The first Garden of the Righteous in Latin America was inaugurated in Mar del Plata, a city in the province of Buenos Aires, on September 8 2023 at 14:00 local time.
The Jardín de las Personas Justas is the result of collaboration between the Gariwo Foundation, the Municipalidad de General Pueyrredon of Mar del Plata and the Casa D'Italia association. The ceremony was attended by delegations of students, the Italian, the Jewish and the Armenian communities and organizations involved in the protection of human rights in Argentina.
"Today in Argentina there is an important battle against negationism. Many would like everything to be removed. They say that these crimes were not born from the state, but were the result of a civil war between opposing extremists. And how to say that the victims are guilty of their fate", explains Gabriele Nissim, President of Gariwo Foundation, at the opening ceremony of the first Garden of the Righteous in South America.
The first Righteous honored are the expression of both an international dimension, linked to the great genocides of the twentieth century, and the Argentinian recent history characterized by various contexts of oppression of human rights and dignity. The first six Righteous honored are: Pierantonio Costa, Italian consul in Kigali who saved 375 children during the genocide in Rwanda; Armin T. Wegner, German writer who with his photographs denounced the genocide of the Armenians and in 1933 wrote to Hitler to stop the persecutions against the Jews, paying with arrest and torture; Aristides de Sousa Mendes, Portuguese consul in Bordeaux who disobeyed the orders of his government and provided transit visas to persecuted Jews; Maria del Carmen "Coca" Maggi, Dean of the Faculty of Letters and Philosophy of the University of Mar del Plata who in 1975 was assassinated by members of the ultra-right terrorist organization Concentración Nacional Universitaria for defending the free and autonomous university; Silvia Ana Filler, activist symbol of student participation for freedom and university autonomy who in 1971 was assassinated by the National University Concentration during a student assembly; Claudio Hugo "Pocho" Lepratti, an Argentine activist committed to defending the most needy who was assassinated by the Santa Fe police in a vain attempt to demand a ceasefire, in a canteen where children were found, during the Argentine crisis of 2001.
