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Introduction THE CATHOLIC CHURCH IN ARGENTINA AND THE JEWS Historical research regards the Holocaust of European Jewry as a unique event of special significance, not for the Jewish people alone, even though they were the primary victims of the Holocaust and were condemned to annihilation. The universal nature of the Holocaust rests, among other things, on the involvement of many other nations in some way, whether they admit it or not. Historians distinguish three categories of actors in the setting of the events: perpetrators, victims, and bystanders.1 In this respect the Catholic Church of Argentina during the period of the Holocaust has not so far been investigated. Yet its position merits study as a specific religious group owing allegiance to the Vatican that also belonged to the bystander category. The South American continent contains one of the largest concentrations of Roman Catholics in the world, and Argentina has an especially large Catholic community. An attempt to understand any facet of Argentinean history must consider the Church as a contemporary institution bearing weighty historical and social influence. Outside the official Argentinean Church many lay Catholic movements and new elites have developed, each with its own political character. Numerous organizations of an ideological, intellectual, social, and economic character flourish, alongside charities and educational institutions inspired by Catholicism.2 No historian interested in Argentine society can ignore the Roman Catholic factor, with its potential for change and as a frame of reference. The Catholic Church exerts enormous public impact. While religious faith cannot be quantified, its omnipresent influence has the potential to divide the world and to define frontiers.3 During the 1930s and 1940s the concept of Argentinidad became current among Argentine Catholics. This concept held that Argentine national identity and Catholic religious identity were one, and that the Church was the spiritual foundation on which society and state should stand so as to establish “Catholic Argentina.”4 Hence, Argentina’s challenge to researchers may be formulated as a question: How did the circumstances outlined above affect Graciela Ben-Dror 2 the attitude of the Catholic Church towards Judaism and the Jewish people during that crucial period of their history, the Holocaust? Many aspects of the situation in Argentina of the 1930s and 1940s have been studied including the nature of the Catholic Church in the relevant years, the official Argentinean policy on Jewish immigration, and the postures of the various nationalist streams. The “Nationalist Movement” and the Argentine radical Right have been a central topic of historical research in recent decades. Antisemitism is noted as one of the components of the Nationalist Movement's ideology, which merged with its characteristic antiliberal , anti-democratic, anti-communist posture. In none of this literature is there more than a few isolated pages devoted to antisemitism within the movement. However, all writers on the ideology and political attitudes of the highly diversified nationalist Right in Argentina agree that its ideological inspiration came from Europe, and the various groups adopted outlooks that were partly Hispanic, partly Fascist, and partly Nazi. In several areas the consensus among them was absolute, and most defined themselves as Catholic. Drawing on the anti-Jewish tradition found in both in Christianity and the writings of the European Right, they perceived Jews as dangerous foreigners whose entry into Argentina should be stopped. Researchers could scarcely ignore the antisemitic dimension entirely since it appeared in nationalist publications as an obsessive theme; but to date, no study has concentrated on this particular aspect. Studies on the Church and its place in Argentina, or works about Juan Domingo Perón devote only a few lines to well-known antisemitic clerics who wrote books and published articles in the nationalist and Catholic press vilifying the Jews. Thus, the present volume is the first systematic study on the Argentinean Church in relation to Jews and Judaism.5 The documented fact that from the 1930s onwards, well-known intellectuals in Argentina included radical antisemitic priests provides insufficient grounds to assert that the Church in Argentina as an institution was antisemitic. One must determine whether in their antisemitism these few clerics diverged from the official Church position, or whether antisemitism was an accepted norm in an institution that had a strong influence on public opinion. This study also examines the Church leadership as well as the middle and lower level clergy, and explores how the parish religious education system taught about Jews and Judaism in catechism classes. On the social and political level, it analyzes the work of...

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