AMIA - Asociación mutual israelita Argentina

The Jewish community of Argentina is the seventh largest in the world and the largest Spanish-speaking community. In Buenos Aires there are around 165,000 Jews, and another 25,000, in 54 communities spread throughout the country. In 1862 the Israelite Congregation of Buenos Aires was born, the first institution of the Jewish community in Argentina. Among other things, it was devoted to charity and the registration of births, marriages and deaths of the community from 1879. That same year, the congregation began to raise funds to purchase of land with the aim of creating a cemetery that would allow Jews to be buried according to tradition. On 11 February 1894, the various Jewish societies of Buenos Aires met. They created the burial society Jevrá Kedushá, which would form the basis of the Asociación Mutual Israelita Argentina (AMIA). With successive immigration flows, AMIA broadened its activities and these now encompass aspects of social, cultural, educational, political, labor, socio-sports and religious life.

The AMIA’s Mark Turkow Documentation and Information Centre on Argentine Judaism (Centro Mark Turkow) was named after a Polish Jewish immigrant who arrived in Argentina in the 1930s after fleeing from Nazism. Mark Turkow dedicated his life to work to preserving the memory of Jewish culture in general and of the local community in particular.

The Mark Turkow Centre is located on the 4th floor of the of the AMIA headquarters and it has a reading room equipped with digital technology for reading and viewing images, sound and text.

The Mark Turkow Centre's archive is composed of photographs, newspapers, books, magazine collections, oral and visual records of personal experiences and community events, which bear witness to Jewish life in Argentina.