General Roca in the heart of the Rio Negro valley is 1175 km south of Buenos Aires, 39 km from Cipoletti, 25 km from Allen, and 8 km from Colonia Rusa. Wooded with orchards, this colony on Route 22 was founded 1 September 1879 on the site currently called "Father Alejandro Stefenelli's settlement" and moved in 1899, 3 km west due to flooding. This urban center resulted from farmers abandoning other nearby colonies. Eight minute books still exist of the Asociacion Israelita de General Roca dating from the early 1930s. The 1940 Jewish population was forty families. Population decline dates from the 1950s. Only 100 Jews were among the 1991 population of 71,000. [December 2003]
Jewish Community (Asociacion Israelita de General Roca email: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..
- El Cementerio Israelita: At the end of Mendoza Street, turn left to the end. The 0.5 hectar site holds 400 graves. The cemetery abuts the penitentiary and the Christian cemetery from which it is separated by a chainlink fence. Hours: 8:30 a.m. to 12 PM and 3-7 p.m. Door unlocked except Friday afternoon and Saturday. This cemetery (in a common grave) holds reinternments from Colonia Rusa after the "great flood, 17 July 1949." A Holocaust monument and one to the colony's 1901 first settlers, Sepiurka and Zilvestein, buried in Tablada. The oldest gravestones are brick and cement with Yiddish inscriptions. Jews from Zapala, Cultral-Cs, Cipolletti, and Allen also used this cemetery whose records and map are held by the Jewish community of General Roca. [December 2003]