Jose "Pepe" Siderman, who fled his native Argentina during the military regime's "dirty war" that targeted opponents and later won a landmark human rights case against the Argentina nation, died Wednesday in Los Angeles. He was 90. His case added to the voluminous documentation of the seven-year dirty war and its nefarious subtext of anti-Semitism. Many of Argentina's military men were admirers of Adolf Hitler and Germany's Nazi regime. Yet Argentina is a nation regarded by many of its citizens as the most European, and civilized, in Latin America.I lived Dante's stories of hell, the inferno. I could see animals flying. I saw everything that Dante had written about."

Siderman recalled the shouted epithets--"dirty Jew!"--as armed goons pounded on his front door March 24, 1976, when a coup d'etat shattered the prosperous existence of the Siderman family.

"I have no doubt that this disgrace happened to us because we were Jewish," Siderman said.

Upon his release, he said, a note was left in his pocket.

He was warned to leave or face death. The family fled Argentina, eventually landing in the United States, where a daughter already lived. Siderman became a naturalized U.S. citizen.