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Compounding these charges, Columnist William F. Buckley Jr. cited Simon Wiesenthal, the famed hunter of surviving Nazis, as having told a Uruguayan journalist that Timerman had interfered with Wiesenthal's decades-long pursuit of Josef Mengele, the infamous Nazi physician who performed deadly experiments on Jews at Auschwitz. Buckley claimed that Wiesenthal had also characterized Timerman as a "leftist" who had been sent to jail not because he was Jewish, but because he was "accused of being in favor of terrorism." In Israel last week, Wiesenthal said the latter statement had been quoted out of context, though he had once mistakenly thought that Timerman had hindered the search for Mengele.
Other voices joined in the debate.
Much to the dismay of Timerman's advocates, many leaders of Argentina's 350,000-member Jewish community disagreed with his warning that a new Holocaust may be in the making there. Said Mario Gorenstein, president of the Delegation of Jewish Associations of Argentina, in a pointed reference to Timerman: "We don't seek to have publicity spectaculars." Other Argentine Jews suggested that Timerman has exaggerated their plight under the junta, thus making things worse for them. Following the lead of Argentine Jewry, influential U.S. Jewish leaders have downplayed the bombings of synagogues, the proliferation of virulent anti-Semitic literature and the discrimination against Jews in government service in Argentina.
Timerman has repeatedly compared the see-no-evil attitude of Argentina's Jews with that of Jewish leaders in Nazi Germany in the '30s, who begged Jews abroad to keep silent about Hitler's persecution in the hope that German Jewry might thereby be saved. In his book, Timerman declared that he had been humiliated not "by torture, by electric shock on my genitals" but "by the silent complicity of Jewish leaders."
No one questions Timerman's account of his personal ordeal. Never charged with a crime, he disappeared into the secret cellars and torture chambers of the military, like an estimated 15,000 to 20,000 other Argentine men, women and children. Timerman's critics, however, have questioned some of the conclusions he has drawn from that grim experience. Close observers of Argentine politics agree that anti-Jewish feeling runs deep in Argentine history and culture. But they doubt that the ideology of the junta is profoundly antiSemitic. They also question Timerman's theory that Argentine Jews are involved in a conspiracy of silence about their present peril.
Says Rabbi Morton Rosenthal, an expert on Latin America at the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith: "Anti-Semitism in Argentina is subtle and complex. There are no official laws directed against the Jewish people." Jacob Kovadloff of the American Jewish Committee maintains that human rights have improved in Argentina in the past six months. He also argues that "Timerman is not accurate when he says the Jews of Argentina are afraid to speak. Right now there is an open dialogue between the leaders of the Jewish community and high-ranking members of government."