Rosa Tarlovsky de Roisinblit received the title of Doctor Honoris Causa for her career and work in favor of peace, justice and the defense of human rights, especially the right to Identity.
La Universidad Nacional de Rosario awarded the highest title to Rosa Tarlovsky de Roisinblit during an event chaired by the Rector Franco Bartolacci, the deans of the Faculty of Medical Sciences Jorge Molinas, of Psychology Soledad Cottone and in which Estela de Carlotto, members of Abuelas de Plaza participated virtually de Mayo and family of the honoree.
“When institutions decide to recognize someone, what they want to be, the principles and values on which they are sustained, is revealed. In Rosa there is a testimony of life, struggle and commitment that mobilizes our university community and challenges us. This recognition is a caress from the Public University that unanimously endorsed this intention and that is manifested in this institutional but also political academic act”, said Rector Franco Bartolacci.
On behalf of the entire UNR community, Bartolacci thanked him from the bottom of his heart "for that enormous courage, because in the relentless darkness, a horror that seemed eternal to us, always in its fight, could be light." He also thanked him “for his integrity and above all his example, which has made his struggle and that of all Grandmothers more exemplary than anyone else. For those who have violated all possible norms, for those who promoted death, they never demanded revenge but truth.
The Rector highlighted that due to her life testimony, “she is a worthy daughter of our house. She has carried the banner of the principles and values of our University high throughout her life. On behalf of our entire community, thank you. Excited and proud, I formally welcome you to the faculty of the UNR”.
The dean of the Faculty of Psychology Soledad Cottone maintained that "memory and oblivion are not neutral fields, quite the contrary, they are battlefields where collective identity is modeled" and added: "We come from a hegemonic culture that appropriates the symbolic violence of the past and that composes from there demands towards the present in which many facts have been silenced and others are mitigated”. In this sense, she considered that awarding this title "is a recognition against so much silence, erasure of history, an act that is born as a symbol, inscribes memory and changes our present."
Cottone stressed that it is unique that Rosa is also a midwife. "As if she were a seam of our history, she has given birth to thousands of compañeros and compañeras that we are finding in this search for identity." Likewise, she thanked her as a generation and for being part of Hijos de ella: “She is a mark for us in this tragedy, the possibility of having our grandmothers, a point of vindication. Today we are proud to have you as Doctor Honoris Causa of the University”.
For his part, the Dean of the Faculty of Medical Sciences Jorge Molinas thanked “the fight for dignity and human rights, which has been enormous.” He said that Rosa graduated as an obstetrician in 1937 in the then Universidad Nacional del Litoral with registration number 314 and was head of the Rosario School of Obstetrics, one of the first in the country.
"We celebrate your fight, example and I hope that it is alive in the grandchildren, in the families, in Grandmothers and in all Argentines so that democracy is increasingly strong, supportive and fair," he said. Then, the Faculty recognized the Plaza de Mayo Grandmothers Association and gave Rosa the records of her time as a student in the city of Rosario.
The story of Rosa Roisinblit
Granddaughter and daughter of the first Jewish settlers in Argentina, Rosa was born in Moisés Ville on August 15, 1919, she passed through university classrooms and obtained the title of obstetrician awarded by the then Universidad Nacional del Litoral. She won the position of Chief Midwife of the Maternity School of Obstetrics of Rosario through a competition.
Later, she moved to Buenos Aires, married Benjamín Roisinblit in 1951 and they had an only daughter named Patricia Julia. On October 6, 1978, during the last civil-military dictatorship, Patricia, her 15-month-old daughter Mariana Eva Pérez, and her partner José Manuel Pérez Rojo were kidnapped. Patricia was 8 months pregnant with her second child. The girl was returned to her family, but the child born in captivity was not.
Rosa's grandson was appropriated by Francisco Gómez, an Air Force intelligence agent who, together with his wife Teodora Jofré, registered the child as their own son under the name of Guillermo Francisco Gómez. Rosa's grandson was found in 2000 and his identity restored in 2004. Today his name is Guillermo Rodolfo Fernando Pérez Roisinblit.
After the kidnapping of her daughter, Rosa joined the group of women that would make up the Grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo Association. She was appointed Treasurer of the Board of Directors, a position she held from 1981 to 1989, when she became Vice President of the institution.
In 2013, Marcela Bublik published the book “Abuela. The story of Rosa Roisinblit, a Grandmother from Plaza de Mayo”. Rosa participated in multiple presentations of the book in different places in Argentina. The publication was declared of Interest for the Promotion and Defense of Human Rights by the Legislature of the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires.
He was a plaintiff in the trial that proved a systematic plan for the appropriation of children during the last civil-military dictatorship, and is a plaintiff in the case investigating the disappearance of his daughter and son-in-law in the RIBA.
He is a member of the International Society for the Prevention of Abused and Abandoned Children and the Latin American Association against Child Abuse. She has also obtained prizes and distinctions in a personal capacity, for her career and performance in favor of peace, justice and the defense of human rights, especially the right to identity.
Journalist: Victoria Arrabal