JUNE 30 In Jewish History
713 CE: In Spain, Visigoth nobility which had held out against the invading Moslem forces, throughout the winter of 712 finally surrendered to the Arabs. A majority of the remaining Goths and Hispano-Roman people who lived in the newly acquired areas eventually converted to Islam. The Jews, who had been persecuted by the ruling Goths, proved to be the exception. They kept their religious identity and flourished under the new rulers.
1294: The Jewish community of
Berne
,
Switzerland
forfeited all financial claims against non-Jews, and then was expelled from the country.
1298: The Jewish community of
Morgentheim
,
Austria
was massacred.
1470: Birthdate of Charles VIII, King of France. In 1494, Charles invaded Italy leading to the occupation of the Kingdom of Naples in 1495. Charles conquest led to increased persecutions of the Jewish population which lead to their expulsion in 1510, two years after his death.
1487: At Faro, Portugal, the printing of a Pentateuch was completed on the printing pressed located in the house of Don Samuel Giacon. According to Konrad Haebler's Typographie Ibèrique, “this was the first Hebrew book printed with vowel-points.”
1651: During the Khmelnytsky Uprising, Polish forces prevailed at the Battle of Beresteczko. The victory only provided a brief respite. The Cossack Revolt would continue with thousands of more Jews dying in what would be the worst loss of life until the Holocaust.
1680: In Madrid, an Auto de Fe was held in honor of the marriage of Carlos II to Louis Marie d’Orleans. It took place in the Plaza Mayor and lasted 14 hours. Over 50,000 spectators came to see 118 accused sentenced to prison or burned. It marked the last time that a "royal" auto was held since Carlos’ successor, Philip V, refused the "honor." took place in the Plaza Mayor
1713:Nehemiah Chiya Chayun arrived at Amsterdam and requested permission of the Portuguese congregation to circulate his writings, which had been published at Berlin.
1782(18thof Tammuz, 5542): Because the 17 fell on Shabbat, observance of Tzom Tammuz
1785: James Oglethorpe, the founder of the colony (and later the state) of Georgia passed away. Georgia had been created by Oglethorpe as an alternative to Debtor’s Prison. However, when a boatload of Sephardic Jews arrived in the colony a month after its founding, Oglethorpe welcomed them as he did a subsequent arrival of German Jews who came a year later. Oglethorpe did this despite the opposition of the trustees which surely endeared him to this remnant of the House of Israel.
1821(30th of Sivan, 5581): Rosh Chodesh Tammuz
1840: Major Alfred Mordecai and Sara Ann “Hays” Mordecai gave birth to Alfred Mordecai, Jr. the West Point Graduate who served with distinction during the Civil War and Rose to the rank of Brigadier General.
1838: The Swedish government abolished discrimination against Jews. Unfortunately due to public objections it was repealed. Another 30 years were to pass before Jews were given the right to vote.
1862: At Glendale, VA, seventeen year old Private Benjamin Bennett Levy, a drummer-boy in the Union Army, picked up the “colors” when the color bearers and carried them during the battle. He saved them from capture by the Rebels and was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor for his bravery under fire. [Nothing was of greater value to a regiment than its colors. Defeat in battle was one thing; losing the colors to the enemy was a point of great disgrace. Color bearers were an easy target for enemy soldiers so it was a high risk job.]
1866:Today, in Romania, Jews were attacked maimed and robbed. The Bucharest Synagogue was desecrated and demolished. As a result of the violence Article 6 of the 1866 Constitution was replaced by Article 7. Article 6 declared that "religion is no obstacle to citizenship"; but, "with regard to the Jews, a special law will have to be framed in order to regulate their admission to naturalization and also to civil rights". Article 7 read that "only such aliens as are of the Christian faith may obtain citizenship". All this came to pass when Charles von Hohenzollern took the throne as Carol I and was forced to deal with a riot against the Jews in his capital city.
1870(1st of Tammuz, 5630): Rosh Chodesh Tammuz
1874: “Partial Destruction of a Town by Fire” published today described the two days of fires in Berditchev, a Ukrainian city in the Russian “inhabited most by Jews” have destroyed over 600 houses and left thousands homeless. [Berditichev was a major center of Jewish life in the Ukraine, home to Mittnagdim and Chasidim, the famous of which were the Berditchiver Hasidim and their Rebbe, Rabbi Levi Yitzchok of Berditchev
1878: According to today’s Foreign Notes column, before departing for the meeting of heads of state in Berlin, the Earl of Beaconsfield received a letter from Lionel de Rothschild in which he asked Disraeli to do everything he could to get them to endorse measures that would put all religions on an equal footing in each of their countries. Rothschild made a special point of asking Disraeli to intervene on behalf of the suffering Jews of Romania and Serbia. Disraeli replied that he would do all that he could in this matter.
1885(17thof Tammuz, 5645): Tzom Tammuz
1889(1st of Tammuz, 5649): Rosh Chodesh Tammuz
1893: Birthdate of Harold Joseph Laski “an English political theorist, economist, author, and lecturer, who served as the chairman of the Labour Party during 1945-1946.”
1902: Herzl began a journey to London seeking support for his plans for a Jewish homeland. The journey lasted until July 17.
1904(17thof Tammuz, 5564): Tzom Tammuz
1904: On a day connected with the loss of the second Jewish commonwealth, Herzl, the man trying to connect a modern Jewish commonwealth, suffers a severe bronchial catarrh, which turns into pneumonia. Oskar Marmorek proceeds to Edlac with two doctors.
1905: Albert Einstein publishes the article "On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies" where he introduces special relativity.
1911: A Jew, Abraham Benrubi, former President of the Tribunal of Commerce at Cavalla (
Turkey
) was appointed Judge of the Court of Appeal in
Jerusalem
.
1915: The convention of the Federation of American Zionists came to a close this evening with the election of national officers. Dr. Harry Friedenwald of Baltimore was elected President. Other officers chosen were Chairman of Executive Committee, Louis Lipsky of New York; Honorary Secretary, Bernard A. Rosenblatt of New York, and Treasurer, Louis Robison of New York. The delegates to the convention received a pleasant surprise at this closing session when it was announced that Nathan Starus, the famed philanthropist had turned over his private yacht, valued at between $35,000 and $50,000, to the Zionists to help them deal with the looming financial shortfall.
1917: Birthdate of Bernard “Buddy” Rich. Born in
Brooklyn
, Rich is best remembered as one of the greatest drummers of all times. Later in his career he was the leader of his own group – The Buddy Rich Band. According to one legend, when on his deathbed a nurse asked him if anything was bothering him, Rich replied, “Yes, country music.
1921: Jonas and Pauline Bernanke arrived at Ellis Island today. The 30 year old Bernake listed his occupation as “clerk.” The Bernakes eventually moved to Dillon, South Carolina, where they ran a drug store and raised a son named Ben.
1922: The Central Conference of American Rabbis (CCAR), the Reform movement's professional organization, meeting in
Cape May
,
N.J.
, voted 56 to 11 to affirm in principle the right of women to become rabbis.
1920: Sir Herbert Samuel the first high commissioner for
Palestine
arrives in
Jaffa
and is received with a military ceremony. Samuel served in the position for five years. He was the son of Edwin Louis Samuel, a successful Anglo-Jewish banker. Samuel had been raised as an Orthodox Jew and although according to at least one source, he ceased to be a practicing Jew but remained active in Jewish affairs.
1922: A joint resolution of both Houses of Congress of the United States unanimously endorsed the "Mandate for Palestine," confirming the irrevocable right of Jews to settle in the area of Palestine - anywhere between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea:
" Resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled. That the United States of America favors the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which should prejudice the civil and religious rights of Christian and all other non-Jewish communities in Palestine, and that the holy places and religious buildings and sites in Palestine shall be adequately protected." (As described by Dr. Yitzchok Levine)
1924(28th of Sivan, 5684): Rabbi Yaakov Yisrael De Haan, a Dutch born Jew who was a leader of the ultra-Orthodox Jewish community opposed to Zionism was shot outside of the synagogue moments after finishing his evening prayers. De Haan was scheduled to lead a delegation of ultra-Orthodox anti-Zionist Jews to
London
where he planned to make their case to the British government. His killer was rumored to be a fellow Jew. The Jewish community of
Jerusalem
, regardless of political affiliation was shocked by the killing and 20,000 people turned out for his funeral. Forty years after the crime took place a 1970 broadcast on Israeli radio revealed that the killer had been a member of Haganah who had killed De Haan because he was viewed as a traitor.
1925: Birthdate of Samuel M. Ehrenhalt, “a poet of percentages who for 15 years as a regional commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics transformed colorless wage and employment figures into small, brightly lighted windows onto New Yorkers’ daily lives.” (As reported by Margalit Fox)
1926: Birthdate of Paul Berg, co-winner of the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1980.
1926: Governor Moore of New Jersey is scheduled to deliver the welcoming remark at the opening session the annual convention of the Rabbinical Assembly of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America. Professor Louis Ginzberg and Rabbi Max Drob are scheduled to address the meeting of North American rabbis being held at the Scarboro Hotel in Long Branch, NJ.
1927: Henry Ford retracted and apologized for the publication of the Protocols of the Elders of
Zion
.
1934: Night of the Long Knives: Hitler ordered the execution of some of the SA (Sturm Abteilungen) leaders of whose absolute loyalty he questioned including Ernst Roehm. Until then the SS under Himmler was subordinate to the SA. The SS now became independent and was given charge of the concentration camps.
1936:Gretel Bergmann matched a German high jump record today. Two weeks later the young Jewess would be kicked off the German Olympic Team.
1936: Polish Jews strike to protest anti-Semitism
1937: “A tower and stockade kibbutz was established at Tirat Zevi (Zevi’s Castle) 6 miles south-east of Beisan and less than a mile from the Jordan border.” [As the debate rages about the borders of the state of Israel and settlements on the “West Bank,” please note the location of this kibbutz. Obviously the Zionist pioneers assumed that all territory west of the Jordan River was open to them.]
1937: Under the auspices of the Bialiki Association, Chiam Nachman Bialik’s house was opened to the public. The public display included: the archives of Bialik’s manuscripts and that of other writers, Bialik’s private library and a museum with the poet’s personal possessions.
1939: Tel Aviv attorney M. Seligman was released on bail, pending his appeal of a conviction on charges of conspiring to assist in the illegal immigration of Jews into Palestine which carried a six month term of imprisonment. “He was acquitted of 18 other charges including brigery and corruption of Palestine Government officials.”
1941: Ninety Jews are murdered at
Dobromil
,
Ukraine
.
1941: German troops enter
Lvov
,
Ukraine
, and beat hundreds of Jews to death after running them ragged at gunpoint.
1941: Two death trains left Iasi, Romania after a pogrom. One of them stopped in Podu Iloaiei and the 1,194 Jews who died along the way from thirst and heat exhaustion were buried there in a mass grave.
1941 Three hundred young Jews are deported from
Amsterdam
,
Holland
, to stone quarries at the Mauthausen,
Austria
, concentration camp. All will eventually perish.
1941: American radio commentator Father Charles Coughlin celebrates Hitler's invasion of Russia as "the first strike in the holy war on communism" and attacks "the British-Jewish-Roosevelt war on Germany and Italy."
1941: The Germans entered Lvov, Soviet Union, cite of the third largest Jewish Community after Warsaw and Lodz. Thousands of Jews would be tortured and slaughtered at the hands of rampaging mobs.
1941: In
Amsterdam
, 300 Jews were deported to work camps.
1941: In
Denmark
, a collaborationist SS organization, Freikorps Danmark (Danish Free Corps), is established.
1941: In
Belorussia
, a guerrilla collaborationist organization, Belaruskaya Narodnaya Partizanka(Belorussian National Guerrillas), is established.
1941: In
Latvia
, Viktor Arajs establishes the Perkonkrusts (Thunder Cross), a collaborationist paramilitary unit.
1941: Heinrich Himmler, head of the SS, tells Rudolf Höss, the commandant of
Auschwitz
, that Hitler has ordered that the "Jewish question" be solved once and for all and that the SS is to implement that order.
Auschwitz
is the death camp that is to carry out the greater part of the Jewish extermination. Mass gassings, not shootings, are determined to be the most effective means to exterminate the large numbers of Jews.
1942: A headline in the London Daily Telegraph reads: "MORE
THAN
1,000,000 JEWS KILLED IN EUROPE." [Sort of puts the “lie” the statement that people did not know what was happening to the Jews in the clutches of Hitler.]
1942: Three-year-old Jewish twins in
Sosnowiec
,
Poland
, Ida and Adam Paluch, are spirited away from Gestapo agents by their aunt and sent to live with separate Catholic families
1944: By now, more than 500 Jews are being secretly protected by industrialist Oskar Schindler.
1944: Joel Brand and Rudolf Kasztner working together with the Jewish Agency and the War Refugee board concluded a deal with and Adolph Eichmann. It became known as “Blut fuer Ware” ("Blood for Goods"). This date marked the first of three transports from
Hungary
to
Switzerland
. A total of 3344 Jews were sent on a special transport at a price of $1,000 per head. The deal was the subject of a great amount of controversy and later even resulted in a defamation trial, which reached the Israeli Supreme Court in June of 1955.
1944: One thousand, seven hundred, ninety-five Jews arrived from
Corfu
arrived at Birkenau.
1944: The crematoria at Auschwitz are working at full capacity when 2044 Jews from Corfu and Athens, Greece, arrive. At day's end, lightning rods on crematoria chimneys are warped from the heat generated by the furnaces.
1945: "Lest We Forget," an exhibition of death-camp photography organized by the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and the Washington Evening Star began a tour in Boston, Massachusetts, and then on into Midwest. By tours end nearly 90,000 Americans will have viewed this testament of the Holocaust.
1946: “Irgun Zvai Leumi…issued an ultimatum tonight saying it would kill three British hostages if the British executed two Irgun members condemned to death.”
1946: British soldiers and police officers rushed into the Tel Aviv business district when pamphlet bombs exploded in this predominately Jewish city. They snatched the pamphlets from “the hands of the jeering populace. “The pamphlets, signed by Irgun, said, ‘All this, and what will follow, will not change our dtetermination to take the lives of these three if our two die.’ The pamphlets referred to the three of the five British soldiers kidnapped by Irgun two weeks ago. Two of the British soldiers have already been released in response to pressure from the Haganah.
1946: “Despite the detention of 2,000 “ Jews “in the largest mass arrest ever made in Palestine, the secreted radio of the Jewish resistance movement announced tonight that its leadership and general staff had not been ‘silenced’ by the campaign that British forces opened against’ Jewish forces “yesterday morning.
1946: As the British continued to wage war against the Jews of Palestine, the city of Haifa was placed under a curfew tonight following a spontaneous demonstration that had taken place earlier in the day. According to unofficial reports, four people were wounded when the British fired on the demonstrators.
1946: As the British crack down on the Yishuv, there are reports that the Mandatory Government will cease to recognize the Jewish Agency and replace it a variety of local councils. Moshe Shertok had already expressed the view that withdrawal would not mean the end of the Jewish Agency since it was supported the community in Palestine.
1948: The last British armed forces left Israel.
1948: An Israeli convoy led by commandos arrives at the isolated settlement of Kfar Darom, south of
Gaza
. The convoy brought food for the Jews and was supposed to evacuate the wounded and the women. The Egyptians were able to prevent the convoy from departing which meant that the commandos and the defenders would now be forced to share the meager supplies as they wait for relief from the outside.
1949: “Stand Against Zionism” published today summarized the anti-Zionist views of the late Dr. David Philipson, a leading Reform Rabbi who supported the American Council of Judaism.
1952: Guiding Light, a soap opera created by Irna Phillips, debuted on television on. It is one of the longest-running daily television programs.
1953(17th of Tammuz, 5713): Tzom Tammuz
1953: Between
May 15, 19
48
and
June 30, 19
53
, the Jewish population of
Israel
doubled from 640,000 to 1.3 million.
1956: Between
May 15, 19
48 and
June 30, 19
56, the Jewish population of Israel tripled from 640,000 to 2.1 million.
1957: Release date for “Love in the Afternoon” a romantic comedy that owed its existence two Jews since it was directed and produced by Billy Wilder with a screenplay co-written by Billy Wilder and I.A.L. Diamond.
1959(24th of Sivan, 5719): American composer Lazare Saminsky passed away at Port Chester, NY. Born in Russian in 1882 he was a pupil of Lyadov and Rimsky-Korsakov at the
St Petersburg
and
Moscow
conservatories from 1906 until 1910. He moved in 1920 to
New York
, where in 1923 he was a founder of the League of Composers. He was musical director of Temple Emanu-El from 1924 until 1956 and author of several books. Saminsky wrote Jewish liturgical music and drew on Jewish sources for his five symphonies, choral music and songs.
1962: LA Dodger Sandy Koufax pitches another no-hitter. This time he beat the Mets 5-0.
1966: The National Organization for Women (NOW) was founded at a meeting in Betty Friedan's hotel room.
1970: During the War of Attrition Yitzhak Peer was taken prisoner when his F-4E II Phantom was shot down by an Egyptian SAM.
1970: During the War of Attrition, Rami Harpaz and Eyal “Los” Ahikar were taken prisoner when their F-4E II Phantom was shot down by an Egyptian SAM. (Israel’s existence comes at a very high price.)
1971(7th of Tammuz, 5731): Herbert Biberman, screenwriter, director and part of the Hollywood Ten, passed away
1976: Catcher Jeff Newman made his major league debut with the Oakland Athletics.
1984(30thof Sivan, 5744): Playwright Lillian Hellman passed away.
1984(30thof Sivan, 5744): Rosh Chodesh Tammuz
1985: In an article entitled “Yuppies with Fetlocks” Jean Franco reviews “The Centaur in the Garden by Moacyr Scliar.; translated by Margaret A. Neves. “This novel…is reminiscent of the Chagall paintings in which the scenes of everyday Jewish life are tenderly and oddly transmuted into fantasy. ''The Centaur in the Garden'' is set..on a farm in southern Brazil, in one of the colonies of Jewish immigrants established there at the beginning of this century by the German-Jewish philanthropist Baron Maurice de Hirsch…One Jewish family's struggle to make a living in these unfamiliar and lonely surroundings is thwarted by the birth of the youngest child, Guedali, who is a centaur.
1992: Prosecution of East European Nazi collaborators who had gained entry to the country posing as innocent refugees from Communism by Australia's "Special Investigations Unit" met with failure and the prosecution effort for all practical purposes was shut down on this date.
1994: Catcher Mike Lieberthal made his major league debut with the Philadelphia Phillies.
1996: An article entitled “New Museum Traces 2 Paths Into Jewish History in
Atlanta
” appears in the New York Times
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9E0CEFDD1339F933A05755C0A960958260
Visitors standing in the high-ceilinged foyer of the new William Breman Jewish Heritage Museum here have a choice. They can begin their journey through time and history by entering a portal on the left marked "The Holocaust" or one on the right labeled "Creating Community: The Jews of Atlanta from 1845 to the Present." Once inside, the two sections of the 50,000-square-foot museum flow into one another, but the choice at the beginning, said the museum's director, Jane Leavey, is the real point. The only place in the school curriculums here where they talk about Jews is with regard to the Holocaust, and that is Jews as victims," said Ms. Leavey in a preview tour this week of the museum that is to open on Sunday. "Here we have an opportunity to say there was a Jewish community here long before Hitler and one long after Hitler." The design and rationale of the Atlanta museum is part of what James Young, a professor of Judaic studies and English at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst, sees as part of an increasingly common but still controversial effort to "contextualize and expand Jewish history" memorials in the United States. American Jews, especially in communities with significant numbers of survivors of the death camps, Professor Young said, have been moving very gingerly over the years to broaden the Jewish identity in the memorials and museums while not losing sight of the significance of the Holocaust. In some cases, he said, the "muted debate" over the pivotal role of the Holocaust has led to bifurcation of museums and memorials. That is the case, he said, in Los Angeles and San Francisco, where the Holocaust is memorialized at one site and Jewish heritage is celebrated at another across town. But increasingly, the idea is to combine the two, Professor Young said. "This is an altogether healthier approach to Jewish history," he said, noting that it embraced the tensions of assimilation, achievement and community that are part of the immigrant experience generally, along with events that had contributed to immigration. "With vicariously remembered catastrophes such as the massacre of native Americans, the enslaving of African-Americans and the Holocaust," Professor Young said, "history can be reduced to competing catastrophes, and that reduces its richness. Three thousand years should not be collapsed into 12 calamitous years." Indeed, said Miles Lerman, chairman of the board of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, the juxtaposition and coexistence of the darkness that was the Holocaust and the relative light that was the evolution of Atlanta's Jewish community serve to "make clearer the contrast between evil and goodness" in Jewish history. With this idea in mind the new museum here, 13 years in the making, was created by the Atlanta Jewish Federation. The museum, named for a local philanthropist, has exhibits dating to 1733, when Jews first settled in Georgia as part of the largely Methodist settlement of James Oglethorpe in Savannah. It is presumed that the first Jews to arrive in Atlanta came from that settlement. In 1845, two peddlers, Jacob Haas and Henry Levi, moved to Atlanta where they opened a dry goods store. Census data show that after 10 years there were 26 Jews among Atlanta's 2,572 residents and by 1870, when the first synagogue was opened, barely 300. According to projections from population surveys, Ms. Leavey said that there are now about 75,000 Jews among the Atlanta metropolitan area's 2.4 million people. The Jewish heritage exhibit presents a primer on Jewish religion and culture and then a glimpse at the religion's key rituals before going on to document the role of Jews in the city's development through artifacts, photographs, newspaper clippings and official records. A significant portion of the exhibit focuses on the 1917 lynching of Leo Frank by an anti-Semitic mob in nearby Marietta, where he was held after being wrongly accused of the rape and murder of a young woman, and the 1958 bombing that damaged the city's main synagogue and shattered some of the community's illusions of comfortable assimilation. The Holocaust portion of the museum draws on the memories and videotaped histories, photographs and artifacts of Atlantans who were survivors of Nazi death camps or who, as children, were spirited out of Germany by family members who did not survive. Designed by one of those children, Benjamin Hirsch, a local architect, the space uses floor and wall treatments to suggest changes in time and circumstances -- from the quaint cobblestones of an old European city to the stark concrete of Nazi Germany. There is a reproduction of the 11-foot wall of the Warsaw ghetto and the weathered wooden slats of box cars, suggesting the span from Hitler's rise to power in 1933 to the horrors of the Auschwitz and Birkenau death camps. In one hallway, leading to a wall-size color photograph of a stretch of railroad tracks going into Birkenau, the walls are covered with the wooden siding of the box cars. Bolted to the ceiling are rail tracks, seeming to reflect the tracks running up to the Birkenau gate. They are the actual rails and wooden ties from the Treblinka death camp, said Ms. Leavey, who recalled being puzzled by this part of the exhibit and observing to Mr. Hirsch that it did not make any sense. "His response was that neither did the Holocaust," Ms. Leavey said.
1996: In an article entitled “A Question of Conscience” appearing in the New York Times, Eugen Weber reviewed The Statement by Brian Moore. The German occupation of
France
and its factious fallout provide the raw material of Brian Moore's powerful new novel. Between 1940 and 1944, more than one in four of the 330,000 Jews living on French territory were deported. The majority were identified, arrested and shipped off by French administrators and the French police, without whose zealous cooperation German forces in
France
would have been unable to carry out the job. In a time of want, fear and national humiliation, few of the French cared about what happened to the Jews. While many individuals helped them (otherwise three in four would not have survived), many also denounced, pursued and robbed them. The drumbeat of official
Vichy
propaganda presented Jews as noxious parasites, and the church went along, fearing godless Communists more than godless Nazis. Some bishops -- and, in their wake, some priests -- denounced such injustice, but most Roman Catholics had other priorities. Objectively, the church, like its
Vichy
allies, shared in the vicious anti-Semitic policies of those dark years. After 1944, when liberation brushed
Vichy
aside, a significant portion of the ecclesiastical establishment discovered treasures of Christian charity that had lain dormant in the preceding years. For them and many others, Communism was a greater crime than collaboration, and a lot of bloodstained thugs were sheltered and hidden, or smuggled out of the country. The moral quagmire that resulted provides tantalizing material not only for the historian but for the novelist -- particularly a novelist like Mr. Moore, who has spent his career exploring the complex and contradictory nature of religious and political devotion. Mr. Moore's attention has been caught by the real-life situation of a man named Paul Touvier. While still in his 20's, Mr. Touvier had headed the murderous militia's intelligence and operations unit for the
Savoy
and
Rhone
departments, fighting the Resistance and tormenting Jews. After the war, although convicted of treason and sentenced to death in absentia, he received priestly protection that enabled him to have a family and earn a living. In 1971, he was pardoned by President Georges Pompidou in the name of national reconciliation. But the pardon raised a national outcry that affected not only "the torturer of
Lyons
" but more important figures: high officials who served the Fourth and
Fifth
Republics
as they had served
Vichy
. One of these was Rene Bousquet, who as Secretary General for Police presided over
Vichy
's Jewish policy. Another was Maurice Papon, who had done well under
Vichy
and worked efficiently as General Secretary of the
Gironde
department to intern and deport Jews. Bousquet prospered as a banker, industrialist and supporter of Francois Mitterrand. Papon, inducted into the Legion of Honor in 1948 "for 18 years of public service," became the police prefect of
Paris
. Compared with such men, Mr. Touvier was in the minor leagues. While they grew respectable, rich and powerful, he lived on faked papers, passed counterfeit bills, traded on the black market, informed for the police -- and became a groupie of Jacques Brel. But in June of 1944 Mr. Touvier had selected seven Jews to be shot as hostages, and this qualified as a crime against humanity, something that could not be wiped out by a presidential pardon. After dilatory court procedures and further years in hiding, Mr. Touvier was rearrested in 1989, tried, retried, convicted and finally sentenced to life in prison. This is the background of the fascinating story told by Mr. Moore in "The Statement," a roman a clef that can be read with equal suspense by those who know the context and those who don't. "The Statement" is Mr. Moore's 18th novel. All are good, some are superb, and this is certainly one of the most engrossing. Its antihero is Pierre Brossard, an old man on the run -- less from the police than from mysterious assassins. As time passes,
Brossard
's places of shelter grow fewer, his protectors more dubious, his escapes more narrow. Are the pursuers Jewish terrorists out to avenge past crimes or are they cat's-paws of more devious foes? Will
Brossard
outrun them? Can he outrun fate? It is as if Mr. Moore has decided to flesh out a phrase the philosopher Joseph de Maistre wrote nine score years ago, in the aftermath of the French Revolution: "There is often in the circumstances that betray the most cunning scoundrels something so unexpected, so surprising, so unforeseeable that men who follow this kind of affair come to believe that human justice is not entirely without some supernatural assistance in seeking out the guilty." The action never flags; the local color rings true throughout. And for readers like me, who often distrust the justice meted out by courts of law, Mr. Moore even manages a satisfying end. But what makes his thriller so thrilling is the fact that it pauses to re-create the self-examination and self-deception of its Catholic characters as they set about rationalizing, equivocating and justifying their actions -- as they try to reason their way through mazes of faith, responsibility and hypocrisy. Mr. Moore has always been good with still, small voices, as well as with the shriller questions of evading or facing obligations. This time his plunge into a host of troubled consciences cuts to the quick. "The Statement" is a book to be read in one sitting. A straightforward shocker, a psychological thriller, a chase and travelogue through
France
, a religio-political conundrum -- any way you take it, this is first-class fare.
2002: The New York Times featured reviews of books by Jewish authors and/or of special interest to Jewish readers including 'Masters of Death': Himmler's Willing Executioners” by Richard Rhodes and ''Trains of Thought,'' by Victor Brombert
2003(30th of Sivan, 5763): Rosh Chodesh Tammuz
2003(30th of Sivan, 5763): Comedian Buddy Hackett passes away at the age of 78 (As reported by Richard Severo)
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/07/01/us/buddy-hackett-irrepressible-clown-of-stage-screen-and-nightclubs-is-dead-at-78.html?pagewanted=all&src=pm
2005: Sir James David Wolfensohn completed his service as the 9thPresident of the World Bank.
2006: In the evening, Jonathan Michael Kerbis participates in Friday Night services as part of becoming a Bar Mitzvah.
2006: Ismar Schorsch, the sixth Chancellor of the Jewish Theological Seminary, retired. For more information about the life of this famed Jewish scholar and author see the following JTS sponsored website. http://www.jtsa.edu/progs/his/isschorsch/index.shtml
2007: Paul Wolfowitz, President of the World Bank, officially resigns his position.
2008: In
New York
, the
92nd Street
Y presents “Debra Winger in Conversation with Arliss Howard” during which Arliss Howard interviews his actress wife who was raised as an Orthodox Jew in
Cleveland Heights
, spent time on a Kibbutz in
Israel
and was called to the Torah during her son’s Bar Mitzvah in 2000.
2009: In New York, Malcolm Hoenlein, Executive Vice Chairman of Presidents Major American Jewish Organizations delivers the Fourth Annual Gershon Jacobson Memorial Lecture, with an address entitled “The Media and Silencing the Support for Israel.”
2009: In the Czech Republic the Holocaust Era Assets Conference comes to an end.
2009:Phoebus Energy is scheduled to unveil its first hybrid water heating system at the Gilo community center in Jerusalem today.
2009: Israel’s defense minister Ehud Barak is scheduled to meet with George Mitchell, the special envoy to the Middle East, in Washington, D.C. today.
2009: A concert featuring 100 cantors from the world is scheduled to take place in Warsaw at The Grand Opera which is l