ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the ideological climate and the underlying conceptions that shaped the mindset and infrastructure for the activities in which many teenagers and young adults, both male and female, were willing to be involved and wield a bludgeon to “break the bones” of anyone who attempted to cause harm to Jews. It surveys the emergence of several spontaneous self-defense organizations among Eastern European Jews in the early twentieth century, the development of the Zionist idea of “Muscular Judaism,” the participation of Jews in military activities in the modern states of the Old Continent, and the militaristic tendencies of Ze’ev Jabotinsky and the Betar revisionist movement, whose influence among Jewish-Latin Americans was far greater than is generally assumed. The chapter deals with the entry of Nazi war criminals into Argentina, a country that still has an exaggerated image as “THE” refuge of Hitler’s executioners after the end of the war in Europe.
