2023-08-30 16:58:33
Marco Bechis told what led him to write a book that recalls his days as missing y tortured: “The memory of the past, as a simple iconographic fact, is of no use to anyone. Has to be somewhat active and that it helps us to overcome certain circumstances”, affirmed the writer and screenwriter in Modo Fontevecchiaby Net TV and Radio Perfil (FM 101.9).
What led you to write this book after so many years?
It is the syndrome of survivor that after so many years he still wonders why he is alive and the others are not. I went back to that personal catastrophe and collective with another language that is that of writing. The book is the voiceover of the movie Garage Olimpo and what those characters thought.
Why did you choose Garage Olimpo for the film, having been in El Club Atlético?
The film is a synthesis of real experiences that I have been collecting over the years from other survivors y witnesses from various concentration camps. The film is not the reproduction of my storyso much so that the protagonist is a woman who has a destiny very different from mine.
The name “Garage Olympus” is a synthesis of what I did with the film, that is, put real situations, but in a different order and a different narrative development. The Orleletti garage existed y “The olimpus” reason why the name of the film represents a synthesis.
Why did you wait so many years between the movie and the book? What happened in these 23 years?
I have a 90-year-old mother and she considered that she had to read the story, from her point of view and with her lived experience. Besides, I wrote the book while with her, lost in a mountain, talking and recalling many memories. When he read the book, he told me: “this wasn’t exactly like that”, but hey, that’s what I remember.
We are rights and human
In the book, did you mention that there were important businessmen, such as Franco Macri and Roberto Rocca, who interceded to get you released and deported to Italy?
I was 15 days in the Club Atlético and then I spent four and a half months in unit 9 of La Plata as a “legal prisoner”, despite the fact that we did not have any specific accusation. After that period, Arguindegui signed an expulsion decree and I came to Italy.
My father told me that he had been a Techint leader and in that moment I lived in Milan and worked at Fiat. Both my mother and father moved immediately and managed to make contact with Suarez Mason through Franco Macri. They had long meetings at the Techint offices together with Roberto Rocca, who was a great friend of my father, and they sent a message to my family saying that in 36 hours they would see if they could do something to get me released or if they had to forget about me. In those days they tortured me and interrogated me.
I mentioned these names in the book and also gave testimony in front of justice. I thank the people who helped me, but I made it clear in court that the industrial class was clearly aware of what was happening in Argentina and they did not denounce anything.
Could we say that Roberto Rocca and Franco Macri saved his life?
Let’s say it was more Franco Macri to have contacts with Suarez Mason.
Enrique Piñeyro, who is a friend of his and, at the same time, is also a descendant of the Rocca family, stars in the film.
Of course, parents were very close friends with mine and when we were kids we played together.
Argentina promises at the UN to investigate “economic crime” in the military dictatorship
In his book he marks that he was guilty. What do you feel?
There are several examples of concentration camp survivors feeling ashamed of being alive because the others are not. I don’t live in Argentina, but every time I walk through the streets of Buenos Aires, It’s like going through a big mental cemetery and of absences, which in reality does not exist because many of the disappeared have no grave.
Somehow, you have to learn to live with that feeling. One way to advance in that swamp is by producing works and rethinking something narratively related to that story.
That is why I wrote the book, it is another way of being able to go through and restore memory. If memory is not used to change something in the present, it is useless. The memory of the past as a simple iconographic fact is of no use to anyone. It has to be something active and that it helps us to overcome certain circumstances.
Could you thank Franco Macri for saving your life?
Franco Macri he looked for me in Milan because he wanted to meet me. the business class had a clear perception of what was happeningbut they also did not have the information that there is today about the details of what was happening in the concentration camps, and they did not know what was happening with the death flights.
I think that it was his curiosity that led him to call me, because I was a direct witness of what was happening. He Club Atlético It worked on Paseo Colón and Independencia, under the highway, and Franco Macri had his offices a few meters. He wanted to know more, I told him and I also told him that he had intentions of carrying out an international information campaign with everything that was happening in the country, taking advantage of the media attention that Argentina had as a result of the World Cup. His response was: “you are in the same, the experience was of no use to you“Almost like disappointed.
How curious that the same people who kidnapped Franco Macri’s son were part of Olympus.
I remember thinking of Franco when I heard the news and I had a feeling of solidarity.
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