An Antifascist Struggle Conditioned by Ethnic Concerns

Thursday, January 5, 2023: 1:50 PM
Grand Ballroom Salon L (Philadelphia Marriott Downtown)
Raanan Rein, Tel Aviv University
As Werner Leopold came out of a Jewish self-defense activity in early 1960s Montevideo with his cousin Juancito, they could hear the tapping of their shoes on the cobblestones. It reminded them of the sound of the boots of the Nazi groups marching next to their house in Frankfurt in the 1930s. “This time around, we are the ones tapping,” they said, exchanging smiles. Not unlike young men and women in other countries in the Americas, Jewish-Argentines, Jewish-Uruguayans, Jewish-Chileans and Jewish-Venezuelans in the 1960s and 1970s organized themselves into armed self-defence groups and trained in response to growing antisemitism. This little researched history highlights the efforts of Jewish youth to break away from communal political traditions. They defied the practice of their parents and grandparents who preferred peaceful compromise over direct confrontation with either state officials or extreme right-wing organizations. Following the kidnapping of Adolf Eichmann and the anti-Semitic wave it provoked in South America, these Jewish youngsters defined organizations like Tacuara or Juventud Uruguaya de Pie as neo-Nazis. They took as a role model the ghetto fighters and the partisan of World War II and were now prepared to resort to violence in their struggle against anti-Semitism. Based on an oral history project, I describe how they not only guarded community institutions but also attacked nationalist thugs and printing houses of anti-Semitic literature. Unfortunately, as this article argues, they did not collaborate with leftist anti-Fascist groups, since they were also concerned in promoting Zionism and immigration to Israel.