Buenos Aires Jewish Community
The Buenos Aires Jewish community was established in 1862, and held its first traditional Jewish wedding in 1868. The first synagogue was inaugurated in 1875. The Ashkenazi Jews from Eastern Europe who settled in Argentina were called rusos (Russians) by the local population.
In January 1919 in Buenos Aires, during a general strike, the police fomented pogroms that targeted Jews and destroyed their property. In the strike's aftermath, civilian vigilante gangs (the Argentine Patriotic League) went after so-called agitators (agitadores), and killed or wounded "scores of victims", including "numerous Russian Jews who were falsely accused of masterminding a Communist conspiracy".
European Jews continued to immigrate to Argentina, including during the Great Depression of the 1930s and to escape increasing Nazi persecutiion. "In 1939 half the owners and workers of small manufacturing plants were foreigners, many of them newly arrived Jewish refugees from Central Europe".
Jewish cultural and religious organizations flourished in the cities; a Yiddish press and theatre opened in Buenos Aires, as well as a Jewish hospital and a number of Zionist organizations.
Read more about this topic: Argentine Jews
Famous quotes containing the words jewish and/or community:
“I think the Messianic concept, which is the Jewish offering to mankind, is a great victory. What does it mean? It means that history has a sense, a meaning, a direction; it goes somewhere, and necessarily in a good direction—the Messiah.”
—Elie Wiesel (b. 1928)
“I am convinced that our American society will become more and more vulgarized and that it will be fragmentized into contending economic, racial and religious pressure groups lacking in unity and common will, unless we can arrest the disintegration of the family and of community solidarity.”
—Agnes E. Meyer (1887–1970)