Mendele: Yiddish literature and language
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Contents of Vol. 4.223
December 8, 1994

1) Impressions of Buenos Aires (Zachary Baker)

1)----------------------------------------------------
Date: Wed, 7 Dec 94 14:16:46 PST
From: bm.yib@rlg.stanford.edu
Subject: Impressions of Buenos Aires

I have just returned from a trip to South America, the primary purpose of
which was to visit Buenos Aires and try to get a grip on the situation
with the Argentine YIVO, in the aftermath of the July 18th bombing of the
AMIA building, which claimed close to 100 fatalities and which devastated
the cultural and social nerve center of Argentine Jewry.  I was in Buenos
Aires from November 21-28, together with Neil Zagorin of the National
Yiddish Book Center, who was there from November 22-29.  Here are a few
of my own impressions of what we saw there (a more detailed report should
be appearing soon in "Der Pakntreger/The Book Peddler"):

Four-and-a-half months after the attack, the sight of the ruins of the
AMIA building is shocking, almost beyond description.  A gaping hole
consumes the space formerly occupied by the front portion of the 7-story
building; the rear of the building is largely intact but is entirely open
to the elements, and the apartment houses facing Pasteur 633 are
skeletal, with their windows blown off and the furniture now removed.
The block is barricaded and resembles a war zone (which indeed it was).
Urinals protrude surrealistically from walls that are now exposed to the
open air; the interior of the AMIA building is a shell that still has not
been entirely emptied of its contents.

Neil and I were guided through the AMIA building by Esther Szwarc, a
former teacher at the Sholem Aleichem school (which has close to 2,000
pupils) who is now the administrator of the YIVO-BA library. We entered
through a courtyard in the rear of what is left of the structure, the
lower floors of which still contain some furniture left behind by the
social service agencies that were housed there. To get up to the third
floor (corresponding, European-style, to the fourth floor of a building
in the U.S.) one must climb a rickety ladder and scale a ledge or two.
The first room that one enters is the former auditorium of YIVO-BA; its
stage is intact and a piano sits beside it.  The room is open to the
fourth floor and is surrounded by galleries where paintings once were
hung.  Shelves, now emptied of their books, also line the walls.
Adjacent rooms, where the archives and press collections were kept, also
contain empty shelving units and cabinets of various sorts.  (A table in
a former conference room adjacent to the auditorium was used by rescue
teams to perform surgery immediately after the bombing.) Only by looking
toward the front end of the building does it become obvious that a
catastrophe has occurred there.

The story of the removal of the YIVO-BA library from Pasteur 633 is quite
dramatic.  Hundreds of schoolchildren -- not all of them from Jewish
schools, and not all of them Jewish -- volunteered, as human chains were
formed to pass large plastic bags filled with books and newspapers from
the third and fourth floors down to the building's lower levels, and from
there they were moved off-site. The surviving paintings from the YIVO-BA
art museum -- including numerous canvases by the Polish-born artist
Mauricio Minkowski -- were detached from their positions by means of
improvised "fishing rods" and taken to locations where conservation
measures can be taken.  (This will be very costly, but essential, since
paint is chipping off many of the most badly damaged pictures.)

After the rubble was scrutinized for bombing victims, the debris toward
the front of the AMIA building was excavated and removed to an open field
near the Ciudad Universitaria, where investigators then sifted through it
and were thereby able to identify the vehicle used to transport the bomb
used in the attack.  YIVO-BA representatives did not have access to the
debris for six weeks, during which time any surviving books and documents
were exposed to the rain, cold, and wind of a Buenos Aires winter.  When
we visited the site, weeds had sprouted among the piles of brick and
concrete that had been deposited there. By chance, Neil came across a
broken Hebrew typewriter amidst the debris; otherwise, there was little
indication of its provenance, and clearly no books or papers may be
salvaged from that site, beyond what YIVO-BA people were able to unearth
right after Rosh Hashanah, when they finally gained access to the site.

Estimates that as much as 90% of the YIVO-BA's library and archives were
rescued from the AMIA building itself may well be accurate, though the
haste in which they were removed, combined with the loss of the library's
card catalog, and their subsequent dispersion to several different
locations means that it will be quite a while before YIVO-BA will be in a
position to state definitively what has been lost and what is needed.  As
was reported in the weeks after the bombing, it is known that the
library's reference collection (encyclopedias, dictionaries,
bibliographies, and the like), its collection of recorded music, most of
its early imprints (rare books), its videotapes, and its back stock of
YIVO publications (including many volumes from the "Musterverk" series)
were located in the front of the building and were destroyed.

What are YIVO-BA's plans for the immediate future?  About a year ago,
i.e., before the bombing, YIVO-BA and the Argentine branch of Congress
for Jewish Culture (also called Kultur-kongres) merged, and the combined
organization now calls itself IWO - Cultur-Congres (to use the
hispanicized spelling of its name).  It operates out of the longtime home
of the Kultur-kongres, Casa Simon Dubnow, at Ayacucho 483, and plans are
being laid for the reopening there of a small YIVO -BA library, while the
rest of the collections are to be moved to a rented location where they
can be unboxed, shelved and cataloged. Eventually, it is expected that
YIVO-BA will move back into a reconstructed Pasteur 633, which is to
serve as a cultural center for the Jewish community (kehillah agencies
would be housed else- where).  This plan, however, is quite provisory,
and is dependent on the requisite funding -- some of which may be
provided by insurance coverage.  At the time of the explosion, YIVO-BA
was also in the process of absorbing the Biblioteca Jose Mendelsohn, a
library that had been established under AMIA auspices to serve Jewish
educators.  The merger of the YIVO-BA and Biblioteca Jose Mendelsohn
collections was interrupted by the events of July 18th, but if and when
it resumes, the renewed YIVO-BA library will become an even more
important repository, especially in the field of Argentine and Latin
American Jewish history.

YIVO-BA is asking for assistance to help reconstruct those portions of
its collections which are known to have been destroyed, as well as for
practical suggestions for computer programs that can be used to recatalog
its collections.  The National Yiddish Book Center has offered to supply
upwards of 10,000 Yiddish books to replace volumes missing from the
YIVO-BA's collections; YIVO-NY, for its part, should be able to provide
other forms of assistance and advice.  As a fact-finding visit, I feel
that the trip was very successful.  In my next posting (which I hope I
will be able to send out soon), I will try to convey my impressions of
Jewish -- and Yiddish -- Buenos Aires, which is one of the most amazing
cities I have ever visited.

This messsage is being posted to HASAFRAN (the electronic bulletin board
of the Association of Jewish Libraries) and MENDELE.

Zachary Baker

[This is a good time to remind readers that they can make a contribution
to the rebuilding of YIVO-BA and in return receive a set of disks
containing all of Mendele.  A note to the shames will get you the
details.]

______________________________________________________
End of Mendele Vol. 4.223

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