account (Burgos-­ Debray 1984) drew significant attention to the po­liti­cal vio­lence in Guatemala. However, it ­later came ­u nder scrutiny by the anthropologist David Stoll (1999), who denied some of Menchú’s claims to firsthand witnessing. Stoll’s account also became the subject of further critiques (see Arias 2001). 18. Emilio Crenzel notes that as of 2008, the Nunca Más report was translated into multiple languages and “had sold 503,830 copies . . . ​a s well as being incorporated into school curricula to give new generations an enhanced understanding of this period” (2011, 1063). 19. I have also explored the importance of the “implicated listener” in relation to child survivors of the Holocaust (Zaretsky 2013a), and the notion of being mutually implicated also resonates with Michael Rothberg’s concept of the “implicated subject” (Rothberg 2019).I thank Annette Levine for pointing out the significance of other practices of listening in Argentina, including strikes and escraches connected to the impunity following state terrorism, as staged by the c­hildren of the dis­ appeared (H.I.J.O.S.); see also the work of Diana Taylor related to escraches (2006).



Notes to Pages 22–44

199

2 0. See Avni (1991) for more on the role of the Jewish Colonization Association in the history of Jewish immigration. For an analy­sis of the memory of that colonization in the town of Moisés Ville, see Cherjovsky (2017). 21. All material from Sofía related to her history in Moisés Ville derives from interviews conducted by the author in 2002, 2003, and 2004 in Buenos Aires and Moisés Ville. 2 2. See Guterman (1995, 77–78), translation by author. This excerpt appears h ­ ere with Sofía Guterman’s permission. For a more in-­depth analy­sis of Sofía Guterman’s writing, specifically as it relates to recovery from trauma, see A. Levine (2005). See also Sadow (2015). 2 3. Sofía Guterman, interview by author, Buenos Aires, 2018. 24. Name changed, interview by author, Buenos Aires, 2003. 25. Carlos Susevich, interview by author, Buenos Aires, 2003. 26. In her work on the aftermath of September 11, Marita Sturken also explores the complex articulations of presence and absence in relation to the memorial that was developed (2004). 27. Unlike the AMIA bombing, for which no group has taken responsibility, in the case of the Israeli embassy, the Islamic Jihad Organ­ization did claim responsibility (with links to Iran and possibly Hez­bollah); see Norton (2018, 66–67). 2 8. See, for instance, Carol Kidron’s ethnographic work (2009; 2010). 29. Diana Wang, interview by author, Buenos Aires, 2003. I have also written about Diana’s story in Zaretsky (2008b) and Zaretsky (2013a). 3 0. Throughout, I use “Shoah” if my subjects used that term to describe the Holocaust. In my interviews, they rarely used holocausto in Spanish, preferring Shoá as the term to reference the Jewish experience in that genocide. 31. For an analy­sis of March of the Living in relation to questions of place-­based memory, see Weissberg and Neile (2015). 32. Marianne Hirsch explores the power of f­amily photo­g raphs in shaping experience (1997), and in Argentina such ­f amily photo­g raphs are also central to the activism of groups like the Madres de Plaza de Mayo, as detailed by Diana Taylor (1997). For more on the role of photography in relation to justice and re­sis­t ance, see also Hirsch and Spitzer (2019). 33. The original poem in Spanish can be found in Guterman (1997). It appears ­here with Sofía Guterman’s permission. Translation by author. 34. For an analy­sis of mourning and the body in relation to the Madres de Plaza de Mayo, see Robben (2004). 35. See also Zaretsky (2015b) for additional analy­ sis of the significance of public memorials to private strug­g les for recovery.

Chap te r  2   D ialog ic M emory and the U neve n Te rrain of Ju stice 1. As noted in the introduction, Daniel Feierstein (2014) makes the argument that the state vio­lence in Argentina should be considered genocide, if we take the def inition of genocide in critical genocide studies, which includes the intent to destroy any group in ­whole or in part (be that group defined po­l iti­c ally or in other social categories). 2. For an analy­sis of their work in the context of per­for­m ance studies and theory, see D. Taylor (1997). Additionally, for a discussion of the intersection of personal loss and po­l iti­cal activism, see Navarro (1989), and for additional analy­sis of the Madres de Plaza de Mayo’s activism in relation to space, see Schirmer (1994). 3. See Crenzel (2009) for a comprehensive analy­sis of the CONADEP. 4. See also D. Taylor (2006) for additional analy­sis of H.I.J.O.S.’s repre­sen­ta­tional practices. See also Wigham (2016). 5. Although this work focuses largely on memory-­based social movements, ­there ­were also other NGOs, such as the Centro de Estudios Legales y Sociales (CELS),

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Notes to Pages 44–51

which served an impor­tant role in advocating for and documenting h ­ uman rights abuses. 6. Katherine Hite provides a comprehensive overview of the vari­ous sites of commemoration that arose in Argentina (2012). See chapter 4 for an analy­sis of commemorations in public spaces. 7. Focusing on local contexts and contingencies also dovetails with what Hanna Leonardsson and Gustav Rudd (2015) reference as the “local turn” in studies of peace building, with an emphasis on “voices from below” and local agency in understanding post-­conflict socie­ties. For more work on the “local turn,” see Hughes, Öjendal, and Schierenbeck (2015). The section on “­Trials and Transitional Justice” and the ­later section on “Dialogic Memory at the ESMA Megatrial” is adapted from Zaretsky (2019), with permission from Rowman & Littlefield. 8. Throughout this book, I invoke material from both the aftermath of the dictatorship and the aftermath of the AMIA bombing as existing in the same field of memory, both representing how citizens grapple with impunity. Despite points of intersection, however, t­ here are still impor­t ant differences between state terror and a bombing. 9. See Friedlander (1992). 10. Cathy Caruth has written extensively on the nature of individual trauma. See Caruth (1995; 1996). In addition, the work of Susan Brison (2002) and Judith Herman (1992) address the importance of testimony in the wake of trauma, and the work of Dori Laub (1995) has been significant in understanding the strug­g les for survivors of genocide. 11. Hayner (2001) provides a comprehensive overview of truth commissions. See also Minow (1998). 12. For issues relating to articulation and war remembrance, see Ashplant, Dawson, and Roper (2000), and Robben and Suárez-­O rozco (2000). 13. See Minow (1998). 14. See Caruth (1996). 15. For a detailed account of the history of h ­ uman rights during that time, see Brysk (1994). 16. For a full transcript of Miriam Lewin’s testimony, see http://­w ww​.­desaparecidos​ .­org​/­nuncamas​/­web​/­testimon​/­lewin​.­htm; translation by author. 17. See Actis et al. (2006); Lewin and Wornat (2014); and Lewin (2015). 18. See “Declaración de Miriam Lewin,” #JuicioJuntas, https://­w ww​.­youtube​.­com​ /­watch​?­v ​=V ­ ​_ ­3UYXuaTSQ. All transcribed excerpts from that testimony translated by author. 19. Miriam Lewin, interview by author, 2018. 2 0. Miriam Lewin’s reflections on her testimony before the 1985 Trial of the Juntas (2015) derive from a filmed interview on April 21, 2015, for a program commemorating thirty years since the trial. Transcribed excerpts from her testimony translated by author. 21. The Supreme Court found the amnesty laws to be unconstitutional in 2005, which made prosecutions pos­si­ble of t­ hose responsible for the repression during the dictatorship. Importantly, it also found that statutes of limitations did not apply to ­t hese crimes, as they w ­ ere crimes against humanity. See the Supreme Court of Argentina’s 2010 Report, Delitos de lesa humanidad. 2 2. For an overview of the significance of the “right to truth” to the rule of law in Latin Amer­i­ca more broadly, see Inter-­A merican Commission on ­Human Rights (2014). 2 3. A large number of the testimonies are compiled in the proceedings described in the Argentina Trial Monitor (ATM), a joint collaboration between Rutgers University’s Center for the Study of Genocide and ­Human Rights and Argentina’s Universidad Nacional de Tres de Febrero. The ATM translates proceedings of the ESMA



Notes to Pages 52–71

201

t­rials to generate an English-­language archive of the testimonies produced during this historic trial. 24. For an analy­sis of the evolution of testimony as a genre, see Wieviorka’s work on Holocaust testimony and archives (2006). 2 5. For a more in-­d epth discussion of transitional justice, see Roht-­A rriaza and Mariezcurrena (2006). 26. For additional context about the AMIA bombing and its significance in Argentina’s human rights history, see Levine and Zaretsky (2015); also see Faulk (2012). ­ Related to this, c­ ontroversy persists related to the 2015 death of Alberto Nisman, the investigating prosecutor in the AMIA case, with questions surrounding his death resulting in complex negotiations of meaning (see Zaretsky 2015a) and what Karen Faulk has called the “moral economy of truth” (Faulk 2019). 27. For an analy­sis of the politics of truth surrounding the Nisman case, see Faulk (2019). For an analy­sis of the Nisman case in relation to role of the ­M iddle East in Argentine policy, see Sheinin (2016). 2 8. Eugenia Bekeris, interview by author, Buenos Aires, 2018. 29. Eugenia Szejer, interviews by author, Buenos Aires, 2003 and 2014. 3 0. Indeed, as of 2020, Argentina is no closer to justice in the Israeli embassy bombing case. In a recent interview, Jorge Cohen, who had worked for the embassy at the time of the bombing, noted that ­every anniversary “carries an implicit call for justice that is our g­ reat frustration.” See CNN Radio (2019). 31. Adriana Reisfeld, interview by author, Buenos Aires, 2003. 32. Laura Ginsberg, interview by author, Buenos Aires, 2014. 33. José Blumenfeld, interview by author, Buenos Aires, 2003. Some material derives from José Blumenfeld, interview by author, Buenos Aires, 2014. For more analy­sis of Marcelo Brodsky’s photography, see also Hirsch and Spitzer (2019). 34. The concept of “subversive” for the dictatorship derived from the idea of being subversive to the national order and also was framed in relation to the U.S. National Security Doctrine (see Zaretsky 2017b). 35. Carlos Susevich, interview by author, Buenos Aires, 2003. 36. Sofía Guterman, interview by author, Buenos Aires, 2018. 37. Santiago Maldonado, twenty-­eight years old, participated in a protest in the Province of Chubut that was or­g a­n ized by Mapuches over their indigenous land claims on territory that had been seized by the Bennetton ­f amily. As part of their protest, they blocked a road (a common strategy in Argentina), and a­ fter a confrontation with the Gendarmería (the Argentine National Gendarmerie), some of the protesters tried to flee. Santiago was among them. A ­ fter this, he dis­appeared, sparking protests and demands for investigations by h ­ uman rights organ­izations, local and international, such as Amnesty International, H ­ uman Rights Watch, the Inter-­A merican Commission on ­Human Rights, and the UN Commission on Enforced Disappearance. Yet in 2018, the case was closed by the Argentine justice system, without anyone held accountable for what many considered to be a forced disappearance. See Amnesty International (2018). 38. For additional analy­sis of the social impact of the 2 × 1 ruling, see Zaretsky (2017a).

Chap te r  3   D i sruption and Age ncy in the P ublic S ph e re 1. See Gandsman (2012) for an ethnographic analy­sis of the Abuelas and their activism in relation to the politics of memory and transitional justice. 2. See Bosco (2004) for additional analy­sis of the Madres in relation to contestations over how to approach memory. Though initially they may have had conflicts over leadership and po­l iti­cal strategy, Bosco suggests ongoing issues centered on the uses of historical memory in relation to h ­ uman rights advocacy.

202

Notes to Pages 72–85

3. Elena Pavlotzky, interview by author, Buenos Aires, 2003. 4. Luis Czyzewski, interview by author, Buenos Aires, 2002. 5. Daniel (name changed), interview by author, Buenos Aires, 2003. 6. Enrique Burbinski, interview by author, Buenos Aires, 2002. 7. More recently, Rabbi Bergman served in President Mauricio Macri’s cabinet as secretary of the environment. 8. Rabbi Marshall Meyer’s influence on Jewish life in Argentina was significant. Not only did he establish the only rabbinical seminary in Latin Amer­i­ca, he also revitalized Jewish practice with the introduction of Conservative Judaism. Further, he was one of the few Jewish voices vocally opposing the dictatorship, protected in certain ways b­ ecause of his American citizenship. At the time, the American Jewish Committee also participated in criticizing the Argentine state, although it was not pre­sent in the same way as Rabbi Meyer in local affairs, since its members did not permanently reside t­ here. He also served on the CONADEP and was also impor­t ant in Jacobo Timerman’s experience, famously chronicled in the memoir Prisoner without a Name, Cell without a Number (1981). For more about Rabbi Meyer, see Meyer and Meyer (2004). 9. I have noted the stated reasons for the split between the two groups. Other reasons may exist for this division that go beyond the scope of my research. 10. Laura Ginsberg, interviews by author, Buenos Aires, 2003 and 2014. Note that this speech was cowritten by Laura Ginsberg and Diana Wassner Malamud, another member of Memoria Activa who lost her husband in the bombing. 11. Laura Ginsberg, interview by author, Buenos Aires, 2014. 12. Beatriz Gurevich more fully explores the question of the degree to which the DAIA represents the Jewish community (2005). It would be in­ter­e st­ing to also examine the question of community leadership and repre­sen­ta­t ion in relation to the traditional models of kehillah described by Sofer (1982) as Eastern Eu­ro­pean pre­ce­dents to the Argentine model. 13. Members of other groups of f­ amily members of the victims indicated to me that they felt uneasy about what they perceived to be an anti-­Israel stance for some of ­these affiliated groups. The role and relationship of Israel and the North American Jewish philanthropic organ­izations to the AMIA bombing and the aftermath in the community (in terms of security) is another dimension to this history. 14. See Ross (2001) regarding the experience of ­women testifying in the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission. See also Arendt 1994 [1963]. 15. For an analy­sis of Memoria Activa’s relationship to other ­human rights strug­g les and issues of impunity, see Wappenstein (2015). 16. Portions of this section about Memoria Activa and the l­ater section in this chapter about the listeners in the plaza a­ re adapted from Zaretsky (2015b), appearing h ­ ere with permission of Brill. 17. Memoria Activa collected the testimonies given at the Plaza Lavalle in an online archive (see http://­w ww​.­memoriaactiva​.­com). In addition, it issued compilations of testimonies, such as A dos años del atentado a la AMIA (1996) and Memoria Activa: 3 años de impunidad (1997). 18. Enrique Burbinski, Memoria Activa, Buenos Aires, July 16, 2001. Transcribed and translated by author. 19. See Jelin and Kaufman (2000, 96–98). 2 0. See Bernardo Kononovich’s 2000 documentary film, Lunes 9:53—­Atentado a la AMIA (Monday 9:53—­Attack of the AMIA). 21. Excerpt from Diana Wang’s testimony at Memoria Activa, May 19, 2003. Translation by author. 2 2. Reizl Sztarker, interview by author, Buenos Aires, 2003. See also Zaretsky (2008b) for a more in-­depth ethnographic analy­sis of the Coro Guebirtig, which represents



Notes to Pages 86–99

203

a form of agency and social change. For more on the role of m ­ usic in response to the bombing, see Wohl (2015). 2 3. Reizl Sztarker, testimony at Memoria Activa, August  25, 2003. Translation by author. 24. Listeners are critical to the actos that take place in the Plaza of Memory and on Pasteur Street. But it is impor­t ant to note that p­ eople also remember their losses in other, more private moments. 25. Name changed. 26. Eugenia Szejer, interview by author, Buenos Aires, 2004. 27. Note that t­here are strong traditions of public protest in Argentina, including ­u nion strikes and piqueteros. ­Here I am writing specifically about the regular, weekly occupation of a public space as a modality of po­liti­cal agency and citizenship par­tic­u ­lar to sustaining democracy and citizenship in the aftermath of the dictatorship. 2 8. For more on the group Ciudadanos de la Plaza, see Zaretsky (2015b); see also Faulk (2012). 29. Benjamín Guz, interview by author, Buenos Aires, 2014. 3 0. Isidoro Bronstein, interview by author, Buenos Aires, 2003. 31. Isidoro Bronstein, interview by author, Buenos Aires, 2013; also, Isidoro Bronstein, interview by author, Buenos Aires, 2003. 32. For additional analy­sis of the differences between ­these two spaces, see Prekker (2000a). 33. For more on the idea of implication in trauma, see Caruth (1995, 24). Michael Rothberg’s recent work on the “implicated subject” (2019) is also in­ter­e st­ing to consider in relation to ­t hese questions. The personal involvement of the researcher in the study of situations of vio­lence or trauma can be seen in many works, including Brison (2002); Spitzer (1998); and van Alphen (1997).

Chap te r  4   S ite s of M emory, E rasure, and Be long ing 1. See Jelin (2003); Jelin and Kaufman (2000). For a more specific discussion of monuments in Latin Amer­i­ca, see Jelin and Langland (2003 [2002]); Valdez (2003 [2002]); Hite (2012); Tandeciarz (2017). In addition, see Sawhney (2019) for an analy­sis of contested spaces in the wake of vio­lence, in the case of Guatemala. For a focus on the dynamics of citizenship in relation to vio­lence and belonging, see Goldstein (2004); Caldeira (2000); Holston (1999). 2. Other scholars have questioned the seemingly “concrete generalization” evident in the notion of the collective (Gedi and Elam 1996, 34), as well as considering the role of body (or habit) memories in shaping collective memory practices (Connerton 1989). 3. For further analy­sis of ­t hese questions, see Anderson (1991 [1983]); Hobsbawm and Ranger (2012 [1983]); Malkki (1995); Jelin and Kaufman (2000); Winter and Sivan (1999). 4. For examples, see Chizuko (1999) regarding the case of Japa­nese comfort w ­ omen and Kirmayer (1996) for a comparison of survivors of childhood trauma and the Holocaust. Other scholars have also focused on the issue of commemoration and memorials following periods of war (see especially Ashplant, Dawson, and Roper, 2000; and Winter and Sivan, 1999). War memory conforms to Halbwachs’s notion that the pre­sent needs of society determine memory (Halbwachs 1980[1950]). War also points to the critical role of power—­specifically, as a form of vio­lence legitimized by a group in power—an issue that should not be disarticulated from the power to write the history and establish the monuments following that period (Ashplant, Dawson, and Roper 2000, 57).

204

Notes to Pages 100–120

5. ­These issues become especially pressing when it comes to commemorating events that do not represent a master narrative, or the nation-­state’s glory. For examples, see the case of the AIDS quilt (Hawkins 1993), Hiroshima (Yoneyama 1999), and the Vietnam memorial (Sturken 1997). 6. Throughout his study of Holocaust memorials, Young explores such questions of monumentality and materiality in relation to the nature of the Holocaust as an experience that fundamentally defies sense and meaning. ­ T hese questions, of course, apply to any material repre­sen­ta­tions of vio­lence and war, including the Vietnam memorial in Washington, D.C. (Sturken 1997), as well as ­others questioning the vio­lence that can be done through attempting repre­sen­t a­t ion of something like the Holocaust (van Alphen 1997). This also resonates with issues facing anthropologists of vio­lence (see Nordstrom and Martin 1992; Coutin 2016). 7. For more on counter-­monuments, see Stevens, Franck, and Fazakerley (2012). 8. For more on the intersections of memory and geography, see Mitchell (2003); Hoelscher and Alderman (2004); and Stevens, Franck, and Fazakerley (2012). 9. For a detailed account of one of ­t hese death flights, see Verbitsky (1996). Additionally, for an analy­sis of the confession from Adolfo Scilingo (one of the pi­lots of the death flights) described in Horacio Verbitsky’s account within the context of perpetrators’ narratives, see Payne (2008). For additional analy­sis of the po­liti­cal significance of this discursive framing of “subversive,” see Zaretsky (2017b). Portions of this section on the Park of Memory are adapted from Zaretsky (2019), appearing with permission of Rowman & Littlefield. 10. For additional comparison of Argentine monuments to the dictatorship in relation to Berlin’s commemorations, see Sion (2015). For more on the commemorations in Argentina related to the dictatorship, see Tandeciarz (2017). I thank my anonymous reader from Rutgers University Press for this suggestion. 11. See D. Taylor (2006) for additional analy­sis of the performative dimensions of the repre­sen­t a­t ional strategies in the escraches. 12. Sofía Guterman, interview by author, Buenos Aires, 2002. 13. This description derives from patterns observed over months of fieldwork. 14. For more on monuments, see Weinstein and Toker (2004, 31–36). For additional analy­sis of the Agam memorial, see Aizenberg (2007). 15. Pi­lotes are just one of the types of barricades used. Sometimes they are rectangular in shape, sometimes they are disguised as planters, but they have become the material remnants and reminders of the bombing, erected to prevent another car bombing from occurring. 16. My own encounter with the routinized security protocol launched me directly into the new ways the Jewish community defined its bound­a ries and created itself anew. See Zaretsky (2006; 2009). For more on the developing field of the anthropology of security, see Goldstein (2010). 17. Mirta Kupferminc, interview by author, Buenos Aires, 2014. 18. Anita Weinstein, interview by author, Buenos Aires, 2018. 19. See “Acto Aniversario Atentado a la AMIA—­A rchivo DiFilm (1997),” https://­w ww​ .­youtube​.­com ​/­w atch​?­v ​= U ­ ZJSGmZUl7c&feature​= y­ outu​.­b e. Excerpt from Laura Ginsberg’s speech translated by author. 2 0. Laura Ginsberg, interview by author, Buenos Aires, 2014. 21. There are also ways in which truth factors into attempts at what some would call obfuscation. An example is the controversial 2013 Memorandum of Understanding with Iran, which sought to have a joint truth commission in Iran about what happened in the AMIA bombing and resulted in internal community controversy, since Memoria Activa was in f­avor of it but many other activists perceived it to be a way to avoid retributive justice. Interestingly, in relation to official archives, U.S. president Barack Obama actually offered in 2006 to open official government archives that would help in relation to the dictatorship.



2 2. 2 3. 24. 25.

Notes to Pages 120–135

205

Laura Ginsberg, interview by author, Buenos Aires, 2014. Adriana Schettini, interviews by author, Buenos Aires, 2002; 2003; 2004. Rebeca “Tita” Sakolsky, interview by author, Buenos Aires, 2013. See Young (1992; 1993; 2000; 2016) and Brison (1999; 2002).

Chap te r  5   Nunca Más and the I nte r section s of Ge nocide, L o s s, and Survival 1. ­T hese restrictions ­were overturned by an amnesty in 1951 (Rein 2005a; Avni 1991). 2. Diana Wang, interview by author, Buenos Aires, 2013. 3. See Lemkin (1946). For more on the work of Raphael Lemkin, see Moses (2010), Frieze (2013), and “Raphael Lemkin: The ‘Founder of the United Nations’ Genocide Convention’ as a Historian of Mass Vio­lence” (2005). 4. Primo Levi was born in Turin in 1919. As a young man he studied chemistry, and despite the advent of race laws that made it difficult for Jews in Italy to study, he earned his university degree in chemistry in 1941. Afterward, he became active in the re­sis­t ance movement, was captured in 1943, and was deported to Auschwitz in 1944. He spent eleven months in the camp before being liberated in January 1945. 5. For more on Jewish community politics during the dictatorship, see Klich (1989). Also, it is impor­tant to note that even though Jews represented an estimated 12 ­percent of the dis­appeared, they w ­ ere not necessarily targeted for being Jewish (Kahan 2019). It has been established, though, that Jews ­were treated differently once detained, and t­here was an institutional component to the antisemitism of the dictatorship. In addition, during ­those years, many Argentines went into exile abroad. For Jewish Argentines, some also went into exile in Israel during ­those years, including, famously, Jacobo Timerman (Timerman 1981). 6. See Article 7 of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (UN General Assembly, 1998). Parts of the section on imagining difference that examine genocide are adapted from Zaretsky (2017b), appearing ­here with permission of University of Toronto Press. 7. For a more in-­depth discussion and analy­sis of Garzón’s definition of genocide, see chapter 2 in Roht-­A rriaza (2005). For additional analy­sis of the historical uses of “genocide” in Argentine po­liti­cal discourse, see Robben (2012). 8. In explaining the use of the term genocide, Judge Carlos Rozanski, president of the La Plata Federal Oral Court, asserted that the offenses carried out by Etchecolatz and his associates constituted part of a systematic attack intended to destroy parts of society that the victims represented, as such, and that they r­ose to the count of genocide. Rozanski (2016) also said, “The reasoning b­ ehind the term ‘genocide’ was to place it in the context of a larger phenomenon instead of the summation of kidnappings, torture, murders and forced disappearances. The idea was to break ­f ree from an arithmetic operation and instead use a concept that is in line with the infinite pain of a society in which tens of thousands of ­people ­were massacred by a violent and terrorist state and millions w ­ ere affected by the cultural effects of that terror” (n.p.). 9. See D. Feierstein 2010, 500–502. 10. Feierstein argues that what tran­spired in Argentina should be considered genocide, and that it should be understood as “the deliberate annihilation of h ­ uman groups as a distinctive form of social engineering” (2014, 6), with the group in question being t­ hose considered subversive. 11. Silence has also been explored in relation to other experiences of vio­lence, such as the testimonies of w ­ omen in South Africa (Ross 2001), or the use of silence in times of fear in Guatemala (Green 1994; 1999) or in the aftermath of genocide in Rwanda (Burnet 2012).

206

Notes to Pages 136–146

12. See Elkin (1998, 254–255); Rein (2005a). For more on the question of Nazis and Jews in Argentina, see Baer and Sznaider (2016), and Goñi (2002). The Eichmann kidnapping revealed the conflicts surrounding Jewish belonging in Argentina, given the presence of Nazis in Argentina and other incidents of antisemitism during the years of dictatorship and beyond as explored in the Introduction. 13. Through transitional justice, many countries have employed nonjudicial means to try to achieve the rule of law and transition into democracy after vio­lence and genocide. This idea of justice having a restorative function is explored by Martha Minow in her work Between Vengeance and Forgiveness (1998), specifically through her analy­sis of the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission, where restorative justice helped heal a fractured society. 14. Over the last thirty years, many other countries throughout Latin Amer­i­ca (as well as around the world) have had some kind of truth commission or pro­cess, such as the opening of archives, reflecting the significance of transitional justice to the con­temporary po­l iti­cal landscape in Latin Amer ­i­ca. 15. For more on the experience in general of c­ hildren and child survivors of the Holocaust, see Holliday (1995); Valent (2002 [1993]). The section of this chapter that focuses generally on Niños and “implicated listeners” is adapted and expanded from Zaretsky (2013a). It appears with permission of Brill. 16. She also published several books (Wang 1998; 2004; 2007) detailing the experience of the Holocaust survivors and their ­children who emigrated to Argentina. 17. See R. Feierstein (1999 [1993]) for a history of the IWO in Buenos Aires. 18. See Sofer (1982) for more about the Plaza Lavalle and Once as locations of initial Jewish settlement. 19. Ester Szwarc of the IWO, interview by author, Buenos Aires, 2003. 2 0. ­After the bombing, the IWO moved to a smaller building a few blocks away. While what remained and was sal­vaged of the library was returned to the IWO library—­ which is now a part of the AMIA building—­the IWO as an institution remained at its location a few blocks away. Also, the Niños group would ­later go on to include the “second generation” (­children of survivors) and change its name to “Generations of the Shoah.” Since I conducted the majority of my fieldwork when they ­were known as “Niños,” I refer to them as such throughout this chapter. 21. For an analy­sis of the experience of German-­speaking Jews in Argentina in par­t ic­ u­lar, see L. Feierstein (2017). Also see Feierstein (2014) for the role of the Shoah in testimonies of dictatorship survivors. 2 2. The March of the Living coordinates groups around the world. In Argentina, the journey it organized—to the death camps in Poland, followed by a trip to Israel—­ was becoming more popu­lar with young adults during the 2000s (see Blejter et al., 2002). For additional analy­sis of the program, see Weissberg and Neile (2015). 2 3. Some examples of t­hese testimonies include Fuchs (1995; 2006); Papiernik (1996; 2000); Stupnik (2007); Novera (2010); Baron (1998); Kertesz (2018); Rotenberg (2003); Cymlich (1999). In addition, in 2005, an Argentine journalist published a book about survivors in Argentina (Schettini 2005). Films about the survivors include a documentary about Jack Fuchs, El Árbol de la Muralla (2013; Tomás Lipgot, dir.), a film about vari­ous child survivors of the Holocaust, Aquellos Niños (2003; Bernardo Kononovich, dir.), and a documentary about Lea Novera and Mira Stupnik, also members of this group, Lea y Mira Dejan Su Huella (2018; Poli Martínez Kaplún, dir.). 24. See Wang (1998; 2004; 2007). 25. See also Herman (1992); Friedlander (1994). 26. Elsa Rozín, interviews by author, Buenos Aires, 2003. 27. The notions of mutual implication also resonate with Michael Rothberg’s work on the “implicated subject” (2019). 2 8. Dina Lew, interviews by author, Buenos Aires, 2003.



Notes to Pages 146–174

207

29. For a historical analy­sis of the experience of Polish Jews in Argentina, see Kalczewiak (2020). 3 0. For more on the history of Sugihara, see H. Levine (1996). 31. Mira also published her memoir, ¡¿Quo Vadis Mundo?! Memorias de una sobreviviente del holocausto nazi, Mira Kniaziew de Stupnik No. 15538. (Stupnik 2007). 32. Lea also wrote about her story and published a memoir, Historias de mi mochila (Novera 2010). For more on the friendship between Mira and Lea, see the documentary about them, Lea y Mira Dejan Su Huella 2018; Poli Martínez Kaplún, dir.). 33. Sofía Guterman, interview by author, Buenos Aires, 2002. 34. For more on the Soviet Jewish experience of the Holocaust, see Murav and Estraikh (2014); Gershenson (2013); Shneer (2012). 35. For the full testimony in Spanish, see http://eduiot.amia.org.ar/testimonio/francajarach/. The schoolchildren were from the secondary school Scholem Aleijem in 2014 and 2015. English translation by author. See also http://www.buenosaires.gob.ar​ /edu​cacion/programasymemoria/archivos-por-la-memoria/vera-jarach. 36. The full testimony is available in Spanish at http://­eduiot​.­a mia​.­org​.­a r​/­testimonio​ /­d aniel​-­lazaro​-­rus​/­. It was conducted with students from the secondary school Scholem Aleijem in 2014 and 2015. En­g lish translation by author. 37. A Madre named Matilde Mellibovsky (1990) compiled a volume of testimonies by Madres de Plaza de Mayo. 38. For a transcript of Diana Wang’s testimony from that day, see http://­w ww​.­d ianawang​ .­net​/­blog​/­2 003​/­05​/­19​/­memoria​-­activa​-­d iscurso​-­2 003​/­.

Chap te r  6   O n the L imits of Witne ssing, On the B ound­a ri e s of Time 1. Name has been changed. Interview by author, Buenos Aires, 2003. 2. One of its bishops has been convicted of Holocaust denial in the German courts. In October 2013, the Italian branch offered to hold a funeral for Nazi war criminal Erich Priebke, who had been extradited to Italy from Argentina. See BBC (2013). 3. Diana Wang, interview by author, 2013. 4. Martha de Antueno, interview by author, 2013. 5. For more about this incident, see Zaretsky (2013b). 6. Carol Kidron explores traumatic memory and the embodied forms in which it can appear, specifically, the “nonnarrative forms of presence” in the lives of the descendants of Holocaust survivors (2009, 7). 7. I borrow the notion of “scapes” from Arjun Appadurai (1996) to indicate the “perspectival” and shifting nature of the landscape of memory in Argentina. See also Kirmayer (1996) for further exploration of “landscapes of memory.” 8. Interviews in Buenos Aires with Diana Wang, 2003; Graciela Jinich, 2003. In 2000, the American Jewish Committee commissioned a survey which indicated that Argentines ­were aware of the Holocaust but did not feel as strongly about the importance of preserving its memory as other nations they used as comparison (in western Eu­rope and North Amer­i­ca, for instance). Some attribute the increased prominence of the Shoah in public consciousness to the popu­lar media, such as the film Schindler’s List. It was also during this de­cade that the Holocaust Museum and Fundación Memoria del Holocausto ­were officially established, whose work includes public events and outreach, as well as the growth of the Niños group into Generations of the Shoah. 9. See Rein (2005a); Goñi (2002). 10. See Wang (1998) for an examination of other survivors in Argentina who strug­g led with silence in the aftermath of their experience. 11. Jack Fuchs, interview by author, Buenos Aires, 2003. [All interviews with Jack ­were conducted primarily in En­g lish.]

208 12. 13. 14. 15. 16.

17. 18. 19. 2 0.

Notes to Pages 175–181

My thanks to Sandra Fox for confirming the Yiddish transcription. Rosi, interview by author, Buenos Aires, 2002. For an ethnographic analy­sis of Jewish tourism to Poland, see Lehrer (2013). Eugenia Bekeris, interview by author, Buenos Aires, 2018. For an example, see @MemoriaActiva. “#AMIA Dibujos Urgentes de la audiencia 44 del #JuicioEncubrimiento Testigo: Gastón Bentancour Por Eugenia Bekeris.”Twitter.8 July 2016.8:00am. https://­t witter​.c­ om​/M ­ emoriaActiva​/­status​/7­ 51385450254704640. For more of Dibujos Urgentes’ work, see https://­d ibu​jo​sur​gentes​.w ­ eebly​.­com. For more insight into the history of Soviet Jews, it can be instructive to explore their experience of the Holocaust; see Murav and Estraikh (2014); Gershenson (2013); Shneer (2012). For more on the “Doctors’ Plot,” see Etinger (2016). All excerpts from the film El Arbol de la Muralla (2016; dir. Tomás Lipgot) translated by author. Jack Fuchs, correspondence with author, 2013. Sofía Guterman, interview by author, Buenos Aires, 2018.

C onc lu si on 1. Jack Fuchs, interview by author, Buenos Aires, 2003.

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Inde x

Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo, 2, 43, 51, 67, 70, 131, 138, 195n6, 201n1 accountability, 1, 84, 94, 119, 130, 136; juridical, 107, 183; social, 125; truth and, 2, 50, 128, 137, 150, 184. See also impunity; truth commissions activism: citizenship and, 11, 14, 55, 68–70, 77–78, 90, 130, 150, 184; of Madres de Plaza de Mayo, 1–2, 11, 14, 40, 43, 68–70, 77, 90, 108; of Memoria Activa, 14, 40, 55, 77–78, 89–90, 172; repair and, 195n2 actos, 60, 75, 158, 197n36; Ciudadanos de la Plaza, 14, 80, 91, 93–95, 108, 112; commemorative, 28, 74, 94, 138, 172; Familiares y Amigos de las Víctimas, 74, 76–78, 79, 94, 108 advocacy: of Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo, 2, 51, 67, 78, 195n6, 201n2; ­human rights, 40–41, 42, 70, 74, 77, 103; related to AMIA bombing, 2, 11, 29, 55, 57, 58–59, 61, 112; related to Israeli embassy bombing, 2, 29–31, 57, 61 Agam, Yaacov, 111, 204n14 agency, 18–19, 68; Ciudadanos de la Plaza, 91–94; listeners, 86–91, 94–95; Mondays in the Plaza of Memory, 82–84; testimony and citizenship, 84–86, 116–120, 124–127; testimony and recognition, 80–81, 94–95 Agosti, Orlando, 48 Alberto (pseudonym), 113 Alfonsín, Raúl, 27, 42–43, 80, 137 American Convention on H ­ uman Rights, 50

American Jewish Committee (AJC), 202n8, 207n8 AMIA (Asociación Mutual Israelita Argentina), 10, 23, 197n28; monuments and security, 111–112 AMIA bombing (1994), 2, 13, 16–17, 21, 24, 70–71, 116–117, 159; Daniel’s escape, 28–29; understanding and defining, 77–78. See also terror AMIA investigation, 54–55, 60, 62, 71, 76, 78 AMIA trial: coverup, 55, 61, 118–119; first trial, 54, 79; groups participating in, 79–80; second trial, 54–58, 61, 119, 174–175 Amnesty International, 70, 152, 201n37 amnesty laws, 2, 40–41, 43, 46, 48–50, 53, 66–67, 70–71, 74, 102, 134, 138, 200n21; Due Obedience Law (1987), 2, 46, 48, 200n21; Full Stop Law (1986), 46, 48, 200n21 Ana (pseudonym), 158–159 Anderson, Benedict, 46, 99, 132 antisemitism, 8–10, 60, 90, 118, 125, 136, 160, 172, 196n17, 196n22, 196n24, 196n25, 205n5, 206n12 Anzorreguy, Hugo, 54–55 A.P.E.M.I.A. (Agrupación por el Esclarecimiento de la Masacre Impune de la AMIA), 55, 58–59, 78–79, 94, 101, 118, 183 Aquellos Niños (Kononovich), 140, 177, 206n23 Árbol de la Muralla, El (film), 164–166, 178–179, 206n23

229

230

Index

Arendt, Hannah, 7, 136 Argentina, 22–23; imagination of difference in, 133–134; Jewish immigration, 7–11, 140; as land of memory, 41, 42–44, 158; rule of law in, 2, 55, 63, 71, 120, 200n22, 206n13 Argentina Trial Monitor, 51–54, 200n23 Arru, Mario Daniel, 50 articulation, 18–19, 198n8, 200n12. See also narrative Asamblea Permanente de Derechos Humanos, 42 Ashkenazi, 7 Astiz, Alfredo, 49 Auschwitz, 32–33, 48, 132–133, 151, 161–163, 167, 177, 179, 205n4 authoritarianism, 44, 196n25. See also dictatorship; repression Bakhtin, Mikhail, 45, 64–65 Bal, Mieke, 19, 21, 42 banality of evil, 7, 136 Banchero café, 87, 91, 93, 124–126 Banco, El (“The Bank”), 53, 125. See also dictatorship; torture Bekeris, Eugenia, 55–57, 154, 173–175, 180, 208n16. See also Dibujos Urgentes Belarus, 141, 151, 162–164, 176 belonging, 120–127; Jewish belonging, 7–11, 136, 138, 140; national belonging, 8, 10, 11, 99, 132; subjectivity, 59, 71, 133. See also identity Beraja, Rubén, 54, 119, 127 Bergman, Sergio, 77, 202n7 Berner, Ernesto, 53 Bet El Synagogue, 77 Between Vengeance and Forgiveness (Minow), 12, 45, 137, 206n13 Bignone, Reynaldo, 106 Birkenau, 141, 142–144 Blumenfeld, José, 59–61, 117, 124 body memories, 203n2 Bonaparte, Laura, 177–178 Bosque de Memoria, 105 Brison, Susan, 200n10, 203n33 Brodsky, Fernando, 59, 105, 111

Brodsky, Marcelo, 59, 105–106, 201n33 Brodsky, Sara, 111 Bronstein, Isidoro, 93–94 Buena memoria (Brodsky), 59 Buenos Aires, 23, 158 Burbinski, Enrique, 76, 83–84, 124, 173 Cabezas, José, 77, 84 cacerolazos, 16 Caruth, Cathy, 19–20, 37, 86, 95, 159, 200n10, 203n33 Castillo, Andrés Ramón, 51, 67 CELS (Centro de Estudios Legales y Sociales), 5–6, 69, 199n5 Centro de Documentación e Información sobre Judaismo Argentino Marc Turkow, 12, 71–72, 116 Cerruti, Isabel Teresa, 53 certainty, 57, 59, 61, 138 ­children and child survivors, 85, 135–136, 140–146, 177–178, 206n15, 206n23 Chile, 44–45 citizenship, 3, 11, 12, 15, 54–57, 77–78; testimony, 84–86. See also belonging Ciudadanos de la Plaza, 14, 68, 80, 87, 91–95, 108, 112–113, 116, 183, 203n28 civil society, 1, 3, 12, 19, 40–43, 46, 54, 59, 70, 71, 81, 94–95, 135. See also democracy; rule of law clarity, truth and, 58–61, 63, 119 Cohen, Jorge, 201n30 coherence, 3, 31, 50, 64–65, 98, 117, 120, 135, 138, 146; limits of, 94, 159; narrative order and, 12, 13, 18–19, 21, 25, 37, 38–39; po­liti­cal agency and, 21, 81, 84, 94, 120, 182–184 Colegio Nacional de Buenos Aires, 47, 59 collected memory, 100 collective memory, 3, 26, 53, 98–101, 120, 137, 203n2 collective mourning, 75 commemorations, 30, 38, 65, 74, 78, 111–112, 125, 128, 160, 172, 200n6, 203n4, 204n10; protests and, 14, 16,

Index

67, 80, 94, 182; public space and, 14, 80, 94, 98–101, 182 CONADEP (Comisión Nacional sobre la Desaparición de Personas), 2, 5, 6, 9, 13, 21, 40–41, 42–43, 44–46, 50, 70, 76–77, 80, 130, 133, 137–138, 195n5, 195–196n9, 197n26, 199n3, 202n8. See also Nunca Más Report; truth commissions confession, 5, 49, 204n9 consubjective being, 198n15 continual reconstruction, 100–101 Coro Guebirtig (Coro Judío Popu­lar Mordje Guebirtig), 32, 85, 122, 138, 172, 202n22 counter-­monuments, 100, 204n7. See also monuments Coutin, Susan, 182, 198n6 crimes against humanity, 6, 56, 106, 130, 133; impunity and, 1, 13, 41–42, 49, 63, 64, 182, 184; perpetrators of, 1, 41, 49, 63, 134, 184; t­ rials related to (see specific ­trials). See also CONADEP (Comisión Nacional sobre la Desaparición de Personas); dictatorship cultural memory, 3, 11, 13, 41–42, 99–100 Czyzewski, Luis, 74–75, 77 Czyzewski, Paola, 74–75 D’Agostino, Alejandro Domingo, 50 DAIA (Delegación de Asociaciones Israelitas Argentinas), 10, 54, 78–79, 119, 124, 152, 202n12 DAIA Centro de Estudios Sociales, 12, 196n24 Daniel (pseudonym), 27–29, 38, 72, 75 death flights, 5, 49–50, 104, 174, 204n9 democracy, 11, 21, 50, 60, 77–78, 100, 136–137, 203n27; citizenship and, 68–70, 120; democ­ratization, 27, 40–44, 48, 206n13. See also civil society destruction, site of, 74–75 detentions, 5, 42, 51–53, 127, 195n5 Día de la Memoria por la Verdad y la Justicia, 44, 67, 102, 152, 158, 163

231

dialogic/dialogism, 19, 41, 45–46, 63–64, 81, 100, 178, 182; at the ESMA trial, 50–54. See also Bakhtin, Mikhail dialogue, 20, 86, 92, 160, 178 diaspora, 99. See also immigration Dibujos Urgentes, 55–56, 58, 174–175, 180, 208n16 dictatorship, 3, 6–7, 42, 50; aftermath of, 2, 44, 46, 70, 98, 203n27; disappearances and torture during, 1, 4–6, 10, 42, 49, 66–67, 86, 104, 133, 134, 196n11, 197n27, 200n21, 205n5, 205n8; military junta, 4, 9, 69, 70, 106, 133; monuments to, 204n10; state terrorism, 5–6, 62, 76, 97, 103–105, 113, 131, 133, 198n19. See also “Dirty War” difference, imagining, 131–134 digital media, 99 Dilemas de la memoria (Fuchs), 161 “Dirty War,” 1, 4–6, 132–134, 196n11, 197n27, 200n21. See also dictatorship disappeared/desaparecido, 1–4, 42, 52–54, 56–57, 59, 103–104, 155, 195–196n9, 197n26, 201n37, 205n8; ­children of, 66, 130, 198n19; disappearance as state vio­lence, 5, 9–10, 49–50, 133–134, 174, 177, 205n5 Disappearing Acts (Taylor), 42, 70, 77 disruption, 3–5, 19, 42, 64, 66, 68–69, 71, 83, 95, 107, 116–127, 130, 152, 182 dissent, 5, 40, 42, 67 Doberti, María Paula, 57–58, 174. See also Dibujos Urgentes Drajer, Saul, 176 Due Obedience Law (1987), 2, 46, 48, 200n21 Durkheim, Émile, 98 Eichmann, Adolf, 3, 7, 9, 130, 136–137, 172, 196n20, 206n12 18-­J (organ­ization), 79, 101 embodied memory, 23–24, 35, 198n15 erasure, 44, 49, 85, 97, 106–107, 128, 166, 175, 184

232

Index

ERP (Ejército Revolucionario del Pueblo), 195n4 escraches, 43, 66–68, 70, 85, 94, 96–97, 106–107, 120, 130–131, 183–184, 198n19, 204n11. See also actos; protest ESMA (Escuela Mecánica de la Armada), 5, 40, 44, 47, 102, 104, 130; ESMA megatrial, 49–54, 81, 152, 154; ex-­E SMA, 44, 102, 105 Etchecolatz, Miguel, 49, 134, 205n7 Familiares y Amigos de las Víctimas del Atentado a la AMIA, 55, 74–78, 108; AMIA trial participation, 79; division with Memoria Activa, 78–80 fascism, 8–9, 152, 162, 196n19 Federman, Enrique, 123 Feierstein, Daniel, 134, 195–196n9, 196n10, 199n1, 205n10 Feitlowitz, Marguerite, 137, 195n7 Flight, The (Verbitsky), 5, 49, 104, 174, 204n9 Foster, David William, 59 Fuchs, Jack, 33–35, 38, 121–122, 124, 152, 156–157, 161–168, 170, 173, 175–176, 178–181, 185, 206n23 Full Stop Law (1986), 46, 48, 200n21 Fundación IWO, 7, 10, 138–140, 206n17, 206n20. See also IWO Fundación Memoria del Holocausto, 140, 162, 171, 207n8 Fundación Memoria Histórica y Social en Argentina, 152 Furman, Graciela Linial de, 58 Galeano, Juan José, 54, 55 Garzón, Baltasar, 134, 205n7 Gebirtig, Mordechai, 172 Generaciones de la Shoá, 85, 138–139, 160, 206n20, 207n8. See also Niños de la Shoá genocida, 57, 96–97, 131, 174 genocide, 4, 6–7, 70, 97, 130, 131–134, 142, 156, 195–196n9, 196n11, 199n1, 205n7, 205n10 Genocide Convention, 6–7, 132

geography of memory, 116–117 Ginsberg, José Enrique “Kuky,” 58, 118 Ginsberg, Laura, 58–59, 78, 79, 101, 118–120 Goldman, Daniel, 77 Gruman, Bernardo, 87, 172–173, 186 Guatemala, 20–21, 131, 198n17, 203n1, 205n11 Guterman, Alberto, 17–18, 23–25, 35 Guterman, Andrea Judith, 16–18, 23–26, 35–38, 109 Guterman, Sofía: death of d­ aughter, 16–18, 74; history, 21–23; loss of Andrea, 23–25, 35–37; Moisés Ville and, 186–188; search for justice of, 61–62, 150; significance of narrative for, 117–118; vacío of, 25–27, 37–39, 138, 154; and wall of names, 108–109; writings, 25–27, 37, 117–118 Guz, Benjamín, 87–88, 91–93, 114, 122–124, 126, 170–171, 173 Halbwachs, Maurice, 20, 98, 99, 104, 117, 120–121, 156, 203n4 Herman, Judith, 200n10 Hez­bollah, 199n27 H.I.J.O.S. (Hijos e Hijas por la Identidad y la Justicia contra el Olvido y el Silencio), 2, 43, 66–70, 85, 94, 96, 107, 119, 130–131, 138, 174, 198n19, 199n4 Hinton, Alexander, 44–45, 64, 68, 98, 132 Hirsch, Marianne, 31, 36, 136, 170, 179, 199n32 Hite, Katherine, 100, 200n6 Holocaust, 3, 20, 130, 196n21, 198n4; memorials, 100, 204n6; as part of public consciousness, 160, 162, 207n8; survival and, 31–33; survivor testimony and silence, 135–136, 141–146, 158–159, 161–162, 203n4, 206n23. See also Shoah Holocaust (TV series), 136 Holocaust Museum of Buenos Aires, 138, 160, 207n8 hope, 61–63

Index

­human rights. See CONADEP (Comisión Nacional sobre la Desaparición de Personas); crimes against humanity; specific organ­izations identity, 31–32, 139–140, 177. See also belonging ­imagined community, 46, 90, 99, 132. See also Anderson, Benedict imagining, 11, 15, 71, 89–90, 100–101, 131–134, 156, 184 immigration, 7–11, 22–23, 129, 135, 140, 148–149, 196n12, 199n20 implicated listeners, 123, 138–141, 146, 156–157, 178, 198n19, 206n15, 206n27 implicated subject, 95, 198n19, 203n33, 206n27. See also Rothberg, Michael impunity, 1–3, 11, 61–63, 66–67, 70–71, 74, 200n8; protest and, 76–77. See also accountability indifference, 119–122, 124, 135–138, 159, 172, 175, 179–180, 182, 186 Indij, Alberto, 123 Inter-­A merican Commission on ­Human Rights (IACHR), 54–55, 71, 77, 201n37 International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, 138 Iran, 60–61, 199n27, 204n21. See also Memorandum of Understanding with Iran Israel, 6, 9–10, 24, 32, 60, 70, 100, 136, 145, 148, 162, 167, 171, 176, 202n13, 205n5, 206n22 Israeli Embassy bombing (1992), 2, 10, 27, 29–31, 60–61, 70, 72, 82–83, 111, 114, 126, 152, 172, 199n27, 201n30 IWO (Instituto Judío por Investigaciones), 7, 10, 138–140, 206n17, 206n20. See also YIVO Jarach, Franca, 152–154 Jarach, Vera, 152–154, 168 Jelin, Elizabeth, 41, 77–78, 98, 100, 135

233

Jewish belonging, 7–11, 136, 138, 140 Jewish Colonization Association, 22, 199n20 Jewish community, 10, 167–168, 186–188, 196n12, 197nn28–29, 205n5 Jinich, Graciela, 138 juicio y castigo, 96, 120 Julián the Turk, 125–126 justice, 38; citizenship and witnessing, 54–57, 174–175; delayed justice, 49–50, 93–94; demands for, 76–77; hope and impunity, 61–63; international remedies for, 77; reclaiming, 126–127; retributive justice, 40, 41–42, 45, 64–65, 137 (see also t­ rials); transitional justice, 21, 43, 44–46, 68, 76, 80–81, 98, 136–138, 206n13 (see also truth commissions); uneven terrain of, 3, 63–65 justice and memory, 40, 74, 108 Kaddish, 74, 109 Kahan, Emmanuel, 135 Kirchner, Cristina Fernández de, 43, 62 Kirchner, Néstor, 40, 41, 43, 75, 105 Klimkovich, Berta, 162, 163, 164, 176 Kononovich, Bernardo, 140, 177 Kreiman, Susy, 24 Kristallnacht, 160, 179 Kupferminc, Mirta, 113, 114, 115 Lambruschini, Armando, 48 landscapes of memory, 162, 207n7 language. See narrative Laub, Dori, 20, 141, 200n10 Lea y Mira Dejan Su Huella (film), 206n23, 207n32 Lemkin, Raphael, 6–7, 132 Levi, Primo, 20, 132–133, 135, 181, 205n4 Levine, Annette, 105, 106, 117, 198n19, 199n22 Lew, Dina, 146–150, 157, 173 Lewin, Miriam, 46–49, 200n16 Lexicon of Terror, A (Feitlowitz), 137 liberation, 143–145

234

Index

lieux de mémoire, 99 liminality, 3, 11–13, 18–19, 21, 39, 61, 63–65, 68–69, 95, 117, 120, 128, 130, 132, 157–158, 160, 162, 173, 180–183 listening/listeners, 20, 21, 33, 86–91, 94–95, 184, 198n11, 203n24; implicated listeners, 123, 138–141, 146, 157, 198n19; listening in silence, 123 Lithuania, 147–148, 171, 179–180 Lodz ghetto, 33, 161, 163, 164–167 López, Jorge Julio, 50, 54, 56–57, 63, 174 Macri, Mauricio, 41, 63–64 Madres de Plaza de Mayo, 1–2, 5, 38, 40, 52, 178, 180, 201n2; abductions of, 177; divisions, 43, 177, 195n3, 195n8; origins, 69–70; protests and the public sphere, 42–43, 66, 70–71, 77, 85, 94, 101, 119, 126, 153, 155; repre­sen­t a­t ion and symbols, 101, 102, 109, 199n32 Madres de Plaza de Mayo-­Línea Fundadora, 2, 43, 71, 152, 177, 195n8 Magnacco, Jorge Luis, 51, 67–68, 96, 106–107, 183–184 Magnacco escrache, 70, 96–97, 106–107, 120, 130–131, 183–184 Malamud, Diana Wassner, 30–31, 118, 202n10 Maldonado, Santiago, 63, 201n37 Marcha por la Vida (March of the Living), 32, 139, 166–167, 169, 171, 199n31, 206n22 Más allá de la bomba (Guterman), 26 Massera, Emilio, 48 “Mataron a mi hija” (Guterman), 26 materiality, 204n6 “Mein Nisht” (song), 86 Mellibovsky, Matilde, 207n37 Memorandum of Understanding with Iran, 60–61, 204n21. See also Iran Memoria Abierta, 12, 44, 102 Memoria Activa, 2, 55, 68, 74; agency, 81, 82–84; AMIA trial participation, 79; belonging, 123–124; Diana Wang and, 32, 138–139, 156; and “dibujos urgentes,” 175; division with

Familiares y Amigos de las Víctimas, 78–80; Eugenia Szejer and, 57; Isidoro Bronstein and, 93–94; José Blumenfeld and, 59, 60; Laura Bonaparte and, 177; Laura Ginsberg and, 58, 118; and Memorandum of Understanding with Iran, 204n21; nature of advocacy, 77–78; online testimonial archive, 202n17; tenth anniversary, 67, 131; twentieth anniversary, 92; and Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, 172–173; weekly actos of, 40, 66, 76, 81, 82–84, 85, 112–114, 121–125; and Zaretsky testimony, 185–186 Memoria del Silencio, 21. See also transitional justice memorials, 3, 11, 16, 69, 98–101, 158, 194, 199n35; Holocaust memorials, 100, 105, 160, 203n4, 204n6; security and, 111 memory: collected memory, 100; collective memory, 98–101; commemoration, 29, 98–101; cultural memory, 3, 11, 13, 41, 42, 100; delayed justice and, 49–50; embodied memory, 198n15; as form of protest, 43–44; memorials, 98–101, 138; memory, truth, and justice, 40; memory-­based social movements, 69–71; memory-­ scapes, 162, 207n7; monument, 29; multidirectional memory, 41; postmemory, 31, 36, 136, 170, 179; recovery and, 26; retributive justice and, 41–42; site of memory, 98–128 (see also specific locations); transmission, 31, 160; trauma and, 19; vio­lence and, 11 Menchú, Rigoberta, 20, 198n17 Menem, Carlos, 46, 49, 54, 78, 92, 118, 119, 127 Mengele, Josef, 196n20 Merry, Sally Engle, 44 Meyer, Marshall, 77, 202n8 migration. See immigration “Mi hija, mi amiga” (Guterman), 37 military coup, 4–5, 43, 102. See also dictatorship

Index

military junta, 4, 9, 48–49, 69, 70, 106, 133–134, 195n4 Minow, Martha, 12, 45, 137, 206n13 Moisés Ville, 22–23, 186–188, 199n20 Monti, María Elena, 52 Montoneros, 46, 135, 195n4 monumentality, 204n6 monuments, 98–101, 148, 183, 203n1, 204n10; AMIA monuments, 16, 107, 111–112; dictatorship monuments, 103–104. See also counter-­monuments Monument to the Memory of the Victims of the Terrorist Attack on AMIA, 111 Monument to the Victims of State Terrorism, 103–105 Monument to the Victims of the AMIA Bombing, 113–115 mourning, 74–75, 105, 176, 199n34 Movimiento Judío por los Derechos Humanos (MJDH), 69 narrative: limits of language, 38, 159, 166; survival and, 18–19, 33, 37, 45–46, 50, 94, 170; testimony and trauma, 3, 11–12, 19–21, 38, 64, 116–117, 135, 140, 146, 154, 198n16; tool of repression, 195n7 national identity, 99–100, 132–134 nationalism, 8, 196n17 National Security Doctrine, 4, 201n34 Nazis, 32, 61, 67, 130–132, 154, 156, 167; Nazis in Argentina, 3, 7–9, 23, 130, 136, 162, 196n20, 206n12; Nazism, 3, 8, 145–146, 162, 164, 171; neo-­Nazis, 9, 136, 162 Niños de la Shoá, 85, 138–141, 146–147, 149–150, 156, 160, 177–178, 180, 206n20, 207n8. See also Generaciones de la Shoá Nisman, Alberto, 3, 55, 62, 195n1, 201nn26–27 Nora, Pierre, 99 Novera, Lea, 149, 151, 206n23, 207n32 Nunca Más Report, 2, 5–6, 76, 80, 125, 130, 133–134, 137, 167, 184,

235 195–196n9; detention centers, 195n5; translations, 198n18. See also CONADEP (Comisión Nacional sobre la Desaparición de Personas)

Obama, Barack, 204n21 Obelisk, 87 Oesterheld, Elsa, 178–180 Olimpo, El (“The Olimpo”), 53, 125. See also dictatorship; torture Once (neighborhood), 85, 109, 131, 139, 158–159, 170, 172, 206n18 Operation Condor, 195n5 order, 3, 4, 12, 13, 18–19, 64, 70, 97, 120, 133, 195n4, 201n34 Organ­ization of American States (OAS), 54–55, 77 owner­ship of memory, 100 Palace of Justice, 40, 60, 82, 88, 114, 173 Papiernik, Charles, 171 Parque de la Memoria, 102–106, 121, 152 Partnoy, Alicia, 10 Pasteur Street, 23, 28–29, 67, 74–75, 94–95, 107–110, 131, 139, 159, 184, 203n24 Pavlotzky, Elena, 72–73, 117 Payne, Leigh, 49, 136, 204n9 Pegoraro, Evelín Karina Bauer, 107 Peretz School, 172 Pérez Roisinblit, Rodolfo Fernando, 107 Per­for­m ance, 3, 77, 88, 199n2, 204n11; agency and, 14, 55, 81, 94, 128; performativity, 42 Perón, Juan Domingo, 8–9, 23, 162, 196n20 Peronist Youth, 46, 153 perpetrators, 5, 7, 52; confessions, 136, 204n9; justice and impunity, 1–2, 11, 40–44, 48–50, 53, 63, 70, 96, 102, 128, 131, 137, 184; protests against, 66–67, 70, 96. See also genocida persianas, 25, 27 photo­g raphs, 34, 36, 56, 69, 100–101, 103, 147, 161, 174, 199n32

236

Index

Piedras por la justicia (Brodsky), 106 pi ­lotes. See security Plaza del Congreso, 59, 71, 72, 73, 93. See also Tarde de los Paraguas Plaza de Mayo, 1–2, 11, 27, 42, 69, 71–72, 94, 101–102, 116, 184. See also Madres de Plaza de Mayo Plaza Lavalle, 40, 66–67, 76, 85, 88, 91–95, 108, 127, 206n18. See also Plaza of Memory Plaza of Memory, 67, 81, 82–84, 86, 111–116, 120, 123, 172, 184, 203n24. See also Plaza Lavalle pluralism, 46, 53, 63, 81, 84 Poch, Julio, 51–52 pogrom de noviembre, el, 160. See also Kristallnacht Poland, 31–33, 139, 162–163, 167, 169–170, 171, 173; Bialystok, 21, 146–149; Lodz, 33–34, 161–167 Polish language, 22 po­l iti­cal prisoners, 135 postmemory, 31, 36, 136, 170, 179. See also Hirsch, Marianne precarity, 9, 63, 64, 68, 71, 92, 94, 107, 109 presence, 38, 74, 86, 207n6; absence and, 98, 199n26; activism and, 1, 42–43, 66, 82–84, 87, 90–91, 95, 101, 104, 127; witnessing and, 173–175, 178, 184 Priebke, Erich, 196n20, 207n2 Prisoner without a Name, Cell without a Number (Timerman), 6, 135, 202n8 Proceso de Reorganización Nacional (Pro­cess of National Reor­g a ­n i­z a­t ion). See dictatorship; “Dirty War” protest. See actos Proyecto Aprendiz, 160 public sphere, 28–31, 68, 71–80, 83–85, 90, 99, 136, 140, 162, 203n27 reconciliation, 45, 134, 137 reconstruction, 100–101 recovery, 3, 11, 13, 18–19, 20–21, 26, 29, 41, 106, 182–183, 199n22 reform, 41, 63, 117

Reisfeld, Adriana, 58 Reisfeld, Noemí, 58 re-­membering, 182, 198n6. See also Coutin, Susan remembering. See memory repair, 3, 11, 13, 18–19, 26, 35–37, 106, 182–183, 195n2 repre­sen­t a­t ion, 12, 45, 98–101, 106, 108, 198n4, 204n6; vio­lence and terror and, 18 repression, 1–11, 41–45, 63–64, 70, 76, 79, 104–105, 133–134, 137, 154–156, 158, 195n5, 196n11 retributive justice, 2, 12–13, 40–42, 44–46, 50, 59, 63–64, 68, 137 return to life, 124–126, 182–183 Río de la Plata (River Plate), 5, 49, 88, 102, 103, 104, 121, 174 Robben, Antonius C.G.M., 4, 19, 45, 63, 133–134, 198n9, 199n34, 205n7 Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, 205n6 Rosi, 167–170, 173 Rothberg, Michael, 41, 99–100, 198n19, 203n33, 206n27 Rozanski, Carlos, 205n8 Rozín, Elsa, 141–146, 157, 160, 170, 176 rule of law, 2, 55, 60, 63, 71, 80, 120, 123, 200n22, 206n13; 2 × 1 ruling, 1, 57, 63–64, 107, 183–184, 201n38. See also civil society; democracy Rus, Daniel Lázaro, 154 Rus, Natalia, 154–156, 157 Rus, Sara, 56, 154–156, 168 Rus­sian language, 22, 139, 148–151, 162–163 Sakolsky, Rebeca “Tita,” 126–128. See also Tita Sanford, Victoria, 21 Schettini, Adriana, 124–125, 206n23 Scilingo, Adolfo, 5, 49, 204n9 Secreto, El (Bekeris), 173 security, 111–112, 152, 167, 197n29, 202n13; anthropology of, 204n16; pi­lotes, 111–112, 204n15

Index

Semana Trágica (Tragic Week), 8, 196n17 Sherit Hapleitá, 138, 162 Shoah, 32–33, 56, 84–85, 129–130, 138–140, 150, 154, 162, 171–173, 199n30. See also Holocaust Shoah (film), 136 Shoah Visual History Foundation, 136, 146 shofar, 82–83, 86, 91–92, 113–114, 121–122, 126, 172–173, 185 Shtern, Lina, 176 SIDE (Secretaría de Inteligencia del Estado), 54–55, 59 silence, 5–7, 11, 29, 30–34, 40, 83, 90, 97, 99, 123, 135–138, 205n11, 207n10 Simón, Julio Héctor, 126 Sirota, Graciela, 136 social change, 197n1, 202–203n22 social justice, 77, 195n2 social memory, 198n9 social movements, 2, 10, 12, 29, 42–43, 57, 68–78, 107, 197n1, 199n5 South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission, 137, 202n14, 206n13 Soviet Union, 34, 121, 146–148, 150–151, 164, 175–176, 186, 208n17 state terrorism, 5–6, 62, 76, 97, 103–105, 113, 131, 133, 155, 198n19 Stern, Lina. See Shtern, Lina Strejilevich, Nora, 10 Stupnik, Mira, 149, 150–151, 206n23, 207n31 Sturken, Marita, 99, 199n26 subversive, 9, 52, 59, 70, 97, 104, 201n34, 204n9, 205n10; category of, 4, 6, 131–133, 195n4, 195–196n9; subversion, 4, 70, 133–134 Sugihara, Chiune, 147, 207n30 survivors, 75, 80, 206n15; ­children of Holocaust survivors, 31, 85, 198n15, 206n16, 206n20, 207n6; Holocaust survivors in Argentina, 81, 140, 206n23, 207n10; silence and, 31–33, 135–138, 175–176, 207n10; strug­g les for survival, 64; testimony and

237

memory, 3, 7, 12, 18–21, 37, 181–182, 198n19, 200n10 Susevich, Carlos, 29–31, 38, 50, 57, 58, 61, 168 Szejer, Eugenia, 57, 89–91, 92–93, 118, 124 Sztarker, Reizl, 85–86, 172 Tablada Jewish Cemetery, La , 90, 111 Tarde de los Paraguas (After­noon of the Umbrellas), 71–72, 73, 93 Taylor, Diana, 42–43, 55, 69–70, 77, 198n19, 199n32 “Tëmnaya Noch” (song), 151 temporal disruption, 3, 64, 68, 117, 161, 182 temporality, 41, 98, 117, 130, 138, 156, 159 terror, 18, 42, 44, 55, 59, 69–70, 104, 134 Testimonies of Life, 153–154, 156 testimony, 45; and citizenship, 84–86; confession, 49, 136, 204n9; indifference and, 135; of Madres de Plaza de Mayo, 152–156, 207n37; narrative, trauma and, 19–21; power and impact of, 80; as sites of memory and public disruption, 116–120; of survivors, 140–150, 206n23; survivors and, 146; Trial of the Juntas, 13, 42, 46–49 “theory of the two demons,” 196n11 Tiempo de recordar (Fuchs), 33, 161 tikkun olam, 195n2 Till, Jaique, 122 Timerman, Jacobo, 6, 10, 125, 135, 202n8, 205n5 Tita, 113, 125, 126–127, 128 Toker, Eliahu, 175–176 torture, 4–6, 9–10, 40, 42, 47–49, 51, 53, 134–137, 205n8; ESMA torture center, 44, 47, 49, 67, 104, 130, 183. See also repression transitional justice, 2, 18, 43, 44–46, 50, 80–81, 83, 120, 136–138, 201n25, 206n13; in Latin Amer­i­ca, 76, 206n14; normative understandings of, 64, 68, 98, 182; truth and, 21, 54, 76, 84

238

Index

trauma: coherence, 3, 12, 18, 19–21, 64, 84, 117, 184; comfort in, 198n15; memory and, 19; narrative and testimony, 19–21; vacío and, 18–19 Trial of the Juntas (1985), 13, 42, 46–49, 200n20 ­t rials, 44–46. See also specific t­rials truncation, 152, 157 truth, 44–45; delayed justice and, 49–50, 62; desiring, 58–61, 76–77; obfuscation and, 204n21 truth commissions, 21, 44–45, 58–59, 80–81, 137, 206n14. See also CONADEP (Comisión Nacional sobre la Desaparición de Personas) Turner, Victor, 11, 12, 15, 65, 183, 184. See also liminality 2 × 1 ruling, 1, 57, 63–64, 107, 183–184, 201n38 “Tzedek, tzedek, tirdof,” 83, 114, 126 Ukraine, 21, 32, 186 uncertainty, 5, 16, 50, 53, 55, 61–63, 92, 94, 120 understanding, 27–29, 159, 163, 166, 179 vacío: coherence in, 37–39; liminality and, 183; limits of understanding, 27–29; presence of, 30, 117, 146, 154–157; retreat from world, 25–27; trauma and, 18 van Gennep, Arnold, 11. See also liminality Verbitsky, Horacio, 5, 49, 204n9 Videla, Jorge, 48, 106 Villa Crespo (neighborhood), 25, 87, 170 Viola, Roberto, 48

vio­lence, 18, 19; articulating, 198n5; and commemoration, 99; ethnographic approaches to, 197n33; genocide and, 6–7; impunity and silence, 11; narrative and testimony of, 20–21; silence and, 205n11; truth commissions and, 44–45; war memory, 203n4. See also genocide wall of names, 17, 38, 74, 107–111, 112 Wang, Diana, 31–33, 38, 59, 84–85, 123, 129–130, 138–140, 151, 156, 160–161, 170–171, 173, 177, 206n16, 207n10 Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, 150–151, 158, 171–173 Weinstein, Ana (Anita), 116–117 Wiedenhoff, Geronimus, 51–52 Wieviorka, Annette, 80, 136–137, 201n24 witnessing, 81, 175–176, 198n4; era of the witness, 80, 136; in juridical spaces, 54–57, 173–175; limits of, 179–180 World War II, 6–9, 22, 31, 33, 70, 129, 135, 147, 161–162, 167–169, 176 Yale Fortunoff Archives, 136 Yiddish, 8, 22, 32, 85–86, 138–139, 162–166, 186–187, 196n21 YIVO (Argentine Yidisher Visnshaftlekher Institut), 7. See also IWO Yo acuso speech, 78, 118–120 Yom HaShoah (Holocaust Remembrance Day), 158 Young, James, 100, 128, 204n6 Zito, Luciano, 122

About th e Auth or

Natasha Zaretsky is a se­n ior lecturer at New York University and a visiting scholar at the Center for the Study of Genocide and H ­ uman Rights at Rutgers University, where she leads the Truth in the Amer­i­cas proj­ect. She coedited Landscapes of Memory and Impunity: The Aftermath of the AMIA Bombing in Jewish Argentina (with A.  H. Levine, 2015). Her documentary film, 1000 Mondays, explores memory and justice in Argentina.