The Nazi Crematorium in the Movie Houses of Buenos Aires
For some days past, newsreels about the concentration camps have been showing in the movie theaters of Buenos Aires. The public can now easily observe the methods used by the Germans in the death camps. Military and newspaper photographers, parliamentary commissions from London, and reporters like Paul Ghali, correspondent for the Chicago Daily…
“The Nazi Crematorium in the Movie Houses of Buenos Aires” was published on May 24, 1945, shortly before the end of World War II, in the anti-fascist Argentine weekly publication Antinazi. Gerchunoff tells of the screenings of unedited Allied newsreels documenting the liberation of Nazi concentration camps. These short reels were shown in theaters before the feature films. Gerchunoff describes how the largely non-Jewish audiences were forced to look directly at the graphic images, including the industrial design of the Nazi death camps. Earlier in his career, Gerchunoff believed Jewish immigrants could assimilate into Argentina by connecting their biblical heritage to rural gaucho culture. However, the horrors of the Holocaust transformed him into a fierce opponent of antisemitism. From 1945 to 1948, he successfully lobbied South American politicians to secure vital Latin American votes for the UN partition plan that created Israel.
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