Jacobo Timerman

(1923 - 1999)

Jacobo Timerman was five years old when, in 1928, his family fled Ukraine to settle in Buenos Aires. As a teenager, he soaked up books written by authors like Upton Sinclair, John Dos Passos, and Jack London; he briefly studied engineering before becoming a journalist. In 1971 he founded La Opinión, modeling the newspaper after Le Monde. In 1977 Timerman was seized by military forces, imprisoned, and tortured for more than a year. He later summed up the reason for his arrest by quoting a military official who had called him “a talented, arrogant Jew.” In 1979 he was deported to Israel, where he claimed citizenship. He had two heart attacks in 1999; the second one killed him at the age of seventy-six.

Issues Contributed