According to the announcement the award is given “in appreciation for the strong moral and professionalism he has shown throughout his career, by his decisive contribution to promote the memory of the Holocaust and the Jewish heritage, as well as the preservation of the interfaith dialogue.”

The International Raoul Wallenberg Foundation is a global-reach NGO that develops educational programs and public awareness campaigns based on the values of solidarity and civic courage, ethical cornerstones of the Saviors of the Holocaust.

Translation: IRWF

The Argentine, Baruch Tenembaum, a pioneer in the communication among different creeds, teaches us that ignorance is the engine of hates and of present wars.

How can it be understood that religions professing love, charity and compassion, are excuses for present wars?

The use of the word ”excuse” seems perfect to me since it is men who make the wars and use religion as an excuse. Tyrants commit crimes using the excuse of ”order”. Nazis organized the Holocaust on behalf of a ”pure race”. The Turks massacred Armenians. The Colonials slaughtered the Indians. Iraqis destroyed the mosque belonging to a religious group that is Islamic. Stalin killed millions of people in an atheistic country. Crime, if it is crime, is committed whether you invoke religion or not. And love, if it is love, is simply offered and lived with or without religion. The main difference is that real religion proclaims love. If Humanity only respected the Ten Commandments, the Creation of the world would be completed…that is to say, perfection would be achieved.

Why is ignorance the great enemy of Humanity?

I’m not talking about ignorance just as a synonym of indifference or a lapse of concentration, but as a complete lack of knowledge regarding the other one. As long as we get to know someone we begin to let go of our fear to that person. This simple and basic principle is the main base of the interconfessional dialogue.

A principle that seems too complicated for million of believers.

Millions of people do not understand that it is not necessary to accept ones principles and understand them. We, as people, have the freedom to be whatever we want to be. Ignorance can only weaken that. There is an old Aramaic story that tells about two people in the desert coming from opposite directions. As they could not distinguish the other one that was coming closer through their shadows, they drew their swords ready to defend themselves. Upon meeting, they realized that they knew each other. They simply threw down their swords and hugged one another. This story tells us that without fear, people would be a lot more understanding of one another. Fear needs to be evanescent.

How could we change in religion to help our understanding?

First of all we should eliminate the word tolerance. It is a bad word. Those who tolerate, sin. You can tolerate a pain, or a great lack of comfort, but you cannot tolerate another human being. I am the same as any other person as long as I consider them equal.

Isn’t it naive to claim to have the answers of historical violence by means of the interreligious communication?

Communication tends to destroy ignorance, and to help others understand to look for common denominators in each other in order to help solve problems (poverty, environment, government, economy, etc). There is a philosophical concept through which we recognize each other. Whether the world was created in six or seven days or in millions of years, we should continue building it, and continue making it a decent place to live.

If beliefs are being discussed, how can an agreement be reached?

The agreement is not about faith or theological beliefs. Each of us will continue sticking to his or her faith, and his or her source of inspiration. The agreement is based on respect, the knowledge and understanding of our rights that each one of us can be different from the other.

What aspects of Islam, Catholicism and Judaism (three great religions in conflict nowadays) prevent them from being closer?

The extreme of those who try to convince, who wish to impose upon themselves, who pretend to prophesize in the name of God, who proclaim they will kill in the name of religion, is ridiculous. None is the owner of life, even his own. That is why religions condemn suicide: to kill yourself means to kill the creation of God. We are The Creation of God.

Are religions not themselves the main problem?

Did God create man or was it the man who created God? To answer this question I say that religion is a human creation. If there is a responsibility, it is man’s responsibility. In the same way that if there is merit, it is also man’s merit.

WHO, WHAT

Graduated in the Superior Institute of Jewish Religious Studies, Baruch Tenembaum was the first director of the Israeli Argentine Cultural Institute. From the International Raoul Wallenberg Foundation, formed by tens of Nobel Prize Laureates, he promotes interconfessional communication, a recognized mission in the world. He was born in Santa Fe, and he emigrated to USA in 1976 when he was kidnapped by the dictatorship.

Translation: Graciela Forman
Edited by Adriana Karagozian

Tenembaum was born in the colony ”Las Palmeras”, in Santa Fe, a settlement of Jewish immigrants founded at the end of the 19th. century. Grandson and son of Jewish gauchos, he studied in Buenos Aires and in Rosario.

The decree signed by Obeid, points out, amidst other concepts, that ”Mr. Tenembaum is the founder of the International Raoul Wallenberg Foundation, which carries the name of the person who had a leading part in countless and extraordinary actions to rescue the hungarian Jews during the World War II” and that the Wallenberg Foundation ”groups people of different faiths, without ever getting involved in politics and developing its activities totally independent of States and/or governments”.

”The work and the human quality of Mr.Tenembaum has won him the national and international appreciation of governments and institutions such as Sweden, Portugal, Poland, Chile, the Vatican and the Congress of the United States.

For all these reasons, the Governor decreed that Mr. Baruj Tenembaum be declared Distinguished Citizen of the Province of Santa Fe, ”honorable ambassador of our Province before the entire World”.

The engineer Oscar Vicente, Director of Petrobras Energía S.A., the presbyter Horacio Moreno, President of the Wallenberg Foundation, Governor Obeid and Mr. Tenembaum spoke during the course of the ceremony. The latter, very touched, thanked his native Province for the honor bestowed upon him.

Amongst the numerous demonstrations of support which arrived from all over the world, the ones that stand out most are those of the Argentine President, Néstor Kirchner; the Minister of the Interior, Aníbal Fernández; the Mayor of Berlin, Klaus Wowereit; the Representative of the Congress of the United States, Tom Lantos; the American Ambassador to Argentina, Lino Gutierrez; the Parish Priest Annemarie Werner from the German Evangelical Church; the Sheik Abdul Aziz Bukhari, President of the Uzbekian Community of Jerusalem; as well as those of the Governor of Munich; the Archbishop of Rosario, Monseigneur Eduardo Mirás; the Judge of the Supreme Court of Justice of the Argentine Nation, Carmen Argibay; the President of the newspaper La Nación, Julio Saguier; the Director General of the ORT Schools in Uruguay,Charlotte Grünberg and the Ambassadors of Germany, Portugal, Austria, the Vatican and Israel, amidst other diplomatic delegations from the whole world.

Lantos, the only survivor of the Holocaust that occupies a seat in the Capitol, wrote: ”There is no bigger recognition for a man like you, who dedicated each one of his days to cultivate a peaceful coexistence, education and human rights, than the one offered to you by your own community (…) The pride that your native town feels for the result of your efforts, will be useful to inspire other individuals to follow your steps. Often, those nearer to us are the most difficult to please. Notwithstanding, your work has managed to accomplish even this great feat”.

Lino Gutierrez, American Ambassador for Argentina, stated: ”The province of Santa Fe deserves to feel proud for the native son that created the Wallenberg Foundation, mister Baruj Tenembaum. In this occasion I wish to join the citizens and the Governor of Santa Fe in the acknowledgement and homage to the life of this really outstanding man”.

In a letter written by the parish priest Annemarie Werner of the German Evangelical Church in Berlin to Governor Obeid , she says ”To Mr. Tenembaum, with his inexhaustible efforts towards the reconciliation and the intereligious dialogue, his dedication to humanity, his generosity and magnanimity, we owe the donation to our church of a copy of the Memorial Mural to be found in the Cathedral of the city of Buenos Aires which was dedicated to the victims of the Shoa and to the victims of the terrorist attacks against Jewish and Israeli institutions in Argentina. We feel his constant appraisal of the suffering and needs, of honesty and truth, and we are very pleased to have shared his wisdom and knowledge”.

The vicegovernor of Santa Fe, Mia Eugenia Bielsa; the ministers of the Governor´s cabinet; the president of the CGE, Ricardo Faerman; the Superintendent of Las Palmeras, Víctor Cravero; community managers, educators and diplomats were all present at the ceremony.

The Fisherton Chorus of Rosario closed this act.
Translation: María Pensavalle

”The one, who saves a life, is as the one who saves the whole world”. Baruj Tenembaum (Las Palmeras, Argentina, 1933) is the President of the foundation which main purpose is to make known the life of the Swedish diplomat who during the Second World War fulfilled tens of thousands times the principle of the Talmud and saved Jewish from the Nazi extermination camps. Tenembaum believes that Raoul Wallenberg’s behavior can be taken as an example to overcome the tensions of the current world. The president of the Raoul Wallenberg Foundation (with subsidiaries in New York, Buenos Aires and Jerusalem) proposes to look for heroes and take them as examples, instead of deepening divisions and controversial figures.

Question: Do you suggest that there has to be tolerance among religions?

Answer: I do not like the word ”tolerance” at all. I think it gives a negative idea. One may tolerate a pain, but if I have to tolerate somebody that means that I do not consider him my equal, i.e. he has something that has to be overcome. The Wallenberg Foundation is the projection of an idea that came into life in the 50’s. It was when we initiated an approach among different groups. A true communication (yo pondria dialogue). It is not a question of fostering the coexistence of different ethnic or religious groups, but that they know each other, because ignorance is our greatest enemy. We have to make people know so that they can understand each other. Knowledge is achieved through approach and study.

Q: Is present time fostering encounters?

A: Certainly not. We talk about understanding and knowledge from both sides. It is not enough that one party makes efforts to understand the other. If it were the case, this would not be the aggressor but the attacked one.

Q: How is the world divided?

A: For the first time, at least in my generation, we began to talk openly about the problems of a religion: the Islamism. Till few weeks ago, there was a kind of shyness with the generalization of a group. Coincidentally, almost all terrorists come from groups claiming a certain religion. But we have to be able to distinguish those who are terrorists from those who are not. It is a very difficult issue. So difficult, that many people tend to give their opinion. Many people are giving their opinion and this causes confusion.

Q: How can these divisions are solved?

Fifty years ago, we began (including Islamic people) to look for concrete issues for believers, agnostics, Jewish, Catholics so that we can work together. That’s why we wanted to take the example given by the righteous, which saved Jewish but also saved gypsies and other minorities. I mentioned the example of the Holocaust. It is so terrible that many people do not believe that it had really happened. And when we try to explain the holocaust to a young man, he rejects to look at pictures of the wires in the concentration camps, the dead bodies or the uniforms. In every situation there are lights and shadows, and we rely on heroes. Young men are attracted towards heroism and people get surprised by the quantity of heroes.

Q: Don’t you think that it is a useless task considering the current world situation?

A: The fact of being a minority does not mean to be wrong. We have to make our efforts to do the right thing. We are not longer a lonely voice in the desert. When we began the dialogue, we were an exception but now at least there are some talks about it. We have to look for the heroes. For example, in the case of the missing people in Argentina it is always mentioned the tortures, the people threw into the river, but there are not any mention to the heroes who saved people.

Q: Do you think that the governments are convinced of the necessity of education?

A: I do not know. I cannot judge anybody. My perception is that education is not considered a top topic, and I am not talking of culture, but about reaching children at the most far ends of civilization.

Q: Does ignorance may turn real the crash of civilization?

A. Absolutely. We live in a kind of Tower of Babel. When the messages from the countries are confusing and are not understood, they thought that are being attacked. When we experience the same things that others we take their places and understand. The problem is the lack of understanding. Looking again the figure of Wallemberg, it is necessary to find an example for our children and fight, but fight for positive things. Otherwise, we are animals.

Traducción: Cristina Mendez

My answer was precise: ”I never left my village.”

I believe that with these words I synthesize all my feelings about my origin. Not only I feel I never left my town, by the contrary, I take it with me, deep inside me.

In the province of Santa Fe, on the occasion of Las Palmeras century, they say a commemorative edition will be launched out. Editors wish to register memories of the small colony located 15 kilometers of Moisesville. To me, instead, talking about Las Palmeras is not only about memories; it’s more about living memories. The present has it’s roots in the past, and much of what had happened sixty, fifty, or forty years ago, it mixtures with past and further events. .

When I was five years old, I used to live with my parents and brothers in our usual home, that by the way, it still has its front intact. My parents, Jews immigrants that got to Argentina at the beginning of the 20th century, they used to have a store-pub in a field of an eighteen hectares farm.
I was too naughty, with certain abilities to climb trees, horse riding, playing balls, boleadoras, getting into the shed where alfalfa bales were stored, and reaching the pigeons nests. Also I was good at climbing brick walls and covering up my fall downs when happened. When my father found me naughty he used to give me ”active massage”, I remember it hurted. Even though, with time I could develop an antidote against that home therapy. When I felt punishment was coming, immediately I climbed a tree whose branches went all the way to my home’s roof, and I was not going down until my father would have promised that he was not going to hit me. His word was holy.

Since my dynamic behavior and propensity towards accidents, my mother used to live concerned about me, fearing something terrible might happen.
One torrid summer, like most Santa Fe’s summers, the town school director went by my home, and after seeing my mother so worried he asked her what was going on.

”Dear director, this boy is making me crazy, there’s no way to control him.”, she said.
Smart in finding a solution, the director proposed: ”Well, madam, send him to school, get him a dust-cover and that’s it. I’ll take care of him.”
”But he is just a kid, he’s only five.”
”It doesn’t matter, he can be a casual visitor. Just bring him.”

The director’s name was Piccione and my schoolteacher until fifth grade was Misses Jacinta Vulfson Kancepolsky. In sixth grade, I had Bobio, brother of the accordion player -I believe- from Colonia Bosi.

And that’s how the casual visitor finished Primary School being ten years and a half old, ready to start high school.

Then, with less than eleven years old, I was sent to Buenos Aires. My father traveled with me up to Palacios, a neighbor colony where there was a train station. That trip is stacked on my mind because it was synonym of taking off, of restarting.

Future was in Buenos Aires, but the price I paid was very high. It was about leaving a little town of grass-hoppers, boleadoras, pubs, plows and alfalfa smell to the big city of underground trains, trams, electric energy, fountain pens, never ending streets and the always new.

Train whistled and started moving. Behind was Palacios, together with my father, who greeted with his extended arm from the platform. For me on board in that old train, it was all pain. It was the starting of a new life.

The one who doesn’t remembers it’s hometown denies his roots, he’s a memory orphan. I had the grace to practice coexistence and to pick up the love from gauchos and homeless in a poor scene, but also respect and dignity. I bless today the opportunity that Argentina gave to our grandfathers.

The author is founder of the International Raoul Wallenberg Foundation.
Translation by: Enrique Borst.

JERUSALEM, JULY 8, 2004 (Zenit.org).- As the 18th international meeting of the Catholic-Jewish Liaison Committee was closing in Argentina, ZENIT interviewed Baruch Tenembaum, an Argentine-born Jew who established the Raoul Wallenberg Foundation and the Angelo Roncalli Committee.

The Wallenberg Foundation was named after the Swedish diplomat who helped save tens of thousands of Jews from the Nazis during World War II.

The Angelo Roncalli Committee recognizes the work of diplomats who risked their lives to save Jews persecuted by Nazism.

At the time of the interview, Tenembaum was traveling in Israel.

Q: Mr. Tenembaum, your visit to Israel is full of initiatives.

Tenembaum: So it is. We are working intensely to continue with the organization of the commemorative events of the 40th anniversary of the declaration ”Nostra Aetate,” the 42nd anniversary of our interreligious dialogue movements and, also, the 70th anniversary of the death of the greatest poet of the Hebrew language, Najman Bialik, whom I had the opportunity and privilege to translate during my years of study as a seminarian, as well as other greats of Jewish poetry like Uri Zvi Grinberg.

Not only must we remember those who saved bodies but also those who every day redeem our souls.

Q: In an unusual gesture, Cardinal Walter Kasper, president of the Pontifical Commission for Religious Relations with the Jews, will reserve, in his tight schedule in Argentina, time this Saturday for the Wallenberg Foundation. Why?

Tenembaum: On Saturday, July 10, in the morning, the ”Monsignor Angelo Roncalli” kindergarten room will be inaugurated. The event will be presided over by Cardinal Walter Kasper.

It will take place in the Raoul Wallenberg Community Center, headquarters of the Unemployed Workers Movement of La Matanza, in an extremely poor slum of Buenos Aires province.

School materials and clothing will be donated. In the Educational Complex, named after Raoul Wallenberg since May 14, 2004, there is a kindergarten and productive undertakings such as a bakery, a silkscreen printing workshop, a publishing house, a sewing workshop, and a trade school.

On Saturday the 10th in the afternoon, after the Shabat, the Raoul Wallenberg International Foundation and the Angelo Roncalli Committee will confer on Cardinal Kasper the Memorial Mural Award for a lifetime’s dedication to causes of understanding and reconciliation between Jews and Catholics.

The presentation will take place at the headquarters of the Latin American Rabbinical Seminary. Undoubtedly, an unbeatable interfaith framework.

The award is a replica to scale of the mural that remembers the victims of the Holocaust, and those killed in the attacks against the Embassy of Israel …, installed in Buenos Aires Cathedral in April 1997 by the then primate of Argentina, Cardinal Antonio Quarracino.

A replica in the Mural’s original size will be installed this year in the ”Vaterunser” church of the city of Berlin. The event is being organized by the Wallenberg Foundation and the German Evangelical Church.

On the occasion, the Wallenberg Foundation will announce the granting of the Angelo Roncalli scholarship to a Jewish seminarian for his academic dedication, spirit of solidarity, and human values placed at the service of Jewish-Catholic reconciliation. Another interfaith gesture of which we are proud.

Q: How are the programs related to the Wallenberg Foundation dedicated to paying homage to the saviors of humanity and those promoting interconfessional dialogue?

Tenembaum: Both have as their common denominator the famous phrase: ”And thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.” It was no accident that the dictum was the inspiration of Hillel and later of Jesus.

The saviors are the light, the personification of the concept of the Messiah, understood as the opportunity that each one of us has to do good, to do something for our neighbor.

Hope is the concept that unites both Jews and Catholics. Love, solidarity and courage placed at the service of one’s neighbor are like the water that runs down from the mountain to fertilize the sowing and allow it to prosper.

This allegory alludes to the need for us all to come down to the plain, to the level of the common people, and not stay on the heights, with those who see the world from on high.

There is also a very cynical interpretation of ”thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself,” which claims to understand the dictum as loving the neighbor so long as he is like yourself. An interpretation that can only be accepted provided that the being of ”yourself” refers to the human race.

It is no accident that this movement was born in the Argentina republic, a country where there were no ethnic struggles as in other latitudes of the planet.

We celebrate the fact that, 42 years after starting this endeavor, led among others by Monsignor Ernesto Segura, auxiliary bishop of Buenos Aires; Rabbi Guillermo Schlesinger; and Jorge Luis Borges, today other organizations of diverse confessions raise these flags.

Q: Among the saviors there are notable figures such as Raoul Wallenberg and many others who even risked their lives to save those of different cultural and confessional origins who were persecuted.

Tenembaum: So it is. There are no better examples to serve as guides of action than those given by these persons.

As you well point out, outstanding among the thousands of heroes is Monsignor Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli, later Pope John XXIII, and another Italian, Giovanni Palatucci, the police chief of Fiume during the Second World War, who will soon be beatified by the Supreme Pontiff.

They are, in all truth, the other face of indifference, a very dangerous attitude that is functional to the realization of evil.

It is much more comfortable, but also extremely risky to practice indifference and to abstain from assuming a commitment. On this topic, important thinkers have written some memorable aphorisms.

Edmund Burke wrote: ”All that is necessary for evil to prosper is that the good man do nothing.” Einstein said: ”The world is a dangerous place. Not because of those who do evil, but because of those who do nothing to avoid it.”

And, among others, George Bernard Shaw pointed out: ”Indifference is the essence of humanity.”

Let us recall what pastor Martin Niemoller said, later popularized by Bertolt Brecht: ”First they came for the Communists, but as I was not a Communist, I did not raise my voice. Then they came for the Socialists and the trade unionists, but as I was neither, I didn’t raise my voice. Then they came for the Jews, and as I am not a Jew, I did not raise my voice. And when they came for me, there was no longer anyone left to raise his voice to defend me.”

Q: We must not forget Aristides de Sousa Mendes, that notable Christian who avoided the extermination of thousands of persecuted people by issuing visas in his capacity as consul of Portugal in Bordeaux, in the south of France, in 1940.

Tenembaum: Precisely, Sousa Mendes was remembered by our Foundation last June 17 with the organization of more than 80 tributes in 30 countries.

Sousa Mendes was a pioneer and is the paradigm of the one who sacrifices everything to be on the side of the weakest. He defied the Portuguese dictatorship which ordered him to do nothing, and because of this died in the most terrible poverty, condemned and sick.

The CGE ceremony was scheduled as a tribute to Landelius but CGE president Ricardo Faerman slipped in a suprise award to Raoul Wallenberg President Baruj Tenembaum, received at the hands of trade unionist Carlos West Ocampo (writer Marcos Aguinis gave Landelius his). With such a mixed cast, the event was an unusually eclectic affair, mingling economics, human rights and culture.

Despite this diversity and despite his own strong literary bent (the polygot diplomat has translated Ernesto Sábato, Julio Cortázar, Pablo Neruda, Gabriel García Márquez and Mario Benedetti among others from Spanish into Swedish), Landelius – ambassador here between 1997 and 2001 – largely aimed his speech at his CGE hosts. Perhaps its main theme was that despite widespread fears of globalization, small and medium-sized companies actually gained most from regional integration.

NEW YORK–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Oct. 13, 2003–On Thursday, October 16th 2003, Baruch Tenembaum, the founder of the International Raoul Wallenberg Foundation (IRWF) will receive a tribute from the U.S. Congress in the Washington office of Congressman Tom Lantos (D-CA). This tribute, traditionally reserved for luminaries who have exhibited exemplary feats in their respected fields, has been bestowed on select individuals, including, the Dalai Lama, Dr. Martin Luther King on the 30th anniversary of his assassination, Robert Kennedy, Rosalyn Carter, Ken Burns-documentary filmmaker and Diego Rivera, the Mexican muralist.

Congressman Tom Lantos, Co-Chairman of The House of Representatives’ Human Rights Caucus (D-California) and the only Holocaust survivor to serve in Congress, proposed this tribute. Lantos and his wife Annette, were saved by Raoul Wallenberg, a Swedish Diplomat, in Hungary during WWII.

In his speech at the House of Representatives Lantos said: ”Mr. Speaker, even before Mr. Tenembaum started to work for Raoul Wallenberg’s cause, he had lived an extraordinary life. He was devoted to supporting the Jewish community in Argentina and to creating a deeper understanding between Jews and Catholics worldwide. Tenembaum’s outstanding commitment to the Jewish and Catholic communities has earned him accolades and honors from Pope Paul VI and from Monsignor Antonio Caggiano, Cardinal Primate of Argentina.”

Tenembaum was born in 1933 in Argentina. After studying in the Seminary for Rabbinical Studies, he worked as a teacher, taught Hebrew and Bible and translated classical Jewish scripts. In 1997 he founded the International Raoul Wallenberg Foundation, a non-profit organization with branches in New York, Buenos Aires, Jerusalem and Caracas aimed at creating a living memorial to Wallenberg, a Swedish Diplomat who saved close to 100,000 Jews during WWII. ”This exceptional person is truly an inspiration to us all. Like the man whose legacy he works tirelessly to preserve, Mr. Tenembaum is living proof that one man can make a difference,” concluded Lantos. Baruch Tenembaum has never received a salary and/or other financial compensation for his community work which he has done as a volunteer.

The Ceremony will take place on October 16th, 11:15 am, at the office of Congressman Tom Lantos, The U.S. House of Representatives 2413 Rayburn Building Washington DC, USA

More About Baruch Tenembaum

Baruch Tenembaum was born at the ”Las Palmeras” colony, a Santa Fe province settlement for Jewish immigrants escaping from the Russian pogroms of 1880. The grandson and son of Jewish ‘gauchos’ he became a professor of Hebrew and Yiddish language and literature, the Old Testament and philosophy.

In 1965 Baruch Tenembaum was the Argentinian promoter of the first visit by a Pope to Jerusalem and was subsequently received by Pope Paul VI. Mr. Tenembaum launched the idea of establishing interfaith monuments by promoting the creation of a fresco by the Argentine master painter Raul Soldi at the main church in Nazareth, which was carried out in 1968.

In early 1976 Baruch Tenembaum was kidnapped by rightwing extremists belonging to the Triple A (Argentine Anti subversive Alliance) a clandestine state terrorist organization founded under the aegis of Jose Lopez Rega, a sinister character of great influence during the government of President Isabel Martinez de Peron. Mr. Tenembaum was accused by these terrorist groups of ”infecting the Catholic Church with the virus of Judaism” and ”of spreading ideas of alleged coexistence so as to destroy Christian principles” through his inter-faith work. In a dramatic turn of events, his wife Perla volunteered as a hostage, and was also kidnapped herself. After his release, and during the years of the military dictatorship Baruch Tenembaum did not visit Argentina but continued dedicating his life to humanitarian causes. He searched for gentiles who helped Jews during the Second World War including Dr. Alejandro Pou in Uruguay and Mrs. Emilie Schindler in Argentina.

In 1997 Baruch Tenembaum promoted the idea of installing a showcase dedicated to the victims of the Holocaust inside the Buenos Aires Cathedral. Also in 1997 he founded, along with US Congressman Tom Lantos, The International Raoul Wallenberg Foundation, (IRWF) with the mission of promoting the life and work of Raoul Wallenberg. The Swedish diplomat is credited with saving up to 100,000 Jews from certain death in Budapest in 1944-45 and finally disappeared in hands of the Soviet army. His fate is still unknown.

About the International Raoul Wallenberg Foundation

The International Raoul Wallenberg Foundation (IRWF) endeavors to promote civic courage among high school and university students around the world as a democratic virtue that is critical in fighting intolerance, racism and violence. The foundation focuses on three core messages: Holding your own opinion even though it is against the most powerful people and acting accordingly; Opposing illegitimate or immoral orders; and Helping and defending the weak and the victims of violence and aggression.

Members of the IRWF include more than 50 Heads of State, 30 Nobel Peace Prize Winners and countless Mayors and Governors around the World. More information may be found at

Speech of Rep. Tom Lantos in the Congressional Record.

Contact:
International Raoul Wallenberg Foundation
Esther Loewy, 646-270-0808
Email: esther@loewydavid.com

Source: International Raoul Wallenberg Foundation