2024-07-18 03:07:00
- July 18, 2024
- 00:07
- 06 a moment of reading‘
THE NATION
Escuchar
On July 18, 1994, at 9:53 am, a car bomb driven by a terrorist crashed into the front of the Argentina Israel Mutual Association (AMIA) building. In the attack, 85 people died and more than 300 were injured. It was the most tragic event in the history of Argentina and it is a wound that is still open. However, in the midst of the horror, there were stories of strangers who crossed paths and managed to turn a partial twist on fate.
As happened with Adrián Furman and Mirta Regina Satz, co-workers, who helped save a child’s life while trying to escape from the rubble. Or the case of Horacio Neuah, a merchant who thankfully remembers that he managed to survive because Juan Carlos Terranova’s truck ran into the shock wave. They were moments, just a few seconds, in which their paths crossed and left an indelible mark.
Adrian Furman He recognizes that not a day goes by without him thinking about what happened and what happened to his older brother. At that time, he was 26 years old. Since 1987 he has worked in Human Resources at AMIA. His brother Fabián Furman was 30 years old and was also an employee of the Israeli mutual insurance company, but in the Sepelios sector. “I got up like every day to go to work. I arrived at 9 and, as always, I went up to the fourth floor to greet my brother before starting my homework. I was on the second floor. Everything seemed normal until 9:53 when we were surprised by a terrible explosion, we did not know what it was,” says Furman. He never imagined that he would never see Fabian again…
A few meters away, in the same building, but in the treasury office, he worked Mirta Regina’s sentence. Although she does not remember the glimpse that Adrián is talking about and attributes it to a defense mechanism, for her, the silence was thunderous. “I had the motivation to run and I did it in the right place, on the right side of the building… They say I ran like a Japanese girl, every step I took fell behind me,” says Satz.
The AMIA building, located at Pasteur 633, consisted of two blocks. One of them fell completely and the other remained standing. Mirta was centimeters from where the building collapsed. “The atmosphere was filled with white smoke that did not allow us to breathe. There were about 20 or 25 people on the floor… I don’t know how long that moment lasted… first there was a big explosion and the second the building collapsed. When the smoke cleared I was able to see some companions with me,” says Furman. And Satz was in that group.
The survivors quickly thought that the only way out was to climb the party wall. And they tried. “When I managed to do it, I looked back, on the Pasteur side, and saw that half of the AMIA building was no longer there. was gone The first thing that came to mind was my brother, because the physical location of his work was no longer there,” says Furman.
In the midst of chaos, screams and despair, he was a child who gave hope. That morning, a mother with her young son went to do some paperwork at the mutual insurance company when the attack happened. Despite the hardship and the risk, the survivors saved the boy, passing him from hand to hand until they took him to a safe place: “I remember that he was very warm, innocent… he behaved I was him and for me it was as if I was carrying a sun, a light, a fire that he had to take care of,” explains Satz.
“When we managed to leave the place, we all dispersed but the woman who gave me the baby remained breastfeeding in the door of the building, sitting on a step that was not there, in the middle of the rubble, the screams. . and “We kept escaping.”
The body of Fabián Furman, Adrián’s brother, was found the following Monday among the rubble. It was one of the last ones found.
The merchant had another situation New Horacio who was present during the attack and was unharmed thanks to Juan Carlos Terranova crossing his path. Although he sadly recognizes that his “luck” was someone else’s “luck”.
that day, Juan Carlos Terranova, distributor of Sacaan products since 1984, and his son Sergio were delivering goods on Pasteur Street when the explosion occurred. “They parked the truck in front of the AMIA. My brother had gone over for a change and Juan Carlos stayed in the vehicle arranging the goods. At that moment when he left, the explosion happened,” says the daughter of Juan Carlos, Alejandra Terranova.
Moments before the roar, Neuah arrived on the scene. He had finished shopping for items when he got into the car he had left parked in front of the AMIA. “In front of me was a truck that was distributing bread. When I started the car and went in front of the truck, the explosion happened. As I ran at him, he covered me. That’s why the guy in the truck died and I didn’t. The shock wave played with my car as if it were a ball. He picked it up, crossed the front three buildings and landed on the corner of Viamonte and Pasteur. “I’m a little tire in the air,” he says.
“I did the top of the car… I thought if it starts, it starts. At that moment, people from the Hospital de Clínicas came and checked me to see if I was hurt… fortunately there was nothing, but I was not well. It’s not easy, it was a big shock,” says Neuah.
On the other hand, for Juan Carlos’ family the nightmare was just beginning. “Two people that I don’t remember came, they grabbed a door, laid my father down there and ran away… My father and my brother are bringing him up the newspaper Página 12, cover of the 19th of July. They arrived at the hospital, it was crazy. “Later my uncle was there and to recognize my father he had to go in four times because his face was destroyed it was almost impossible to recognize him,” says the daughter.
For Alejandra and Horacio, 30 years without justice is too long, “very empty” and difficult to bear. They have no faith that justice will ever come. For them, memory is “the only justice we have left.”
THE NATIONConocé The Trust Project
#meeting #survivors #victims #middle #horror #mark