Memorias olvidadas: los judíos y la recordación de la Shoá en Buenos Aires, 1942-1956

This dissertation examines an ensemble of memorial works of the Shoah undertaken by various individuals and institutions of the Jewish community of Buenos Aires between 1942 and 1956. In spite of having lived through the war and the Shoah at a distance and safe from the Nazi threat, this community was the protagonist of intense and productive memorial endeavors. However, such projects were often forgotten, mainly because of the gradual abandonment of the language in which they were developed and recorded: Yiddish. Through an approach both chronological and thematic, I trace and analyze local and transnational, cultural, religious, familial and political dimensions of memory throughout the years of the “Final Solution” in Europe and the first postwar decade, when the intensification of the Cold War and the foundation of the State of Israel (within the international realm), as well as the Peronist regime (within the national realm), had direct impact on the dynamics of the community and also on the struggles regarding the meanings of the past. Hence, this dissertation represents a general contribution to the knowledge of memorial production processes by minority groups. Sources drawn upon for this research include the Argentine daily press, Jewish newspapers and periodicals in different languages, institutional documents, family letters, books, oral testimonies, photographs and illustrations.