Vera Vigevani de Jarach, one of the best known referents, died in Buenos Aires at age 97. Born in 1928 in Italy, within a Jewish family, he arrived in Argentina with 11 years when his parents decided to escape fascism on the eve of the outbreak of World War II. His life was crossed by the tragedy on the two continents: in Europe, his maternal grandfather was deported by Benito Mussolini’s regime and died in the Auschwitz concentration camp; In Argentina, he suffered the disappearance of his only daughter, Franca Jarach, at the hands of the last dictatorship. He died without being able to say goodbye to her.
“Dear, intelligent companion, cultured, cheerful so many times and silently some others because in your mood I revolved the question that should never have existed: why?” Wrote Friday the president of Mothers of Plaza de Mayo – founding line,, informing of her death. Almeida stressed that his memory and that of his daughter will be alive in every step that the last mothers who remain standing and: “The smile of Franca will continue to be the flag of innumerable young people.”
Vera Jarach said that her family emigrated “on time” from an Italy in which religious persecution extended and that Jews would soon begin to deport. A year before getting on the ship that would take her to Argentina with her parents and her sister, a teacher told her mother that she could not go to school for being Jewish. “It was the first injustice that I saw personally. Valient, the teacher, because she risked to say what was happening,”.
After finishing his studies, Vera Jarach worked as a journalist for the Italian news agency ANSA. He married the Italian engineer Jorge Jarach and had a daughter, Franca. The young woman was in the last year of secondary school of the prestigious National College Buenos Aires when she was kidnapped on June 25, 1976. She was 18 years old. They looked for her everywhere, but they never saw her again.
Vera Jarach joined the mothers of Plaza de Mayo and worked tirelessly to denounce the crimes perpetrated by the last dictatorship and know what had happened with her daughter. Through the testimony of survivors, he learned that he had been kidnapped in the largest clandestine dictatorship detention center, the Higher School of Mechanics of the Navy (ESMA). Everything indicates that the military threw their body into the Río de la Plata in one of the many.
“[No hay tumba] Neither for my grandfather nor for Franca: it was the ESMA and then the flights of death. That is, the story is repeated, different eras but always the same tremendous ailment. Perversion and hate ”, two years before he died, Vera Jarach asked Argentina to never tolerate hatred, silence and indifference.
Several human and political rights leaders remembered Jarach on social networks for their active participation in causes for memory and justice. “Vera Jarach was 97. “He survived two genocides and had the courage to turn that pain into struggle,” added Senator Eduardo Wado de Pedro, son of disappeared. His last farewell will be Saturday at the Chacarita cemetery.
