Rosa Tarlovsky de Roisinblit, a prominent activist for victims of Argentina’s 1976-1983 dictatorship, died Saturday, her organization said. She was 106.
“We only have words of gratitude for her dedication, her solidarity and the love with which she searched for the grandsons and granddaughters until the very end,” the Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo campaign group said in a statement.
Roisinblit was born in 1919 in Moises Ville, a town of Jewish immigrants in central Argentina, and was an obstetrician by trade.
Alongside other mothers whose family members disappeared during Argentina’s dictatorship, Roisinblit demanded to know the whereabouts of her missing relatives.
Her pregnant daughter Patricia Roisinblit and son-in-law — both militants of the armed Peronist group Montoneros — were kidnapped in 1978.
Patricia is believed to have given birth in a basement before the baby was taken from her. She and her husband’s bodies were never found.
More than 20 years later, in 2000, Roisinblit was reunited with her grandson Guillermo through her activist organization.
He was among 140 people that the Grandmothers group has reunited with their families.
Roisinblit also fought for decades to see the military personnel involved in her daughter’s kidnapping brought to justice.
In 2016, she was in the courtroom when two former air force commanders and an ex-intelligence officer were sentenced to prison on charges of kidnapping and torture.
“The pain is still there, this wound never heals… But to say I’m stopping? No, I’ll never stop,” she told AFP at the time, at the age of 97.
Campaigners say 30,000 people were victims of forced “disappearances” under Argentina’s military dictatorship.
Roisinblit’s group says there are 300 “stolen grandchildren” — born in captivity or kidnapped with their parents — yet to be found.
“We fight but the heroes are our children who rose up against a fierce dictatorship and gave their lives for a better country,” she told AFP in 2016.
