30 years after AMIA bombing, Argentina’s Jews balance pain with hope for justice
After court ruled Iran and Hezbollah were behind 1994 community center bombing, Milei vows to reopen investigations into attack after decades of stonewalling and inaction
BUENOS AIRES (JTA) — Noah and Shai Abruj never met their uncle, Cristian Adrian Degitar, yet they still made the point of showing up on a cold winter night this week to honor his memory.
Degitar was 21, the age Noah Abruj is now, when he died on July 18, 1994, when a truck bomb ripped through the AMIA Jewish community center in this city, killing 85 people, including children, and widening the hole that had opened in the heart of Argentina’s Jewish community two years earlier when the Israeli embassy was bombed.
The Abruj brothers appeared at an event Wednesday on the eve of the bombing’s 30th anniversary focused on the victims and preserving their memory and the memory of an event that has defined Argentina’s Jewish history and, to a significant degree, its politics.
Different Argentine governments and judiciaries mismanaged or politicized the investigation, and as Jews and others have long complained, never truly followed through on bringing those responsible to justice — even after an Argentine court ruled in April that Iran and the Hezbollah terror group were behind the attack.
“I didn’t get to know my uncle physically… but my relatives always tell me things about him, about what he liked and what he didn’t, his passions and his hobbies. They show me lots of photos and tell me lots of anecdotes,” said Shai, 18.
“I don’t know if there will be justice in this case. I hope so. But… with or without justice I think it is extremely important to keep doing these types of events to remember, to teach and not to lose the memory of the ones who lost their lives during this attack. Future generations have to know what happened here.”
The event on Wednesday night was part of a slew of events held this week to mark the grim anniversary.
On the eve of the anniversary, US antisemitism envoy Deborah Lipstadt joined more than 30 counterparts from around the world in Buenos Aires to launch the “Global Guidelines for Countering Antisemitism” — a plan of action for governments and civil society organizations.
US Senate Foreign Relations Chair Ben Cardin led a Senate delegation to the commemoration in Buenos Aires, where President Javier Milei promised to right decades of inaction and stonewalling in the investigations into the attack.
Earlier this month, Argentina designated Hamas a terrorist organization and ordered a freeze on its financial assets. Milei, in a departure from his immediate predecessors, has cultivated strong ties with Israel.
The official ceremony began at 9:53 a.m. local time, the exact time when the car bomb exploded 30 years ago. US President Joseph Biden sent a letter and US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, in a separate release, said, “We are committed to holding the perpetrators of these vicious attacks to account.”
Yesterday also saw an international summit on terrorism in Buenos Aires organized by the World Jewish Congress and the Latin American Jewish Congress.
The focus of the summit was Iran’s role in orchestrating the 1994 attack and linking it to support for Hamas in the lead-up to the group’s October 7 attack last year, when thousands of terrorists invaded southern Israel from the Gaza Strip, killing some 1,200 people and taking 251 hostages, starting the ongoing war between Israel and the terror group.
Cardin, whose Jewish grandparents came to the US in 1908 from Lithuania, addressed the summit.
“Like my family, Jews in Argentina had to overcome systemic antisemitism,” said Cardin. “After the bombings here, this community refused to compromise its values, despite decades of delayed cover-ups; this community never gave up on justice.”
This year’s commemorations follow several significant shifts that have changed their flavor, including Milei’s ascension. The October 7 attacks also dethroned the AMIA bombing as the deadliest attack on Jews since the Holocaust.
Amos Linetzky, president of AMIA, drew parallels between the two attacks in his remarks at the official ceremony.
“We are speaking about October 7 here because the origin is the same: Iran,” he said. “Always Iran is supporting terrorism, the common factor between AMIA and October 7 is the hate, the hate against Jews and also the hypocritical reaction of the world.”
The attack has had ripple effects across the Diaspora, too. In a blog post, Rabbi Claudia Kreiman of Temple Beth Zion in Brookline, Massachusetts remembered her mother, Julia Susana Wolynski Kreiman, one of the 85 victims.
“Her death was a turning point for me. I left the country, moving to Israel and eventually the United States. I became a rabbi and educator, an activist and pursuer of peace, dialogue and social justice,” she wrote.
“I had been heading in that direction, but the killing of my mom further shaped my values and my determination to live a meaningful and intentional life — a life dedicated to the belief that humans can do better, that violence and hatred are not the ways of the world.”
