Martina Jaureguy Honorary president of Grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo Rosa Tarlovsky de Roisinblit passed away on Saturday, aged 106. The organization, her grandchildren, human rights groups and activists, as well as politicians, bid farewell to her with loving messages on social media in remembrance of her decades-long commitment to human rights.
“Rosita, as the youngest members of Abuelas ironically like to call her, left us just after turning 106 years old, after her great work and trajectory as a human rights leader in the country and the world,” wrote the Grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo.
“For me, you are eternal,” wrote her granddaughter Mariana Eva Pérez in an X post announcing her passing, along with photos of them together.
Guillermo Pérez, Rosa’s grandson, who she found two decades after he was appropriated by the dictatorship, also bid farewell to his grandmother with a photo of her gazing lovingly at him.
“My baba, Rosa, is gone,” he wrote on X. “Beyond the sadness I’m feeling, it is a relief to think that after 46 years she will once again be with my mother, and her great love, my grandfather Benjamín.”
Human rights organizations such as Comisión Provincial por la Memoria and the Center for Legal and Social Studies (CELS, by its Spanish initials), expressed their “deep sorrow” for her passing and appreciation for her decades of work. Former human rights secretariat Horacio Pietragalla described her as “a tireless fighter.” Socialist deputies Esteban Paulón and Mónica Fein filed a bill to pay homage to her in the next Congress session.
Her family, friends and fellow activists said their goodbyes during a wake on Sunday morning, after which she was buried at the Jewish community cemetery in La Tablada, Buenos Aires province.
The life of Rosa Tarlovsky de Roisinblit
Rosa was the daughter of a Jewish couple who had arrived in Argentina escaping religious persecution and attacks in Russia. She went on to become an obstetrician and head of the area at a maternity hospital in Rosario, Santa Fe. She married Benjamín Roisinblit in 1951.
Rosa was the vice president of Abuelas until 2021, when she was named honorary president due to her old age. She first joined the organization in 1978, right after her daughter Patricia Julia Roisinblit was kidnapped with her partner José Manuel Pérez Rojo and the couple’s daughter, Mariana Eva.
Patricia was eight months pregnant with her son when she was disappeared. Mariana, who was just over a year old, was given back to her father’s family. According to several testimonies, Patricia gave birth at the ESMA clandestine detention center. After that, she was never seen again. Neither was Pérez Rojo.
In 2000, Grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo received reports that a military couple may have appropriated the baby and raised him as his own under a false identity. Mariana approached Guillermo at his job and spoke with him about the reports. She learned that he, too, had doubts about his identity.
A DNA test carried out by geneticist Mary-Claire King proved what they already suspected: Guillermo was the son of Patricia and José. That made him Mariana’s brother, as well as the grandson of Rosa Tarlovsky de Roisinblit and Argentina Rojo de Pérez, the grandmother who raised Mariana.
Rosa and Argentina — who was also part of Abuelas and passed away in 2005 — were able to meet their long-lost grandson and close a dark chapter of their lives. Rosa continued looking for other grandchildren for many more years as an active member of the organization.
“I was not here just to look for him, but to look for all those who remain missing,” she once said in an interview. However, she never learned what happened to Patricia, nor her son-in-law José. Their bodies were never found.
Grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo highlighted her tireless work looking for appropriated grandchildren and her role, along with her granddaughter Mariana, in the genetic developments carried out by Mary-Claire King in order to identify those grandchildren.
“We only have words of appreciation for her dedication, solidarity and love with which she looked for grandchildren, right until the end,” Grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo said in their statement.
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