Jacobo Timerman (1923-99) was an Argentine journalist who wrote articles opposing human rights abuses in Argentina and elsewhere. He founded the newspaper La Opinión, which also condemned human rights abuses wherever they occurred.

Jacobo Timerman was born on January 6, 1923, in Bar, a town in the Soviet Ukraine. Timerman's family emigrated to Argentina five years later to escape the pogroms which threatened Jews in the Ukraine in the 1920s. When Jacobo was 12 his father died, leaving his wife to support Jacobo and his younger brother José (Yoselle). They lived in a one-room apartment in the Jewish quarter of Buenos Aires. Large numbers of Europeans had immigrated to Argentina in the early 20th century, and among them were thousands of Eastern European Jews.

Argentina, along with much of the Western world, witnessed the rise of vocal right-wing movements in the 1920s and 1930s, many drawing their inspiration...