Argentine President abolished a 1938 order by which Jews, persecuted by the Nazi Regime, were banned from entering the country.
President Néstor Kirchner abolished a 1938 confidential document which limited the entering of Jews and people persecuted by the Nazis into Argentina, yesterday.
He did so together with Foreign Minister, Rafael Bielsa, and Interior Minister, Aníbal Fernández, during a ceremony that took place at the Government House in Buenos Aires.
The confidential order, which was fostered by then Foreign Minister José María Cantilo and presently abolished after almost seventy years, denied visas to Jews and other people persecuted by Adolf Hitler’s regime.
Its abolishment was requested for years by the International Raoul Wallenberg Foundation, an NGO founded in Argentina and with branches in Caracas, Jerusalem and New York.
The controversial resolution number 11, of 1938, was discovered in 1998 by Argentine researcher Beatriz Gurevich during her work for the Commission for Elucidating the Nazi Activities in Argentina (CEANA, in Spanish), an organization created in 1997 by former Chancellor Guido Di Tella, during the tenure of President Carlos Menem.
However, the investigator decided to quit the Commission when, after having reported her finding the authorities decided to file it once again and not to disclose its contains.
On thanking the Government for the abolishment of that resolution the Vicepresident of the Wallenberg Foundation, Natalio Wengrower, warned about ”the rising of new forms of all kinds of discrimination whose promoters are waiting in ambush for a turn in the development of history to instill their wicked plans.”
”We remind them that history does not go back,” he assured.
Translation: Nora Bellettieri
