David Kraiselburd (1912–1974) was an Argentine journalist, newspaper publisher, and lawyer, best known for his commitment and actions against military regimes and political violence of both right- and left-wing extraction.
In his teens, a high-school writing contest earned him an internship in La Plata's main daily, El Día, after the end of which he was hired by the paper as a sports commentator.
Putting his legal background in action as director and editor-in-chief, Kraiselburd was among the few Argentine publishers to openly oppose the 1966 coup d'état against the moderate, democratically elected President Arturo Illia.
In a spree against dissenters, and prefiguring Kraiselburd's fate, on July 15 a Montoneros unit burst into a small-town restaurant and machine-gunned a frequent El Dia contributor, former Interior (law enforcement) Minister Arturo Mor Roig, who, under the military regime of Gen. Lanusse, had been instrumental in the transition toward democracy that led to two 1973 elections, which Peron's stand-in (Hector Campora) first, and Peron later, won by a landslide.
[3] As many Montoneros acknowledged—most remarkably, intelligence officer, journalist, and outstanding writer Rodolfo Walsh—these "acts of individual terror," as Walsh called them, would not only backfire, but make popular support dwindle.
In September 1975, Kraiselburd was posthumously awarded the prestigious Maria Moors Cabot prize by Columbia University's School of Journalism, for his defense of democratic values in the face of forms of authoritarianism of both right-wing and left-wing leanings.
Threats from right-wing paramilitary groups, bombs in the printing press, random machine-gun attacks on buildings and houses, and other intimidatory tactics were overshadowed by the kidnapping and murder of Raul's two-year-old son, named David, after his grandfather.
Chalked up to the action of "run-of-the-mill" kidnappers in search for a ransom, the case of David Kraiselburd's homonymous grandson was never fully explained—nor was the baby's body ever found.
Diaz's analysis of the media under the military regime, unusually virtuous in escaping the widespread polarization of accounts of the 1970s (and therefore advancing a critical stance, rather than an unqualified paean), hints that the example of the late David Kraiselburd strengthened the commitment of the journalists who risked their lives every day at the newsroom during the dark years of the juntas.