Either the Right or the Left could have arrested me, or kidnapped or murdered me, in that country, so young and far away, because they both had sufficient motive. I was the kind of journalist they didn’t need to force into history; I entered willingly. No one had to impose my enemies on me. I selected them myself. I didn’t avoid them: I pointed them out, marked them, attacked them.
Why then, in that arrogant journalist, that aggressive accuser of Right and Left, did they single out the Jewish aspect as the most dangerous, which must be eliminated?
In that world of political conspiracies, ideological alliances, dialectical adventures, why did they accuse the Jew, torture the Zionist, select the “Jewish conspiracy” as the most hated object?
I know the Argentine political situation, and I know that the army officers did not need to involve the Jew, even for strategic reasons, as a scapegoat. So the gratuitousness of the act frightens me, that is, the existence of a hatred so pure, so unreal, without cause and without object, without end, eternal.
Perhaps Hitler did the same, selecting the “Jewish conspiracy” as the major one among all those he could have chosen, and carrying the results of his hatred to its limits. But it is precisely that which is so frightening. The fact that those actions, which can still be seen and heard with such clarity after scarcely thirty-five years, should be yearned for, dreamed of, sought after by the Argentine military in the 1970s.
It is frightening to have discovered, in those long sessions of torture in the clandestine military prisons of Argentina, that what seemed unthinkable is thought; that the words which seemed unrepeatable are repeated; and that the silences which were incomprehensible, the passivity or indifference, are now explained and justified.
And it frightens me to think that we are all the same. That in a given moment, we Jews all become Jews again, only Jews. That a Jew is only that, a Jew. And that the others are not Jews. And really, they are not.
And above all, it frightens me that everything I am saying has already been said. That it has even been explained. Moreover, that all the possible answers have been catalogued and computed. And I suppose that I understand most of them. However, here I am, with all this having happened in my own life, and I don’t know what to do because I am paralyzed. It seems impossible that it has happened. Indeed, what seems impossible is that it all has been repeated.
Admittedly, it has not been repeated with the same magnitude. But does the key to it all lie in the scale? It is true that it has not been taken to the same limits, to the same competent manufacture of hatred. But is it possible that the key is to be found in the capacity, the systematization, the style?
I think that the key lies in the character of the hatred, its motive, its object. And it is that which has been repeated, returning like a perfect mummy that begins to walk, and offering us again its symbols, its magic, its excitement from other times.
Isn’t this frightening enough? Then let’s think that once again, after the hatred is repeated, so is the silence, the complicity of those who could have prevented it. Because there is another key: it could have been prevented. The degree of solidarity with the victims does not matter, because it is simply part of the human condition. What is important is that the crimes could have been prevented, and that is a sin of our historic condition.
What is frightening is to realize how content we feel because we suppose there are deeds that cannot be repeated. It is true that 6 million European Jews cannot be murdered; tortured and murdered. But if, only thirty-five years after this did happen, the Jew can be considered the enemy, tortured and killed for being that enemy, then he has kept his place in history, his historic condition persists. And his helplessness to change his relationship with history persists, as does the world’s inability to help him or understand him.
We were not all Jews in those hidden prisons. Many of us were. We Jews continued to be Jews, and being Jewish was a category of guilt, even when we were declared innocent of other offenses and absolved of other crimes.
I believe that all this could have been prevented. By the Jews themselves, by the Christians. But it was not. And remembering what happened in Europe, uniting the two experiences, the German one of the 1930s and the Argentine one of the 1970s, it is difficult to find consolation. There is no possible consolation.
In the clandestine prisons, and then in the official prisons of Argentina, they pounded it into my skin, my head, my bones: We Jews still occupy the same place in history. We have that place reserved.
The only thing we cannot guess is the magnitude that place will have, nor the moment we will be pushed into it. What is the magnitude of what happened in Argentina? Was it really important? Most of those killed were not Jews, and if we continue to feel sorry for ourselves as Jews, we will end up being hated by the non-Jewish victims, by the families of those priests and nuns who were murdered, by the parents of those missing boys and girls who were raised in the Christian faith. But in the solitude of prison, it is so sad to be beaten for being Jewish. There is such despair when they torture you for being Jewish. It seems so humiliating to have been born.
Anti-Semitism has always existed in Argentina, as in so many countries of the world. In the most democratic of countries, in one way or another, the Jew who enters into a relationship with his society—especially in politics and journalism—feels his condition as a Jew in reference to others more than in relation to himself. Others point it out to him if he —as a humanist, a freethinker, a liberal—has forgotten it, or not given it any special importance. But this circumstance is not pathetic, dramatic, not even bothersome.
In my long life as a journalist, as a political commentator, I have found difficulties that my colleagues did not have; that is, my Catholic colleagues. But they were not insurmountable problems. However, after my experiences in the clandestine prisons of Argentina, it is impossible for me to focus on these problems without being overwhelmed by the difference between Jewish and non-Jewish prisoners.
The struggle for human rights, for tolerance and democracy, against terrorist violence on the extreme Left and the extreme Right, was not easy. And it is true that there was more risk for a Jew, as the defamation campaigns organized by the Argentine government showed. But all that was bearable, that is to say, humanly bearable. Where the difference became unbearable was in the prisons. The humiliations and degradations to which the Jews were subjected, the special corporal punishments given to them, the insults. And at the same time, the world’s silent complicity in this degrading discrimination, this degrading pain.
According to an editorial on anti-Semitism in the Buenos Aires Herald, “Jews in Argentina take it for granted that if for any reason they go to prison, they will be treated far more harshly than Gentiles.”
I don’t want to forget, and I will not forgive. And every time I refer in any way to those years I have spent in prisons and the struggle I have confronted, and to the theme of human rights, I cannot help but point out this terrible Jewish destiny. In a situation of murderous and pitiless violence, it is difficult to decide to intervene with only the help of ideas and convictions, without belonging to any political party, without being protected by any organization, simply as an independent journalist. I have experienced it personally. I have seen it in many of my colleagues, Jews and non-Jews— many of them assassinated, imprisoned, or missing. But when in the midst of violence one has to make a decision, being independent and Jewish, knowing how alone one may be in confronting this hatred multiplied by the fact of being Jewish, it is a painful choice.
I am glad I made the decision in time, although during many hours of desperation I felt it would be difficult to keep on meeting the challenge. In any event, we should pay homage to those Jews who have decided to confront the violence of totalitarianism, knowing that in the fight for human rights they will be viewed in terms of their birth as much as their ideas.
Some military friends offered me what they regarded as sound advice: to leave the country for a couple o
f years until the most violent phase of the repressive process had passed. Turn over the management of the newspaper to my colleagues until the violence is quelled. Or, not publish certain articles. Or, not publish the names of people who disappeared every day. In short, to find some sort of compromise with reality.
This “realism,” this pragmatic spirit, is the most important mechanism of survival in a totalitarian country. The biological tendency to survive, manifesting itself in a rationalization of conditioning. A moral, practical, or ideological explanation of the attitudes that have to be acquired in order to survive.
One can say to oneself, my acts aren’t going to change history and will lead only to my death; but if I survive, I’ll be useful in the reconstruction of the country. If I publish the names of the disappeared, as their family members request, I won’t prevent them from being killed but will succeed in having myself killed, whereas if I don’t publish the names I’ll be able to survive in order to continue the fight. At such moments as these, nothing I do or print can modify events since the extreme sectors of the armed forces dominate the situation; whereas if I survive, I’ll be able to help moderate groups with my newspaper when they arrive at a position to assume power.
This conditioning toward reality is continually practiced by the large majority of the population. Whichever example you choose—Hitler’s Germany, Stalin’s Russia, Mussolini’s Italy, Castro’s Cuba—virtually the entire population will consistently seek a compromise with reality in order to be able to survive and be useful at a more propitious moment. So whoever departs from such almost biological pragmatism becomes suspect not only to those in power but also to the population in general.
On many occasions the military expressed their admiration for my open confrontations with the leftist terrorists, whom I accused in my newspaper and named, using no euphemisms. But they subsequently found it hard to fathom why, with the same vociferousness, I likewise accused those who used terrorist methods to liquidate left-wing guerrillas. They questioned my motives in fighting against military allies, the right-wing terrorists, and none of my replies provided them with any satisfaction. They invariably felt that the tactic of repression was of greater importance than the ideology behind the process.
My newspaper was the one most persecuted by the four Peronist presidents who ruled Argentina between 1973 and 1976, the most persecuted by Peronism of the Left and the Right. And there was no way of explaining to the military that I firmly believed in the need to repress all terrorism, but that this had to be and could be accomplished within the legal framework of Argentine law.
The military believed—today they realize the degree to which they were mistaken—that they would never have to answer for the extermination policy that was pursued between 1976 and 1980. When the fact emerged that aside from the independent brand of journalism I practiced, I was also passionately Jewish and passionately Zionist, all their schemes collapsed. A kind of panic overcame them, as if they were in the presence of Satan.
Some fifteen years ago I supported a group of democratic colonels considered to be the most brilliant men in the army. Those who discussed their positions used me as an element of criticism: if Timerman backs them, it surely means they’re incapable of winning; Timerman is goading them to action in order to divide* the army.
In 1977 I sent a reporter to a province to write articles on an army general who was doing a superior job of governing. The man was so fearful of being praised by my newspaper that he sent me a telegram saying he didn’t want any praise of his administration to be printed, since he was acting totally on behalf of the nation and not in quest of glory.
Some of the military felt that they could understand me as a religious individual or as a religious Zionist. But when I informed them, or printed the fact, that I wasn’t an observant Jew but that I was a Jew from a political point of view, and also a political Zionist, they felt a kind of terror before the unknown.
My Judaism was a political act. But Judaism as a political category proved impossible for the military to understand. At the same time there were many other things that were impossible to understand, that proved overly suspect for a mentality educated in anti-Semitism, inclined toward anti-Semitism, or openly anti-Semitic. They couldn’t accept or comprehend that an Argentine patriot could simultaneously be a patriotic Jew, a Zionist of the Left, a publisher of psychology books, a defender of Salvador Allende, of the Soviet dissidents, and of political prisoners in Cuban jails. Their world was simpler. And in order to survive in that world, one needed to choose between two extremes. For many, the great majority, it was simple. For me, impossible.
And this too is what made the Jewish leaders of Buenos Aires regard me as an irritating element.
In the pages of my newspaper, all the country’s anti-Semitic acts were protested and denounced. The president of the Jewish community, Dr. Nehemias Reznitsky, then explained to me that they ought not all to be protested, for that would create a confrontation with highly powerful sectors of the army. There was a better tactic: to protest some and maintain silence over others, in an attempt to negotiate and survive.
Psychologists were persecuted, democratic priests were persecuted, journalists, university professors, Jews and defense lawyers of political prisoners, all were persecuted or humiliated. The majority opted for silence, abiding by the new values that constrained their professions, that denigrated their creative spirit. The overriding majority accepted this golden ghetto and survival, the voluptuous sensation of security, that wonderful biological sensation of knowing beyond a doubt that you’re alive.
But if all are guilty of compromising with reality—or rather, innocent, since it is nearly understandable that life in any situation or circumstance is preferable to death—why should I have this obsession only about the complicity of the Jewish leaders in Argentina?
After the war, we began to fathom the magnitude of the Holocaust. And we promised ourselves that never again would this silent, methodical destruction of our people be repeated. We also promised ourselves, and swore repeatedly through the years, that never again would our own silence, passivity, confusion, and paralysis be repeated. We promised ourselves that never would horror paralyze us, intimidate us, allow us to develop theories of survival, of compromise with reality, of delaying our public indignation.
The point of reference for the Jewish leaders of Buenos Aires, as for Jewish leaders in many parts of the world, is the horror of the Holocaust. A gas chamber, a concentration camp, a selection made in front of crematorium ovens, is the point of reference that must determine whether the moment for total and open battle against anti-Semitism has arrived.
For me, the point of reference is equally the responsibility of Jews in the face of any anti-Semitic act. The point of reference is Jewish action; the Jewish silence of the Hitler years toward Hitler’s acts.
I was never able to understand how the horrors of the Holocaust could diminish the significance of the violation of Jewish girls in clandestine Argentine prisons. I was never able to accept how recalling and recording the activity of the Holocaust industry could render it seemingly unnecessary to confront openly the publication of anti-Semitic literature in Argentina and the fact that such literature is studied in the military academies of Buenos Aires.
To my mind, always, the incorporation of the Holocaust into my life meant never to allow the Argentine police to feel that they were authorized to humiliate Jewish prisoners. I never imagined that there would be Jewish leaders who would utilize the horrors of the Holocaust to maintain that the most advantageous response to certain anti-Semitic aggressions of a much less brutal nature was silence.
Thus, in my opinion the most important lesson of the Holocaust doesn’t lie in the horrors committed by Naziism. Expounding those over and over fails to move any anti-Semite to pity. But the Holocaust teaches us the need to understand the Jewish silence and the Jewish incapacity to defend itself; it lies in the Jewish incapacity to confront the world with its own insa
nity, with the significance of anti-Semitic insanity.
The Holocaust will be understood not so much for the number of victims as for the magnitude of the silence. And what obsesses me most is the repetition of silence rather than the possibility of another Holocaust.
The Jewish leaders of Argentina are trying to measure the impending danger by the magnitude of anti-Semitic acts. They are attempting to locate in their memories, fears, and beliefs some table of values that will enable them to predict the future, that will indicate how many Jewish schools must be bombed, how many anti-Semitic programs transmitted, how much anti-Semitic propaganda published for the trend to be regarded as of Holocaust proportions. Whereas I, using my newspaper as a base, fought so that not even the slightest anti-Semitic trace should be left in silence, for the silence of the Jews is the sole indicator of the current presence of the Holocaust in the Jewish historical condition.
The balcony of my house in a suburb of Tel Aviv faces the Mediterranean. It is large, almost the size of a room, and my wife has filled it with flowers, plants, and Max Ernst posters. Facing my balcony, the scarlet sun is sinking over a sea that’s too blue for my eyes, which are accustomed to the southern Atlantic. It hasn’t rained in Tel Aviv for nine months, and the ceremony of the sun blazing over the sea is repeated daily. This is a peculiarly odd moment in my life. Pity emerges as stronger than my memory, and more tender than my ideology. I think of those Jewish leaders in Buenos Aires, trying to find a point of equilibrium between their terror and paralysis and the anticipated pardon from the moderate military. I recall a time when they felt proud that a powerful Timerman was propounding in his newspaper such strong Judaism and Zionism, discoursing on an equal footing with the military, the Catholic Church, politicians, union leaders. They felt protected. Timerman’s downfall aroused the feelings deeply hidden in the subconscious of every Jew: the fear of leaving the medieval ghetto limits at night and of being unable, within those dark, narrow streets, to have recourse to the protection of the feudal lord.
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