Last month I got the opportunity to attend a meeting with Vera Vigevani. founder of the Movement Madres de Plaza de Mayo in Argentina, witness of two of the most dramatic moments of the twentieth century: the Holocaust and the tragedy of Desaparecidos during Videla's dictatorship. She fled to Argentina with the family following the racial laws. During the dark days of dictatorhsip, on June 25 1976, the daughter Franca was kidnapped and locked to Esma, the official school of the Navy used as a clandestine detention center. Here she was tortured and killed, loaded on a “flight of death”, drugged and thrown alive into the Río de la Plata. From that day Vera Vigevani Jarach did not know anything about her daughter. Desaparecida. Following this awful and most tragic experience she became member of the movement Madres de Plaza de Mayo. I was totally stunned and humbled by the positive strenght and enthusiastic hope that this truly heroic woman could carry and bring to her audience. Her extraordinary committment to preserving History in order to shape a better future definitely struck a chord with me, making this exceptional woman a real life-teacher, despite all her experiences and painful stories, her smile fills our conscience with a positive feeling to work together and make sure that none of history's most heinous crimes happen again.
