Fanny Edelman and Jewish Argentine Antifascist Women, 1930–47

Abstract

Fanny Edelman and Jewish Argentine Antifascist Women, 1930–47 Sandra McGee Deutsch (bio) Keywords Anti-fascism, Argentina, Jewish women, Latin America Fanny Edelman's Story illustrates the women of Jewish origins who were key players in Argentine as well as Uruguayan antifascism. As described largely in her autobiography, Banderas, pasiones, camaradas,1 Edelman's fascinating trajectory sheds light on the significant yet largely unexplored topic of Jewish women's participation in Latin American antifascist movements. It also suggests avenues for research. Fanny Edelman was born in 1911 in Argentina, the daughter of impoverished Jewish immigrants from the Russian Empire. She grew up in a secular socialist household that prized reading and learning. When Edelman finished primary school, she entered the labor force. The poverty around her, the Socialist and Communist events she attended, the progressive cultural circles in which she circulated, and her future husband's influence led her into the Communist Party in 1934. From the beginning, her Communism intertwined with antifascism. From 1930 to 1932, a military dictatorship brutally repressed union, anarchist, and Communist militants; expelled foreign-born leftists; and endorsed fascist groups. Successive fraudulently elected governments kept some of these policies and, in Edelman's view, increased Argentine dependency on Britain and the United States. Edelman defined fascism expansively to include imperialism, exploitation, authoritarianism, and antisemitism. During her earliest days in the party, she participated in what became known as the Liga Argentina por los Derechos del Hombre, which defended liberal freedoms and helped political prisoners and their families. A Liga publicist and fundraiser, Edelman admired the bold women—many of them Jews—who took food and supplies to incarcerated militants and confronted prison officials. She also joined the Unión Argentina de Mujeres, whose main [End Page 517] goal was to fend off Nazi-like attempts to limit women's rights. Edelman helped usher women workers into this group's orbit. Imprisoned briefly for her Liga activities, the day she left jail in 1936 marked the start of Francisco Franco's uprising against the Spanish Republic. She connected the two in her mind: solidarity with political prisoners and the Spanish people lay at the heart of her identity. Edelman served as assistant secretary of the Comité Argentino de Mujeres Pro Huérfanos Españoles, a large women's organization providing clothing, shelter, and food for Republican children. In Spain she worked in Socorro Rojo, gathering provisions and garments for Republican troops and their families and manifesting, as she put it, her "profound love for the cause." When the Francoists took over, Edelman was back in Argentina, working from afar for Spanish political prisoners and refugees. After Germany invaded the Soviet Union, Edelman affiliated with the Junta de la Victoria (JV), a Popular Front movement that sent aid to the Allies, supported democracy at home, and advocated for women's rights. It was perhaps the largest and most diverse Argentine women's political organization until this time. The JV organized numerous chapters around the country; its members made garments and hospital supplies day and night. The military coup of 1943 drove the JV underground but could not halt its activities. The JV had mentored a sister organization, the Uruguayan Acción Femenina por la Victoria (AF). Clandestinely, the JV sent funds to AF so that the latter could continue to ship goods to the Allies. In her words, Edelman "worked without pause, without rest, in the Junta de la Victoria."2 As the JV faded by 1947, she transferred some of her energies to the Women's International Democratic Federation (WIDF), founded by veterans of the French Resistance, which continues to labor for peace, antifascism, women's and children's welfare, and women's rights today. As WIDF secretary general, Edelman contested what she considered fascist: U.S. Cold War militarism and the Chilean dictatorship's (1973–90) human rights abuses. Edelman was far from the only Argentine woman of Jewish origins to take part in antifascism. Several others went to Spain; one of them became a captain in the Trotskyite militia. Many engaged in solidarity with local political prisoners and the Spanish Republic and joined the JV. In neighboring Uruguay, a Jewish women...