Mario List:
Born 21/11/1933.
Cordoba - Argentine
Mother: Rosa Jeinson (born in Kiev). Her father was a Rabbi.
Father: Samuel List (born in Poland). He was a communist from the Bund movement. (sisters were killed during the holocaust)
Sofia Elena Schwarz List:
Born 1/12/1933.
Santa Fe - Argentine.
Mother: Clara Malimovska (Born in Kiev). Her father was a clarinetist in the Russia army and in Argentine
Father: Isidoro Schwartz (Born in Romania-Bessarabia). His father was a teacher.
Mario & Sofia bio
Sofia and her family moved from Santa Fe to Buenos Aires when she was 7 y/o. She grow up in neighborhood with Adolf Eichmann who lived in Garibaldi Street. Sofia remembers that in this area were many families of Nazis who escape from Germany and Peron gave them shelter in Argentine.
Youth (from 11 - 21) : Both Sofia and Mario went to the Hashomer Hatzair , a Zionist movement in Argentine, which organized youth activities after school.
The leaders from this movement came from Israel in aim to guide the Jewish youth to make Alia (immigration to Israel) to a kibbutz, mainly to Kibbutzim in the frontier of Israel.
As a preparation to their Aliah, they both went to an agricultural camp training, in the countryside; because they supposed to establish a kibbutz in Israel with a group of other Jewish youth from other parts of Argentine.
There were also "Country Agricultural Training camps" in Brandenburg until 1940.
During the 40 the Zionists movements in Argentine suffer from Anti-Semitism attacks mainly because Peron government was pro-Nazi until very close to the end of War World II.
Mario and Sofia became in love and got marry in the same day of Peron revolution (1955).
They came to Israel and together with their group from the movement, they went to a kibbutz "Nir Ytzhak" in the south of the country, nearby the border with Egypt.
They lived in tents for a long period also while my mother was pregnant with my older brother Yair, while there was the Sinai war (October – November 1956) and the bombs got near their tent (my father was a soldier in this war).
It was a hard time in Israel those times, specially for a young couple who came from "good houses" and from a country without war (Argentine). In Israel there was not enough food, a very hard new language (Hebrew) different culture (integration with Jewish people from all over the world) very hard conditions (families living in tents) and always thread of war. My parents went back to Argentine in December 1959, while my mother was pregnant with me (Mara).
When they came out from the ship, my grandfather Isidoro Schwartz, who was waiting for them in the port, said to my parents that he is very disappointed from them… that they were weak people because they return to Argentine. He thought that they have the mission to bring all the family to Israel and now that they have return to Argentine this dream is lost.
Also my grandfather Samuel List, who was a communist mostly all his life and was against the Aliah (immigration) of my father in the beginning, he dropped his communist ideas after the persecutions of the Jews in Europe and Russia and became very supportive to Zionism and the returning of my parents to Israel.
It took 11 years for my parents to find their way back home, to their spiritual homeland.
First, they moved to Uruguay, were my little brother Alfred was born. There my father with my grandfather build a company of "equipment packing" for families who immigrated to Israel. My grandparents migrated to Israel in 1968 and finally in October 1971 my familly return to Israel.
Since their second return, my parents went through harsh wars and terror attacks, lost family members in wars but they succeeded to bring mostly all the family to Israel, parents, brothers, cuisines and other relatives.
They raised a beautiful family, sons and one daughter (meJ) grandchildren and grand grandchildren.
They were always philosophic and humanistic, but mainly optimists and very Zionists with a huge love to Israel.
They have many friends and as adults, they open themselves to have German friends whom they love very much.
Despite their age, both of them volunteer and are activists in Wizo organization. They are intellectuals and have a strong passion for life.
The life they lived made an amazing piece of our family history.
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Some remarks
Hashomer Hatzair youth movement (Givat Haviva belongs to the movement too)
Hashomer Hatzair came into being as a result of the merger of two groups, Hashomer ("The Guard") a Zionist scouting group, and Ze'irei Zion ("The Youth of Zion") which was an ideological circle that studied Zionism,socialism and Jewish history. Hashomer Hatzair is the oldest Zionist youth movement still in existence. Initially Marxist-Zionist, the movement was influenced by the ideas of Ber Borochov and Gustav Wyneken as well asBaden-Powell and the German Wandervogel movement. Hashomer Hatzair believed that the liberation of Jewish youth could be accomplished by aliyah (immigration; literally "ascent") to Palestine and living in kibbutzim. After the war the movement spread to Jewish communities throughout the world as a scouting movement.
Psychoanalysis was also an influence, partly through Siegfried Bernfeld; so was the philosopher Martin Buber. Otto Fenichel also supported Hashomer Hatzair's efforts to integrate Marxism with psychoanalysis. Hashomer Hatzair's educators sought to shape the image of the child from birth to maturity; some were aware of the work of the Soviet educator Anton Makarenko who also propounded collectivist education.
Members of the movement settled in Mandatory Palestine as early as in 1919. In 1927, the four kibbutzim founded by Hashomer Hatzair banded together to form the Kibbutz Artzi federation. The movement also formed a political party which shared the name Hashomer Hartzair, advocating a binational solution in mandatory Palestine with equality between Arabs and Jews. That is why, when a small group of Zionist leaders met in New York in May 1942 in the Biltmore Hotel, Hashomer Hatzair representatives voted against the so-called Biltmore Program.
In 1936, the kibbutz-based Hashomer Hatzair party launched an urban political party, the Socialist League of Palestine, which would represent non-kibbutzniks who shared the political approach of the members of Hashomer Hatzair kibbutzim and the youth movement in the political organizations of the Yishuv (as the Jewish community in Palestine was known). The Socialist League was the only Zionist political party within the Yishuv to accept Arab members as equals, support Arab rights, and call for a binational state in Palestine. In the 1930s, Hashomer Hatzair (along with Mapai) was affiliated with the left-wing "Three-and-a-half" International, the International Revolutionary Marxist Centre (also known as the "London Bureau") rather than the more mainstream socialist Labour and Socialist International or the Leninist Third International.
Once a huge movement inside the large Argentinian Jewish Community, Hashomer Hatzair Argentina suffered from decay common to all Zionist youth movements in Argentina during the last decades, as well as several military dictatorships in the country's history that directly or indirectly led to the closure of several of its kenim. Today the movement operates in Tzavta Centro Comunitario (Tzavta Community Center), in the neighborhood of Almagro, City of Buenos Aires. It is one of 9 Zionist Youth Movements in the city. It has around 120 members, running regular Saturday activities and secular Kabalat Shabat service, besides two machanot per year.