NATIONALISM, EDUCATION, and IDENTITY: ARGENTINE JEWS and CATHOLIC RELIGIOUS INSTRUCTION in the Midst of World War II, As They St

CHAPTER FIVE

NATIONALISM, EDUCATION, AND IDENTITY: ARGENTINE JEWS AND CATHOLIC RELIGIOUS INSTRUCTION

In the midst of World War II, as they struggled against the limitations imposed on Jewish immigration while their brothers were being sent to the death camps in Europe,1 Argentine Jews were forced to face yet another challenge. In December 1943 the military government that had taken power in Buenos Aires six months earlier published a decree instituting Catholic education in all state schools. In the next decade, the Jewish community of this South American republic had to contend with governments that regarded Catholicism as a basic ingredient of Argentine nationalism. Non-Catholic Argentines, therefore, found them- selves in a peculiar situation in which they were not considered ‘good Argentines.’ This brief essay seeks to analyze the reaction of Argentine Jews to the growing infl uence of the Catholic Church in Argentina in general, and in the fi eld of education in particular, during the 1940s and 1950s. What I mistook at fi rst for Jewish passivity I later recognized as the moderation, sense of proportion, and pragmatic strategy of Jewish leaders in times of rapidly and radically changing political and social circumstances. At the same time, I became more aware of the gap that existed between anti-Semitic public discourse and its actual infl uence on the daily lives of most Argentine Jews in Argentina.

Military Ofﬁ cers and Catholic Bishops

The religious education decree was sponsored by the then justice and education minister, Gustavo Martínez Zuviría.2 He was an extreme anti-Semitic, Catholic nationalist and a leading activist in the

1 Leonardo Senkman, Argentina, la segunda guerra mundial y los refugiados indeseables, 1933–1945 (Buenos Aires, 1991). 2 This move had its roots in Pope Pius XI’s encyclical of December 1928, emphasizing the importance of Christian education for all children and young adults. 90 chapter five organization Acción Católica (Catholic Action), whom the Uriburu government appointed as director of the National Library in 1931. Martínez Zuviría was known for the novels he had written under the pseudonym of Hugo Wast, two of which, El Kahal and Oro, published in the mid-1930s, were venomously anti-Semitic. These two novels, inspired by such writings as The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, were widely disseminated, despite anxious attempts by the local Jewish community to prevent their distribution.3 The religious education decree underscored the alliance between the army offi cers in power and the church bishops. Signed on 31 December, the day that the military government dissolved all political parties, it instituted compulsory lessons in the Catholic religion in all state-run schools. The Argentine Church had fought to achieve this goal for more than half a century. In 1884, Law 1420 established that education in Argentina would be secular in nature and that religion classes could be taught only by religious personnel outside offi cial school hours. Schoolteachers were forbidden to teach religion. This law refl ected the secularization process that took place in Argentina in the second half of the nineteenth century, and the views of the liberal élites, who were strongly infl uenced by developments in state-church relations in Third-Republic France. Since the 1880s the Church had striven to restore religious education to the public schools and to take a hand in the spiritual formation of Argentine youth.4 After a few decades, the Church’s efforts began to bear fruit. In the 1930s, in the context of economic diffi culties engendered by the world depression, a retreat from political freedom following President Hipólito Yrigoyen’s ouster in September 1930, and growing conservatism, the

3 The German embassy in Buenos Aires bought 40,000 copies of these novels in order to distribute them free of charge among inﬂ uential Argentines. See Newton, The “Nazi Menace” in Argentina, 138. By 1955 Kahal had gone through 22 printings, a total of 107,000 copies. Oro went through 21 impressions, totaling 104,000 copies. The books were also translated into many other languages. See Graciela Ben-Dror, Católicos, nazis y judíos: La iglesia argentina en los tiempos del Tercer Reich (Buenos Aires, 2003): 108–114. On Martínez Zuviría and his nationalist and anti-Semitic views, see J. C. Moreno, Genio y ﬁ gura de Hugo Wast (Buenos Aires, 1969); César Tiempo [Israel Zeitlin], La campaña antisemita y el director de la biblioteca nacional (Buenos Aires, 1935); Daniel Lvovich, Nacio- nalismo y antisemitismo en la Argentina (Buenos Aires, 2003); Mundo Israelita [Buenos Aires] 8 June 1935, 15 June 1935, and 22 June 1935. 4 On the struggle over the place of religion in the schools, see among others José S. Campobassi, Ataque y defensa del laicismo escolar en la Argentina (1884–1963) (Buenos Aires, 1964); Susana Bianchi, Historia de las religiones en la Argentina: Las minorías religiosas (Buenos Aires, 2004).