Project number: [JOWBR, ARG-02761]

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RIO NEGRO in ARGENTINA


General Roca

38' 30 South 67'30 West
349 tumbas con 47 apellidos de solteras y 302 mas
General Roca in the heart of the Rio Negro valley is 1175 km south of Buenos Aires, 39 km from Cipoletti, 25 km from Allen, and 8 km from Colonia Rusa. Wooded with orchards, this colony on Route 22 was founded 1 September 1879 on the site currently called "Father Alejandro Stefenelli's settlement" and moved in 1899, 3 km west due to flooding. This urban center resulted from farmers abandoning other nearby colonies. Eight minute books still exist of the Asociacion Israelita de General Roca dating from the early 1930s. The 1940 Jewish population was forty families. Population decline dates from the 1950s. Only 100 Jews were among the 1991 population of 71,000. Jewish Community (Asociacion Israelita de General Roca email: tiendaelcoloso@ciudad.com.ar.

  • El Cementerio Israelita: At the end of Mendoza Street, turn left to the end. The 0.5 hectar site holds 400 graves. The cemetery abuts the penitentiary and the Christian cemetery from which it is separated by a chainlink fence. Hours: 8:30 a.m. to 12 PM and 3-7 p.m. Door unlocked except Friday afternoon and Saturday. This cemetery (in a common grave) holds reinterments from Colonia Rusa after the "great flood, 17 July 1949." A Holocaust monument and one to the colony's 1901 first settlers, Sepiurka and Zilvestein, buried in Tablada. The oldest gravestones are brick and cement with Yiddish inscriptions. Jews from Zapala, Cultral-Cs, Cipolletti, and Allen also used this cemetery whose records and map are held by the Jewish community of General Roca.
  • Data from Mr. Paul Armony z"l Asociacion Judio Argentina de Genealogia [December 2003]

Cipolletti

Cipolletti is located across a bridge from Neuquin and about 40 km from General Roca on National Route 22. The Jewish community dates from the late 1960s and in 2000 had 150 families. Burials were in General Roca. The Jewish Community of Allen, Cipolletti, and Neuquin, 162 Irigoyen Street and 354 Belgrano Street, email: chetasat@arnet.com.ar (Liliana Tasat). [December 2003]

Colonia Rusa

Founded in 1906 as Colonia Rusa by Jews from the Russian town of Shumiachi, fifty years before Rio Negro became an official colony, the original settlers were involved in viticulture for kosher wine (Glanz and Kaspin.) In the center of the Alto Valle of Rio Negro, the town is 47 km from Cipolletti and 58 km from Neuquen. Eight km east of General Roca in Cervantes district, no sign on Route 22 indicates site. Find it by a big willow tree where you leave the main road and turn left to the "old road" 1000 km dirt road runs parallel. By the 1930s, 50% of the seventy Jewish family's land was fruit orchard. Lithuanian and Polish Jews had joined the original settlers. In the early 1960s, only ten families remained. Some kept their farms and moved to the city. In 2000, only two original family descendants remain. Jewish burials were in General Roca.

Data from Mr. Paul Armony z"l Asociacion Judio Argentina de Genealogia [December 2003]