Buenos Aires - 8 June 2005 - UkiNet

Argentine President Nestor Kirchner has repealed a secret order that prohibited the entry to this country of Jews fleeing the Holocaust. The order denied entry to thousands of Jews, condeming them to certain death in Nazi-occupied Europe during World War II and restricting their entry to Argentina in the immediate post-war years.

Argentine Foreign Minister Rafael Bielsa, speaking at the ceremony, apologized for the long delay in making the order public, while pointing out the need to "rebuild the truth with infinte patience."

An appeal demanding the overturn of secret "Directive 11" had been presented in April by author Uki Goņi, whose grandfather Santos Goņi was among the many Argentine diplomats who enforced the order over 60 years ago. His appeal received the endorsment of leading Argentine intellectuals, Holocaust survivors and Jewish institutions.

...‘this was a state secret that became a family secret’...

"In application of this inhuman order, my grandfather denied visas to Jews fleeing the Holocaust," said Goņi at the ceremony during which Argentine Foreign Minister Rafael Bielsa signed the repeal of the order, as President Kirchner looked on.

Goņi pointed out that "this was a state secret that became a family secret" the knowledge of which turned him into "an involuntary custodian of an abhorrent fact that until now did not appear in Argentina's history books."

Also present at the ceremony was Argentine historian Beatriz Gurevich, who discovered the only known surviving copy of the order seven years ago while working as an historical researcher at Argentina's Foreign Ministry. At the time, the Argentine government decided against declassifying "Directive 11", for fear it could damage Argentina's already-tarnished image regarding its role as a haven for Nazi war criminals after the war.

Gurevich provided a copy of the order to Goņi, who revealed it to the world with the publication of his book "The Real Odessa" (Granta Books, New York and London, 2002), although "Directive 11" oficially remained a classified document.

Gurevich, also speaking at the ceremony, pointed out the importance of the repeal, saying that "it is not easy to look back at the past, it requires moral courage." The repeal stands out as an act of reparation "not only for Jews, it is also a contribution to world tolerance and memory," said the researcher.

"In the archives of our Foreign Ministry there can be found many documents in which Argentine consuls, including my grandfather, report that they have denied visas to Jews in application of Directive 11," said Goņi.

At the ceremony last Wedenesday (June 8), Foreign Minister Bielsa praised the "talent, investigative seriousness, patience and insistence" of Goņi and Gurevich, as well as remarking the support granted by institutions such as the Wiesenthal Center, the International Raoul Wallenberg Foundation and Children of the Shoa to the request for declassification.

Diana Wang, of the Argentine Children of the Shoa association, remarked after the ceremony how immigration records show that she and her family had to pretend to be Catholics to enter Argentina in 1947. This was one of the various ways Jews had of getting around "Directive 11" to enter Argentina at the time. "I am now going to ask the government to rectify those records so I can appear correctly as Jewish," Wang said.

UkiNet - 2005