The governor Jorge Obeid declared him an illustrious citizen of the province of Santa Fe.
Baruch Tenembaum, the creator of the International Raoul Wallenberg Foundation, received personnally, in a ceremony that took place yesterday in the local head office of the Government (Santa Fe 1959), the decree of this distinction.
Obeid himself presided the homage to Tenembaum, native of Las Palmeras – located in the north of Santa Fe-, but studied and was employed in Rosario. That is why, the communal president of Las Palmeras and the C.E.O. of the Wallenberg Foundation, Horacio Moreno were present during the ceremony.
Along with a group of pioneers with diverse positions, such as Jorge Luis Borges, Numo Werthein and Zulema Alzogaray, Tenembaum founded the ”Argentinean House in Jerusalem”. He also developed a vast task for the definitive establishment of diplomatic relations between the Vatican and the State of Israel, and did it by means of concrete actions, such as the audience he held with the Pope Paulo VI on January 13, 1965.
Now an illustrious citizen, he stood out also for the big impulse in the creation of the Program ” Rigtheous among the Nations”, that marked a milestone in the 30 years of interconfessional work carried out by Tenembaum. Also, the government highlighted that ”the work of Tenembaum gave him international recognition, such as that of the governments and institutions of Sweden, Portugal, Poland, the Vatican City and the United States”.
In 1997, he created The International Raoul Wallenberg Foundation, dedicated to keep the example of Raoul Wallenberg alive, with the aim of promoting peace as well as developing educational projects based on the concepts of solidarity, dialogue and understanding.
Translation: Egon Strauss
