Hernán Dobry presents "The Jewish Soldiers of the Malvinas" at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem

Madrid │Elías Levy Benarroch

Journalist Hernán Dobry will present his latest book, "The Jewish Soldiers of the Malvinas" (Hebraica Ediciones), in a lecture on March 25 at 16.30:XNUMX p.m. in the Seminar Room of the Central Library at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem's Mount Scopus campus.

This is the author's first visit to Israel, where he will present some of his work, which spans three decades and includes five books, one of which was published with Rabbi Daniel Goldman.

The conference will be moderated by Claudia Kedar, director of the Department of Spanish, Portuguese, and Latin American Studies at the University of Jerusalem (UHJ). The Israeli Association of Latin American Jewish Researchers (AMILAT) and the Abraham Research Institute of Contemporary Jewry at the university are also participating in the conference.

 The event is part of a worldwide tour Dobry has been conducting to share the life stories of the forty Argentines of Jewish origin between the ages of 18 and 20 who fought in the South Atlantic War. The tour has already taken him to ten Argentine provinces, Spain, the United States, and Mexico.

"The Jewish Soldiers of the Malvinas" brings to light, for the first time, the life stories of a group of young men who were sent to fight when their country needed them most and who, to a large extent, were subjected to anti-Semitic abuse from their superiors.

Each of them recounts in first person their experience on the Islands and what they endured while performing compulsory military service and, later, the abandonment by society they have endured over the past forty years.

The importance of "The Jewish Soldiers of the Malvinas" lies in three fundamental reasons: The first is to demonstrate, through these stories, the error of believing that a Jew is not an Argentinian, as has happened so often over the years, and to show how they served the country when the majority of the population was more concerned with the result of the National Team in the World Cup than with what was happening in the South Atlantic.

The second has to do with community memory, because it is essential that the work these young people carried out and the antisemitism they endured at the hands of their officers and non-commissioned officers due to their religious beliefs endure over time, so that no other leader of an institution ever forgets what happened in those years.

Ultimately, it will serve as a family legacy, ensuring that their experiences in the midst of the fighting will endure for generations after they are gone, and that the memory will not be limited to oral recollection, which ultimately ends up distorting what actually happened.

Dobry is a journalist with a PhD in History (UTDT) and a Master's degree in International Relations and Negotiations (FLACSO – San Andrés – University of Barcelona). He serves as director of the Desarrollo Energético y Minero website and co-host of the radio program "Letras y Corcheas" on Eco Medios AM 1220 in Argentina, and the tourism program "Pasaporte al día" on the same station.

Throughout his career, he has worked at Bloomberg TV, Perfil, BNamericas, IIICorp, REDD Intelligence, Inversor Global, Sala de Inversión América, and has published in El Cronista, Clarín, Haaretz, Infobae, Fortuna, among other media outlets, and as co-host of the podcast La usina del tango, on El Debate in Spain.

He has written the books “Operation Israel: Argentine rearmament during the dictatorship (1976-1983)”, “The Rabbis of the Malvinas: The Argentine Jewish community, the South Atlantic War and anti-Semitism”, “The Jews and the dictatorship: The disappeared, anti-Semitism and resistance”, “Being Jewish in the seventies: Testimonies of horror and resistance during the last dictatorship”, “Risky country: How to interpret the economy and financial markets”.

Two of them (The Rabbis of the Malvinas Islands and Being Jewish in the 1970s) were declared of “cultural interest and interest for the promotion and defense of Human Rights” by the Buenos Aires City Legislature.