were disappeared or killed. Three months after the military take-over a decree was promulgated making it possible for public service workers to be removed instantly from their jobs without justification. The union activist Nora Marx lost her job two weeks later. A couple of months after that, on the evening of Saturday 21 August 1976, Nora arranged to meet up with friends to go to the cinema. At around 8 in the evening Ellen Marx received a 'phone call from her daughter's boyfriend, asking if Nora was still at home. She was not. Ellen had been out since mid-afternoon so did not know when Nora had left the house. Nora was never seen again. Two weeks after the disappearance her parents received a telephone call: the caller did not give his name, but he conveyed greetings from Nora and said that she hoped to see her parents soon. Nothing further came of that, however. Witness statements obtained long afterwards indicate that she probably had not survived the serious torture inflicted by her captors during the first week or so after she was taken. Although the full extent and nature of the disappearances that occurred after the army took power emerged only little by little, people already knew enough for Ellen Marx to have been desperately worried by her daughter's unexplained disappearance. She looked everywhere and asked everyone she could think of for evidence of her daughter's whereabouts. She went to all the police stations in the area. Everyone she asked said they knew nothing about what had happened to Nora. The police stations she visited included Police station number 42 in the Mataderos quarter. There she was assured that there were no detainees held in the police cells. It later transpired, from the testimony of a fellow detainee, that this was the police station to which Nora was taken following her capture and where, with others, she was held and tortured for at least five days. Eventually Ellen Marx was reconciled to the probability that Nora was dead, but she never stopped trying to find out more about what had happened, though many details remain uncertain. It appears that Nora Marx was captured by "security personnel" between 16.00 and 19.00 on Saturday 21 August 1976. According to one version, Nora Marx was one of several people detained in a workshop used to make tote bags. The workshop also contained a