Prisoner Without a Name, Cell Without a Number

by Jacobo Timerman

  If, therefore, I were to venture an explanation besides the fact that La Opinion’s existence had become intolerable to the extreme sector, which is simply a political interpretation, the only concrete element at my disposal, the only objective, palpable element, would be the long, interminable interrogations they put me through. These interrogations are a clue to what they were looking for, and therefore to the motive for my arrest.

  Any totalitarian interrogator—whether he be Nazi or Communist—has a definite conception of the world he inhabits and of reality. And any fact that fails to conform to this conception is suitably distorted in order to fit into the scheme. Distorted or explained, judged or restructured. For that reason, perhaps, those who hold a fluid, pluralistic view of reality may find certain convictions quite implausible that to totalitarians seem natural and convincing. There’s a ring of absurdity to it when you read about it, but a much more terrible aspect when you hear it in the context of an interrogation unraveling under the auspices of expert torturers.

  It sounds absurd to read that my torturers wanted to know the details of an interview they believed Menachem Begin had held in 1976 in Buenos Aires with the Montoneros guerrillas. It’s less absurd when you’re being tortured to extract an answer to that question. To anyone at all familiar with Begin, such an interview sounds unreal. But it seems quite coherent to someone who believes in the existence of an international Jewish conspiracy prepared to utilize any method to seize world power. The question then obeyed a perfect logic:

  1. In various raids of the security forces on residences that had been occupied by Montoneros supporters, copies were found of the Spanish edition of Begin’s book, Revolt in the Holy Land. Many of the paragraphs where Begin details anti-British terrorist activities were underlined.

  2. A guerrilla instruction manual found in Buenos Aires recommended Begin’s book as source material on terrorist operations.

  3. Begin was in Buenos Aires before he became Prime Minister.

  4. An interview had taken place. Where? .

  How would one answer this question? For many years, Argentine Nazi ideologues have claimed the existence of a Jewish scheme for seizing Patagonia, the southern zone of the country, and creating the Republic of Andinia. Books and pamphlets have appeared on this subject, and it’s extremely difficult to convince a Nazi that the plan is, if not absurd, at least unfeasible. Naturally, my questioners wanted to know more details than were presently available to them on this matter.

  * * *

  Question: We’d like to know some further details on the Andinia Plan. How many troops would the State of Israel be prepared to send?

  Answer: Do you actually believe in this plan, that it even exists? How can you imagine 400,000 Argentine Jews being able to seize nearly 1 million square kilometers in the southern part of the country? What would they do with it? How would they populate it? How could they defeat 25 million Argentines, the armed forces?

  Question: Listen, Timerman, that’s exactly what I’m asking you. Answer me this. You’re a Zionist, yet you didn’t go to Israel. Why?

  Answer: Because of a long chain of circumstances, all personal and familial. Situations that arose, one linked to the other, that caused me to postpone it time after time. . . .

  Question: Come on, Timerman, you’re an intelligent person. Find a better answer. Let me give an explanation so that we can get to the bottom of things. Israel has a very small territory and can’t accommodate all the Jews in the world. Besides, the country is isolated in the midst of an Arab world. It needs money and political support from all over the world. That’s why Israel has created three power centers abroad. . . .

  Answer: Are you going to recite the Protocols of the Elders of Zion to me?

  Question: Up to now, no one’s proved that they’re untrue. But let me go on. Israel, secure in these three centers of power, has nothing to fear. One is the United States, where Jewish power is evident. This means money and political control of capitalist countries. The second is the Kremlin, where Israel also has important influence. . . .

  Answer: I believe the exact opposite, in fact.

  Question: Don’t interrupt me. The opposition is totally fake. The Kremlin is still dominated by the same sectors that staged the Bolshevik Revolution, in which Jews played the principal role. This means political control of Communist countries. And the third center of power is Argentina, especially the south which, if it were well developed by Jewish immigrants from various Latin American countries, could become an economic emporium, a food and oil basket, the road to Antarctica.

  * * *

  Each session lasted from twelve to fourteen hours; the interrogations began unexpectedly, and always dealt with subjects of this sort. The questions were impossible to answer. In my fatigue and exhaustion, I tried not to engage in ideological discussions so as to avoid the trauma of direct questions and impossible replies.

  Why should the publisher of a newspaper who had devoted his entire career to political journalism in Argentina confess openly to being a Zionist? This was suspect. But then everything about me aroused suspicion.

  Why, when rumors of my possible arrest began to circulate, hadn’t I left the country? This too was suspect. Obviously, I’d been left behind for some mission.

  Why as a political journalist had I hobnobbed so often with the military? A natural event in a country where politics basically stems from the barracks, but something that struck them as suspicious.

  Which branch of the Jewish conspiracy did I belong to— the Israeli, Russian, or North American? A true dilemma, since I was born in Russia, had traveled to Israel, and was extremely friendly with the U.S. Embassy.

  At any cost, they found it necessary for me to declare myself a Marxist. This demanded many hours of questioning and harsh treatment, without my being able to make them understand the obvious contradiction between being a Zionist and being a Marxist, according to their understanding of Marxism. Finally they accepted my declaration of being a Zionist, but one who employed Marxism as a dialectical tool to explain the contradictions of society.

  I believe that in upper army echelons they finally acknowledged that Marxism and Zionism were mutually exclusive, yet still couldn’t understand what Zionism was. Each time the subject was broached, they didn’t quite know how to focus on it, and felt it might prove one of the pressing problems to be resolved after the battle against subversion was won.

  Perhaps it was decided finally to shelve this compelling issue for more urgent problems having to do with the balance of power, the economic crisis, and inflation. Besides, they may have assumed that the incorporation of enforced Catholic education—for Jews as well—would suppress many exotic ideologies such as Zionism within the school curriculum.

  Nevertheless, at the time of my arrest in 1977, the subject of Zionism obsessed them. Sometimes, outside the framework of formal questioning, they’d converse with me through the bars of my cell on Zionism and Israel, trying to accumulate information, taking notes. I advised them to go to the Jewish Agency for more information than I was able to provide from memory in my present physical state. This, they said, might be too compromising. I thought they were joking, but the subject, in their opinion, was inordinately serious and genuinely obsessed them.

  On one occasion, I was unexpectedly brought before the Minister of the Interior. That day Patricia Derian, Assistant Secretary of State in Washington for human rights and adviser to President Carter, had held an interview with President Videla during which she raised, with some vehemence, the issue of my predicament.

  The Minister of the Interior, who was concerned, wanted to see with his own eyes what state I was in. We’d known each other for years. Our conversation was long, but in no way transcendent. Only one point was noteworthy. I told him that I’d been informed I would be brought before a War Council, but I had not been told on what grounds or charges. I wanted to know whether this information was correct. He said that it was, but not to worry, since I was not a subv
ersive and would not be convicted by the War Council. Why, then, was I being imprisoned?

  * * *

  Minister: You admitted to being a Zionist, and this point was revealed at a meeting of all the generals.

  Timerman: But being a Zionist is not forbidden.

  Minister: No, it isn’t forbidden, but on the other hand it isn’t a clearcut issue. Besides, you admitted to it. And the generals are aware of this.

  * * *

  The fact that this prejudice existed among the upper echelons was of enormous concern to me, and I managed to alert the president of the Jewish community. In fact, he was already aware of it, having been personally informed by the minister, who had mentioned to him that the Zionists were extracting “blood and money” from Argentina for Israel. Yet I was never able to convince this leader to open the issue to public debate, allowing the entire community to participate publicly and inviting leaders who were prepared to debate openly with the military.

  His reply to me was that it was best to handle it on a personal level: he was accepting the further reduction of ghetto borderlines.

  While in clandestine prisons, I was almost always cloistered in a cell close to the torture chamber. This was especially painful, even when they’d ceased torturing me. Once I heard the screams of a woman being tortured because she was a Jew, though she kept insisting that she was Catholic and that her family name was German.

  Long afterward, in recalling this episode, I realized that at least that woman had a last line of defense—she could claim that she wasn’t Jewish. But what could a Jewish woman have done in her stead?

  The Jewish question dominated all the interrogations during my entire imprisonment. And although the government, its officials, and military personnel time and again put forth the most dissimilar explanations regarding my arrest, while never formulating a concrete accusation, the enormous undercurrent of irrational hatred behind these explanations, having no correlation with the words employed, could not deceive a Jew. It smelled of profound anti-Semitism, and the magnitude of their hatred increased along with the impossibility they faced of expressing that hatred openly and explicitly.

  I had ample time to speculate on the Jewish reality against its contemporary background. Not so much because of my preoccupation with anti-Semitism, but because it was evident that Argentine Jewry, like world Jewry, seemed incapable of responding to this level of aggression at its moment of occurrence and with a speed matching the speed at which Judaism was attacked. My younger son, in fact, was studying the topic of anti-Semitism at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. While under house arrest, I wrote him that I didn’t think any sociologist, politician, or philosopher could determine when anti-Semitism might disappear from the earth. I said that our task was not to convince the anti-Semites or to exterminate them, but to prevent anti-Semites from destroying us.

  So, when I saw that Argentine Jewish leaders refused to focus on the issue in its true dimensions, and began to recognize the extent of Jewish passivity, I was stunned—amazed, almost unable to encompass it, trying to unearth some elusive clue. Then gradually I became poisoned by hatred and vindictive desires. I would forget my torturers, I declared, but never the Jewish leaders who acquiesced calmly in the torturing of Jews. During a visit from the Israeli leader Yigal Allon, while I was under house arrest in Buenos Aires, I told him that I had not been humiliated by torture, by electric shocks on my genitals, but had been profoundly humiliated by the silent complicity of Jewish leaders. My incarceration and torture were a personal tragedy, but nothing more, for in view of the sort of journalism I practiced, the possibility of my arrest and assassination fit into the rules of the game. Whereas the panic of Argentine Jewish leaders constituted a nightmare within the tragedy. And it was that nightmare that agonized me and kept me awake.

  Of course, there’s still the typical statement I heard so often: Even if I had not been a Jew, I would have been assassinated because of the nature of the work I was involved in. That may be. After all, Hitler also sent homosexuals, gypsies, Communists, and others to concentration camps. But the Jews were sent as Jews. Something similar occurred and is still occurring in the Russian Gulags—all one need do is read the interrogations of dissident Jews in the Soviet Union.

  So, what can we do? One point has already been proved: Everything that happened once can happen again. And in the case of Argentina, the Jews’ historical memory functioned belatedly, slowly, and then possibly only because a well-known Jew was involved. But what is to be done for those who are still imprisoned—without accusation, without trial—enduring amiable anti-Semitic jokes or anti-Semitic rages, dependent wholly on the guard who happens to be on duty that day?

  It is best, I believe, not to elaborate extensively on this, but to return to simpler truths. I was never able to prove to my interrogators that Zbigniew Brzezinski was not a Jew or the head of the Latin American Jewish conspiracy, or that Sol Linowitz was not second in command and I his Argentine representative. Some things cannot be proven. And one of them, it strikes me, is the right of Jews to exist. Simply speaking, the only thing one can do is fight for one’s own right to exist. Under certain circumstances, anti-Semitic groups seize power in a country—or exercise a portion of that power. It may be for a long or a brief while. Argentina is in the former stage, and all the conditions exist for this to be a rather prolonged stage. That is certain. The other fact that’s certain is that the Argentine Jewish community is not about to defend itself. And, finally, one further indubitable fact: The international community is able to intervene, via innumerable mechanisms, in order to disseminate this information, particularly in Argentina. Only public knowledge can alter, to some extent, the course of these events, this downward slope in the march of history.

  In order to strengthen the Jewish spirit, people often resort to observations on the tragic fate that has accompanied their existence. I’ve learned, however, that the only thing that strengthens the Jewish spirit is understanding plus a sense of identity. Being is more important than remembering. I believe that the reminder of Jewish tragedies, punctiliously invoked by the Jewish community against its adversaries, has been futile in overcoming the paralysis and panic that envelop it. Those who succeeded in doing so in recent difficult years were impelled, and are impelled, by a clear notion of their Jewish identity. Only Zionism is capable of providing this identity with a movement, dynamic, and policy. On different occasions, since my release and even at times during interrogation, I was asked how I would have been treated had the Trotskyite or Peronist terrorists seized power there. I have no doubts. I would have been placed against a wall and shot, following a summary trial. The charge: counterrevolutionary Zionism.

  In this respect, as in so many others, Fascists of the Left and Right complement each other. They need, and agree with, one another.

  7

  The peephole of my cell opens and the face of the corporal on guard appears. He smiles, and tosses something into the cell. “Congratulations, Jacobo.”

  This is the first time anyone has spoken to me. Until now, the discipline in this place to which I was brought a few days ago has been extremely severe. With each change of guard, the light is turned on from outside and they shout out: “Name?” This means that the peephole gets opened four times a day, every six hours. I’m cursorily addressed at other times, when the three dishes of hot liquid that constitute breakfast, lunch, and dinner are delivered. The peephole is opened, and I’m asked: “Are you going to eat?”

  So the guard’s present remark is startling. My initial reaction, whenever a new event occurs, is always: What will happen to me now? True, I’m in a legal prison at central headquarters of the Federal Police in Buenos Aires. The cell measures nearly two meters in width and three in length. Furthermore, it has a privy in it so that I needn’t ask permission to go to the toilet, and it has a tap with drinking water. I can also wash up, but have no soap or towel. There’s a cement bed without mattress, though I was promised one. I have a blanket,
but gusts of cold air penetrate from the space above the wall, and I must walk for hours in an attempt to keep warm. If I calculate carefully the longest diagonal extending from the hole in the ground to the other end of the cell, I’m able to take seven steps. I’ve already covered a thousand laps.

  It’s better, much better, than in a clandestine prison. But no one talks to me. I don’t know what’s going to happen; the peephole is always shut. Everything is utterly still, except for the sounds and voices that penetrate from outside. Before dawn, while it’s still dark, I can hear the bugle, commanding orders, and the sound of a formation under my window. Then the sounds of courtyards being washed; also tin pots. This takes place alongside what might be called the window —a mere hole in a wide wall, with a double row of iron bars. I climb on the bed to look outside, but am unable to see anything because the wall is so thick. From the corridor on the other side of the peephole, I can also hear shouts—not commands but insults. Prisoners, no doubt, washing the passageway and being yelled at and struck by the corporal. Often I hear prisoners weeping. One of the punishments meted out to those who don’t do a good scrubbing job is to force them to undress, lean over with their index finger on the ground, and have them rotate round and round, dragging their finger on the ground without lifting it. This is called “looking for oil.” You feel as if your kidneys are bursting. But it’s even more entertaining to place a prisoner near the wall and have five hefty policemen form a little train by lining up in single file and holding onto the hips of the person in front. They come down the passage making the sound of a locomotive and, picking up speed, hurl themselves like a dead weight on the prisoner, plastering him against the wall. This is called the “choo-choo shock.” When they’re busy, though, they simply order the prisoner to run naked along the passageway, which is fifty meters from one end to the other, reciting aloud sayings dictated to him. He has to repeat these without stopping until they invent others. My mother’s a whore. . . . The whore who gave birth to me.