Sylvia Bermann (Córdoba, 1922 - Córdoba, September 17, 2012) was an Argentine psychiatrist, public health specialist, essayist, and Montonera. She spent several years in Mexico before returning to Argentina to practice her profession and manage the clinic that her father, Gregorio Bermann, had established.
Early life and education
Sylvia's father, Gregorio Bermann came from a family of Russian Jews, who arrived in Buenos Aires at the end of the 19th century. Gregorio was a leader of the first stage of the university Reform of 1918. He married the Buenos Aires socialist professor Leonilda Barrancos, who hailed from a family of ranchers from Chivilcoy. Gregorio and Leonilda had three children: Sylvia, Daniel Gregorio (died at the age of a year and a half) and Claudio Santiago (psychoanalyst, who would settle in Barcelona).
In 1921, the family moved to Córdoba because the father would teach at the National University of Córdoba. Sylvia grew up in a family where political and social commitment was daily, where politics was constantly discussed and socialist values were promoted. Her parents separated, and when the Popular Front won in Chile, Leonilda decided to go to work in that country. In Santiago, living with her mother, Sylvia began a medical degree at the University of Chile.
At that time, Sylvia joined the direct political militancy in the FJS (Socialist Youth Federation) in Santiago. Salvador Allende was Minister of Health, and he was a close friend of Sylvia and Leonilda. In 1943, Gregorio was arrested in the city of Córdoba, and imprisoned. Sylvia ―who was in her third year of Medicine studies― decided to return to Argentina. She would visit her father in jail and bring him food in some suitcases. Gregorio was released when the 1944 San Juan earthquake occurred.
Sylvia and her father returned to Córdoba with the intention that Sylvia resumes her third year of medicine. But the rector of the National University of Córdoba was León S. Morra, a very reactionary psychiatrist, a bitter enemy of Gregorio -and one of those responsible for his arrest- and he did not want to admit Sylvia to the university. Ergo, Sylvia moved to the National University of La Plata, where she completed the entire third year. When Morra was pushed out of the University of Córdoba, Sylvia was able to return to her parents' house to complete her degree. In those years, she was general secretary of the (FUC) and director of that organization's newspaper. She graduated as a psychiatrist.
Career
Argentina
Sylvia was a university professor of psychiatry at the University of La Plata and University of Buenos Aires. She obtained a postgraduate degree in Public Health and Mental Health at Harvard University. For twenty years, she was the director of the , in Avellaneda, Buenos Aires Province , Argentina. She taught psychiatry at the , in Coyoacán, Mexico City, Mexico.
Around 1972, Sylvia -50 years old- joined the Montoneros, an Argentine left-wing Peronist guerrilla organization. She then worked in mental health centers in Buenos Aires. In 1976 ―along with Gervasio Paz, Valentín Barenblit, Vicente Galli, and Dicky Grimson, among others― she was part of the board of directors of the Argentine Federation of Psychiatry (FAP), of which she was elected president before the military coup. from 1976.
Sylvie had two daughters: Irene and Nora. Her daughter, Irene Laura Torrents (1954-1977), a student at the Faculty of Exact and Natural Sciences at the University of Buenos Aires, was also a Montonero. On November 13, 1976 -at the age of 22- Irene was kidnapped by the National Reorganization Process, together with her 8-month-old son, Martín. She remained detained at . Her son was taken from her during her disappearance (and recovered by Sylvia). Irene was thrown alive into the Río de la Plata on the (Flights of Death). Her body was never recovered.
On the night of November 12, 1976, Sylvia's house was ransacked. She was unable to return home, and had to abandon everything she had to escape across land with her grandson Martín with a name fake, through Puerto Iguazú, Misiones Province to Foz do Iguaçu, Brazil. In Brazil, Sylvia's ex-husband was waiting for her. Many fellow exiles in Mexico told Sylvia to emigrate there and she did so, along with her grandson and her other daughter, Norah.