page_title: Juan Perón
section_title: Jewish and German communities of Argentina
hierarchical_section_title: Juan Perón / Fascist influence / Jewish and German communities of Argentina
context_page_description: Juan Domingo Perón was an Argentine Army general and politician. After serving in several government positions, including Minister of Labor and Vice President, he was elected President of Argentina three times, serving from June 1946 to September 1955, when he was overthrown in a coup d'état, and then from October 1973 until his death in July 1974.
  During his first presidential term, Perón was supported by his second wife, Eva Duarte: they were immensely popular among the Argentine working class. Eva died in 1952, and Perón was elected to a second term, serving from 1952 until 1955. During the following period of two military dictatorships, interrupted by two civilian governments, the Peronist party was outlawed and Perón was exiled. When the left-wing Peronist Héctor José Cámpora was elected President in 1973, Perón returned to Argentina and was soon after elected President for a third time. His third wife, María Estela Martínez, known as Isabel Perón, was elected as Vice President on his ticket and succeeded him as President upon his death in 1974.
  Although they are still controversial figures, Juan and Eva Perón are nonetheless considered icons by the Peronists.
context_section_description: “Fewer anti-Semitic incidences took place in Argentina during Perón’s rule than during any other period in the 20th century.”
  — Raanan Rein
  In Nuremberg at that time something was taking place that I personally considered a disgrace and an unfortunate lesson for the future of humanity. I became certain that the Argentine people also considered the Nuremberg process a disgrace, unworthy of the victors, who behaved as if they hadn't been victorious. Now we realize that they [the Allies] deserved to lose the war.
  (President Juan Perón on the Nuremberg Trials)
  Fraser and Navarro write that Juan Perón was a complicated man who over the years stood for many different, often contradictory, things. In the book Inside Argentina from Perón to Menem author Laurence Levine, former president of the US-Argentine Chamber of Commerce, writes, "although anti-Semitism existed in Argentina, Perón's own views and his political associations were not anti-Semitic...." Laurence also writes that one of Perón's advisors was a Jewish man from Poland named José Ber Gelbard. U.S. Ambassador George S. Messersmith visited Argentina in 1947 during the first term of Juan Perón. Messersmith noted, "There is not as much social discrimination against Jews here as there is right in New York or in most places at home..."
  Perón sought out other Jewish Argentinians as government advisers besides Ber Gelbard. The powerful Secretary of Media, Raúl Apold, also Jewish, was called "Perón's Goebbels." He favoured the creation of institutions such as New Zion (Nueva Sión), the Argentine-Jewish Institute of Culture and Information, led by Simón Mirelman, and the Argentine-Israeli Chamber of Commerce. Also, he named Rabbi Amran Blum as the first Jewish professor of philosophy in the National University of Buenos Aires. After Argentina became the first Latin American government to acknowledge the State of Israel, Perón appointed Pablo Mangel, a Jewish man, as ambassador to that country. Education and Diplomacy were the two strongholds of Catholic nationalism, and both appointments were highly symbolic. The same goes for the 1946 decision of allowing Jewish army privates to celebrate their holidays, which was intended to foster Jewish integration in another traditionally Catholic institution, the army.
  Argentina signed a generous commercial agreement with Israel that granted favourable terms for Israeli acquisitions of Argentine commodities, and the Eva Perón Foundation sent significant humanitarian aid. In 1951 during their visit to Buenos Aires, Chaim Weizmann and Golda Meir expressed their gratitude for this aid.
  The German Argentine community in Argentina is the fourth-largest immigrant group in the country, after the ethnic Spanish and the Italians. The German Argentine community predates Juan Perón's presidency, and began during the political unrest related to the 19th-century unification of Germany. Laurence Levine writes that Perón found 20th-century German civilization too "rigid" and had a "distaste" for it. Crassweller writes that while Juan Perón preferred Argentine culture, with which he felt a spiritual affinity, he was "pragmatic" in dealing with the diverse populace of Argentina.
  While Juan Perón's Argentina allowed many Nazi criminals to take refuge in the country following World War II, the society also accepted more Jewish immigrants than any other country in Latin America. Today Argentina has a population of more than 200,000 Jewish citizens, the largest in Latin America, the third-largest in the Americas, and the sixth-largest in the world. The Jewish Virtual Library writes that while Juan Perón had sympathized with the Axis powers, "Perón also expressed sympathy for Jewish rights and established diplomatic relations with Israel in 1949. Since then, more than 45,000 Jews have immigrated to Israel from Argentina."
caption: Golda Meir talks with Evita Perón on Meir's visit to Argentina, 1951.
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