July 17 In Jewish History
1203: The Knights of the Fourth Crusade capture Constantinople forcing the Byzantine emperor Alexius III Angelus to flee from his capital into exile. Unlike other Crusades, the focus of the Fourth Crusade was the Byzantine Empire and its capital Constantinople rather than Jerusalem. The Fourth Crusade was really a clash between two different groups of Christians and a fight over commercial interests. Unlike the other crusades, the Fourth did not produce any great overt anti-Semitic activities. But it did keep the crusading spirit alive and subsequent crusades did result in more harm to various Jewish communities. The most significant lesson of the Fourth Crusade was that it was a classic example of religion being manipulated for reasons that had nothing to do with God or His teachings; something that haunts the Jews of the world down to modern times.
1272: Pope Gregory X issued a bull prohibiting accusations of blood-ritual killings
1287: Forty Jews - men, women and children - were killed by a mob in Oberwesel (
Germany
) after a ritual murder accusation. The rioting spread down the
Rhineland
.
1392: King Pedro I (1357–67) of
Portugal
ordered the compliance of the bull of Pope Boniface IX protecting Jews from forced baptism. He also extended it to Spanish Jewish Refugees.
1414: A new edict was issued by the regent in the name of her infant son Don Ferdinand that offered some slight improvement to the conditions of the Jews of Castile.
1549: All Jews and Marranos were expelled from
Ghent
,
Belgium
.
1762: Catherine II becomes Tsarina of Russia upon the murder of Peter III of Russia. Known to history as Catherine the Great, Russia’s ruler participated in the partition of Poland along with Prussia and Austria. In acquiring her section of Poland, Catherine acquired a large Jewish population. Although her first reaction to these new Jewish subjects was restrained but comparatively enlightened, in the last years of her reign, Catherine took the first measures which would lead to what became known as the Pale of Settlement.
1763: Birthdate of John Jacob Astor. Born in
Germany
he parlayed his role in the fur trade into one of
America
’s early fortunes. There is a great deal of debate surrounding Astor’s ethnic origins. In this case, we will give him the benefit of the doubt.
1786: Birthdate of Henri Castro, a native of Bayonne, France who brought hundreds of families to Texas where they settled in an area of west of San Antonio. The town of Castroville, Texas and Castro County are named after him which attests to his importance.
1793: Second of the three partitions of Poland takes place as Russia, Prussia and Austria divide this once proud kingdom home to one of Europe’s largest Jewish communities. As a result of the partitions,
Russia
, which had worked to remain Jew free would find itself home to millions of Jews.
1806: The last auto-de-fe ordered by the Inquisition of Peru was held today.
1810:Reform Judaism was born in the town of Seesen in central Germany with a stated mission to modernize Judaism and create a bridge between Jewish life and the surrounding culture.
1815: In France, Napoleon surrenders at Rochefort, Charente-Maritime to British forces. Napoleon’s final defeat would lead him to permanent exile on St. Helena. His final defeat brought a wave of reaction as the remnants of the old régime in France and Europe sought to regain their old power and undo the changes wrought by the French Revolution. This reactionary wave would have a negative effect on the Jewish people and would be one of the driving forces that led to next wave of Jewish immigration to the United States.
1841(28th of Tamuz, 5601): On the secular calendar, Rebbe Moshe Teitelbaum of Ujhel, known as the Yismach Moshe, founder of the Satmar sect, passed away.
1854: An excerpt published today from Little’s Living Age described Doctor Wolff as being the real Wandering Jew, who is not the melancholy figure “of the poet and novelist” “but a “fat, jolly Jew for ‘whom the law having a shadow of good things to come.’”
1862: Legislation abolishing discrimination against the service of chaplains in the United States army became a law. In other words, Rabbis could now serve as Chaplains.
1862: At the request of the Lincoln administration, the chaplain act was amended to provide for the appointment of Catholic, Protestant and Jewish chaplains.
1863(1st of Av, 5623): Rosh Chodesh Av
1868: Birthdate of Henri Nathansen, “a Danish writer and stage director, today best known for the play Inside the Walls (Danish: Indenfor Murene” who passed away in 1944.
1874: Professor C. H. Brigham of Ann Arbor, Michigan, read a paper on the “Falacha Language of Abyssinia” at a convention of linguists meeting in Hartford, Conn. According to Professor Brigham, who based his paper on the work of Dr. Joseph Haling, “the Flachas are descendants of a tribe of Jews which settled in Abyssinia…” who have lost their knowledge of Hebrew as both a written and spoken language. Their literature is based on the translation of the book of Jonah and “four short prayers.
1878: Schedules showing the liabilities and assets of Barnet L. Solomon, Solomon B. Solomon Judah H. Solomon and Simon Solomon, the owners of B.L Solomon’s Sons, the major upholstery dealers who recently filed for bankruptcy, were filed in the Court of Common Pleas. Their assets totaled $224. 799/31 and their liabilities totaled $1,144,753.88. The firm’s demise was caused by a combination of poor business conditions and a down turn in the real estate market.
1879: A concert and festival sponsored by the Young Men’s Hebrew Union is scheduled to take place at the Terrace Garden
1879(26th of Tammuz, 5639): Maurycy Gottlieb, Jewish painter who came from a family of Polish-speaking Galician Jews passed away. Two of his more famous paintings are “Shylock and Jessica” and “Jews Praying in the Synagogue on Yom Kippur.”
1881: An English quarterly publication, The Contemporary Review examined the life of the late Ferdinand Lassalle. Base on the way he lived his life the epitaph etched on his tomb “Ferdinand Lassalle, thinker and fighter” was deemed to be quite appropriate. Lassalle was a rare combination of philosophical think, political agitator and oddly enough fashion dandy “noted for his dress for dinners and his addiction for pleasures.”
1882(1stof Av, 5642): Rosh Chodesh Av
1882: As the Freight Handler’s Strike entered its fifth week, the workers took steps to keep “scabs” away from the piers and docks. The Russian Jews have gathered at Standard Hall on East Broadway where they are being three meals a day: bread and coffee in the morning; meat and soup at noon; tea and bread in the evening. The strikers are also providing them with lodging in a tenement to keep these destitute people from being “scabs.” Similar efforts are being made with other immigrant groups.
1884: It was reported today that Lazarus Lemisch, his wife and five children who had just arrived in the United States were being sent back to Europe because, by his own admission, he was destitute with no prospects for financial assistance.
1884: Wolf Finkelstein, a Russian Jewish immigrant arrived in New York on the SS Bohemia and was immediately sent to Ward’s Island.
1884: It was reported today that many of the Russian Jews who fled to Cyprus during the recent anti-Semitic violence have returned to Odessa. They were not able to support themselves on the Mediterranean Island which is a British possession. This means that the returning Jews are now British subject which means the British Consul General in the Russian port city has to provide them with some sort of assistance.
1885: It was reported today that in Great Britain, juror was excluded from hearing the case of De Worms versus Hughes because he was Jewish
1887: Birthdate of Beatrice Fox Auerbach, the longtime proprietor of the G. Fox & Company department store in Hartford, Connecticut.[some sources say
July 7, 18
87]. Auerbach was raised in
Hartford
, where her father ran the department store originally founded by and named after his father, Gerson Fox. In 1911, Auerbach moved to
Salt Lake City
to help her new husband run his family's department store there. The couple returned to
Connecticut
six years later when the G. Fox & Company building burned. Beatrice Auerbach's husband became secretary and treasurer of the rebuilt store, which occupied a twelve-story Art Deco building that dominated
Hartford
's
Main Street
. When her husband died in 1927, Auerbach stepped into his business roles. She proved so good at running the business that when her father died in 1938, she became president of G. Fox & Company. Over the next three decades, Auerbach built G. Fox into the largest privately-held department store in the
United States
. Under Auerbach's leadership, the store was known for excellent service, but it was also remarkable for the benefits extended to employees. Auerbach was among the first employers to introduce paid vacations and sick leave, and also among the first to hire African-Americans in meaningful positions. Auerbach sold G. Fox & Company to the May Company, owner of Macy's, in 1965, although she remained involved in the day-to-day operations of the store. The sale allowed Auerbach to increase the charitable contributions for which she was already well-known in
Connecticut
. The Service Bureau for Women's Organizations that she had established in 1945 taught leadership skills to members of women's groups. She also collaborated with
Connecticut
College
for Women for over twenty years (1938-1959) in a retailing program that allowed participants to try out theories in the G. Fox store. Among the other beneficiaries of Auerbach's philanthropy were
Trinity
College
,
Wesleyan
University
, the
University
of
Connecticut
, and several Hartford-area cultural organizations. Auerbach died on
November 29, 19
68
. G. Fox & Company closed permanently in 1992. The building, still a
Hartford
landmark, was later converted for use as a community college and retail shops.
1888(9thof Av, 5648): Tish’a B’Av
1888: Birthdate of Israeli novelist, Shmuel Agnon. Author of numerous books, including the Day Before Yesterday, Agnon won the Nobel Prize in 1966.
1889: “Here is Comfort for Cantor” published today offered reassurance to State Senator Jacob Cantor that he should not be bothered by the fact that the Harlem Club is rejecting him because he was Jewish. “In the face of this foolish and un-Christian prejudice” he should remember that the “Blessed Redeemer would be rejected on the same grounds.”
1893: Register Levy, a leader of the Jewish community on New York’s Lower East Side, expressed his surprise when asked about the derogatory, stereotypically anti-Semitic remarks attributed to Police Justice John J. Ryan who complained about that the Hebrews flouted the law, had no fear of policemen and would claim that they were the victims of religious persecution when they were charged with crimes. “I have never known him to bear any malice or prejudice against any co-religionists.”
1893: Police Justice John J. Ryan claimed today that he had been misquoted and that he had “ no desire to denounce Hebrews” and had in fact “always been their friends.” Ryan said that all he had meant to say, and all that he had really said, was that he enforce the law against all “wrongdoers” including Hebrews regardless of their connections or pressure from local citizenry. Ryan’s contention that he had been “misquoted” and that the remarks of others were wrongly attributed to him, was supported by Mark Alter, the attorney for the Hebrew Protective Association. [Ed. Note: When taken together, these comments read like modern day “damage control.” What is fascinating is that as early as the last decade of the 19thcentury, the Jewish population was of a size that New York politicians had to be cognizant of their feelings and views. This must have come as a shock to those who arrived in the last ten years from Romania and Russia where the governments did not even know that Jews had opinions let alone political rights.]
1902: Herzl finishes a journey to London where he had been seeking support for his plans for a Jewish homeland.
1903: Birthdate of Hiram "Harry" Bingham IV, a member of distinguished old New England family who saved the lives of thousands of Jews while serving as Vice-Consul in Marseille, France.
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history-archaeology/Binghams-List.html
1903: The Jewish quarter of Ofran, Morocco was pillaged.
1906: Birthdate of Yitzhak Ben Aharon. When Aharon died in May of 2006, two months short of his hundredth birthday, he was the last living icon of the left-wing of the Israeli Labor Party. He was born in the
Bukovina
region of
Romania
, in what was then the Austro-Hungarian Empire. As a teenager he was already active in the Zionist youth organizations, HeHalutz and HaShomer Hatzair. After studying economics and political science in
Berlin
, he immigrated to
Palestine
in 1928 and in 1932 joined Kibbutz Givat Haim. Despite living in the kibbutz for the rest of his life, for the next four decades, Ben Aharon's main sphere of influence was the organized labor movement in Tel Aviv. He served as secretary of the Tel-Aviv workers council in the mid 1930s and in 1938 was appointed secretary of Mapai, the original forerunner of the Labor party headed by David Ben-Gurion. In 1935, he spent a few months in Nazi Germany as an emissary of the HeHalutz leadership until being arrested and deported by the Gestapo. He was to be a prisoner of the Nazis again when a year after joining the British Army in 1940, he was captured in
Greece
and spent the next four years in a German POW camp. Upon arriving back in
Palestine
, Ben Aharon joined Siah Bet (Faction B), the group of Mapai activists that eventually split with the party leadership over accusations of forsaking the battle for class equality. After independence he was one of the founders of Mapam, which after the first elections became Mapai's main opposition to the left. Ben Aharon who was a Knesset member from 1949 onwards, represented Mapam in the Histadrut trade union council and was one of the bitter opponents of Ben Gurion's decision to dismantle the Palmach, what had been the main fighting force of the Yishuvin the War of Independence. Ben Gurion feared that the Palmach would become an independent militia, outside the IDF command. Mapam members saw the move as politically motivated since many of the Palmach's commanders were party members. Another bone of contention with Mapai was the government's effort to position the new state with the American sphere of influence while Mapam saw their spiritual home in
Moscow
. Ben Aharon was one of the signatories of the party's letter of condolence to "the Soviet Peoples" on the death of Stalin. In 1954, Ben Aharon's group split with Mapam and ran in the elections as Ahdut HaAvoda - Poalei Zion and later joined the Mapai coalition. In 1965 the two parties merged into what would eventually become the Israeli Labor Party. In 1959, Ben Aharon was appointed transportation minister but resigned after two and a half years blaming the government for not upholding "workers' principles." The peak of his public career was as Secretary General of the Histadrut from 1969-1973. Until then, the Histadrut had been seen mainly as the Mapai organized labor movement. Ben Aharon was the first secretary general to fight against his party and its government on what he saw as workers' rights. He widened the use of strikes in industrial disputes and tried to force private businesses to conform to Histadrut practices. Much of what he did brought him in to open conflict with his party's leadership who preferred a more "pragmatic" version of socialism. Ben Aharon refused to realize that his old-fashioned unvarnished socialism was a thing of the past and left active politics in 1977. His parting shot, delivered on the night of the Likud's historic elections victory, bringing Mapai's hegemony to an end was "if this is the will of the people, then the people should be replaced." Over the last three decades, as the other members of his generation died out, he gained status as a guru to those on the left of Labor and social-revolutionaries. The leaders of his party, Peres, Yitzhak Rabin, Ehud Barak, preferred to minimize contact with him, seeing him as relic of a past standing between Labor and an estranged electorate. Instead he became a rallying-point for young radicals, wanting to relive through him an age when the Israeli proletariat were in power. Some of these young followers even took the trouble to pore over his writings collected in a dozen books. The Labor government awarded him the Israel Prize for his life work in 1995. Ben Aharon could at least take comfort in the final months of his life that a politician in his mould, a Histadrut Secretary General opposed to the other kind of 'General' to be find in the Labor leadership, an unabashed socialist, who put the interests of the workers at the top of his agenda, had finally taken over his old party.
1910: Smallpox epidemic breaks out in
Jerusalem
.
1913: Birthdate of American born architect Bertrand Goldberg who is best known for the Marina City complex in Chicago, Illinois, the tallest residential concrete buildings in the world at the time of completion.
1914: In Salonica a campaign against the Jews continued in the newspapers. The dispute was over Greeks and Jews who worked in a Jewish owned tannery. The dispute became a violent political discussion all throughout
Macedonia
. It originated over Jews wearing the Turkish Fez, which was a symbol of their fondness for the previous Turkish administration.
1915: William Creen, an inmate at Milledgeville State Penitentiary, tried to kill Leo Frank by slashing his throat with a butcher knife.
1917: John Henry Patterson was made commander of the 38th Battalion of the Royal Fusiliers, one of three battalions of the Jewish Legion, recruited from British and foreign Jews. Patterson was promoted to full Colonel. In February of 1918, Patterson proudly led soldiers of the 38th Fusiliers Battalion, one of the components of the Legion, in a parade in the Whitechapel Road, before they were shipped off to Palestine. They met a tumultuous and joyous reception among the Jews of London, as well as generating amazement among other bystanders, as related in this article about the parade of the Jewish Legion in London. [Unlike many British officers, not only was Patterson not anti-Semitic, he was philo-Semitic numbering many Jews among his friends throughout the rest of his life and pushing for the creation of the Jewish Brigade during World War II.]
1917: Birthdate of comic Phyllis Diller.
1917: Birthdate of all-star shortstop and Cleveland Indian manager, Lou Boudreau. Boudreau’s mother was Jewish. But he was adopted by a Roman Catholic family who raised him in their faith.
1917: Birthdate of Morris E. Lasker, who would serve as a federal judge in New York and Massachusetts for four decades
1917: In San Antonio, Texas, David and Riva Rapoport, Jewish immigrants who had fled Russia after participating in an anti-czarist uprising, gave birth to Bernard Rapoport, the Jewish businessman “who built an insurance empire and spent his last decades giving his wealth away to universities, Democratic campaigns and charitable causes in Israel and his adopted hometown of Waco…” (As reported by J.B. Smith)
1919: During the war with the Russian Bolsheviks, Jewish leaders met with Symon Petlura and pledged their support for him and the creation of an independent country of Ukraine.
1920: Birthdate of Rabbi Louis Jacobs, the first leader of Masorti Judaism (also known as Conservative Judaism) in the United Kingdom,
1935:Joseph "Yosky" Toblinsky, a member of the “Yiddish Black Hand,” a Jewish criminal band active in the first decades of the 20th century was taken into custody on charges of hijacking a truck filled with pharmaceutical drugs.
1936: The Palestine Post reported that there was heavy firing on the Hatikva Quarter in Tel Aviv and the Bayit Vegan Quarter of Jerusalem. A bomb was found hidden in a shipment of Norwegian cheese. It was believed that it was inserted while transported from
Haifa
to
Jerusalem
. Jacob Gerzon, victim of a sniper's bullet, succumbed to his wounds. He was the 32nd Jewish victim of the Arab disturbances which began on April 19. Three new battalions of British troops arrived in
Haifa
from
Malta
. The government ordered the demolition of the old
Jaffa
slums and for the construction of two new roads for the benefit of that quarter and of the town as a whole.
1936: The Spanish Civil War began as the armed forces, eventually to be led by Francisco Franco rose up against the recently elected Popular Front Government. Franco’s rebellious army was a fascist force and the received active help from both Mussolini and Hitler. Anti-fascist forces rallied to the support of the French Republicans. For reasons of their own, the French, British and
U.S.
governments provided no support to balance that being provided by
Germany
and
Italy
. While thousands of volunteers from these western countries took up the cause of the Republic, the
Soviet Union
was the only government to provide aide. And that aide helped to what had begun as a broad left-wing coalition into Communist dominated fighting force. The Left saw
Spain
as a place to stop the march of fascism. The Fascists saw
Spain
as an easy victory and testing ground for the weapons that they would later employ in World War II. One of the most famous volunteer groups supporting the Spanish Republicans was the Lincoln Brigade, a fighting force that had a disproportionately large Jewish Population. For a vivid, yet fictional picture of Jewish involvement in the Lincoln Brigade and left-wing causes in the 1930’s, read Davida’s Harp by Chaim Potok. The fascist victory in
Spain
, including the failure of the Western allies to act, emboldened Hitler and Mussolini while frightening Stalin. All three felt the West would never stand against the Germans and Italians. For Stalin, this meant signing a non-aggression with Hitler. For Hitler, this meant he had a green line to do as he pleased in
Europe
. For the Jews it meant that the Final Solution was one step closer to reality. Numerous historians consider the Spanish Civil War that broke out in July 1936 a prelude to World War II.
Spain
, with a population of 28 million, became a bloody battleground of conflicting forces, testing their arsenals in preparation for the battle of the giants that was to emerge shortly. Jews did not sit on the sidelines in this crucial contest. Jewish participation, as a matter of fact, was stunningly extensive. In 1987, at a 50th anniversary commemoration of the Spanish Civil War, Chaim Herzog, then president of
Israel
, stated: "There were people who realized just what a fascist victory in
Spain
would mean. Courageous men from many nations volunteered to help the Republicans. Among them were democrats, socialists, communists... Typically there was a relatively high number of Jews among the volunteers - the highest proportion of any other group... I salute them as comrades in arms in the war against the Nazis." Jewish participation in the Spanish Civil War offers a fascinating, relatively unknown, chapter of Jewish resistance to Nazi and fascist tyranny. Up to 25 percent of the fighters in the International Brigades were Jewish, whereas the total global Jewish population at the time did not exceed 4%. It is ironic that Jews even formed their own Jewish Brigade in Spain, which fought heroically in crucial battles 70 years ago for the freedom of the Spanish people that had expelled them from its midst. The Spanish Civil War attracted volunteers from about 55 countries who knew the dangers they were facing in that bloody conflict. Nevertheless, they came in substantial numbers to join the ranks of the Popular Front. Figures of participants differ. Ernest Hemingway claimed that "over 40,000 volunteers from 52 countries flocked to
Spain
between 1936 and 1939 to take part in the historic struggle between democracy and fascism known as the Spanish Civil War." The lowest estimate speaks of about 32,000, but one estimate is as high as 59,380. The largest contingents came from
France
(7,000),
Poland
(5,000), the
US
(3,000),
Britain
(between 2,000 and 4,000) and
Russia
(in the thousands). Despite the conspicuous presence of Jews in International Brigades, Jewish participation in the fighting has generally not been acknowledged. There could be various reasons for that. Firstly, Jews were usually registered under the name of the country they came from. Secondly, in some cases the Jews used aliases, concerned that their being Jewish might expose them to greater than usual dangers in a war against fascist elements. Lastly, Jewish community organizations that would eagerly underwrite research on Jews fighting against fascists and Nazis were hesitant to do so in the instance of the Spanish Civil War, since those joining would be counted as communists and fellow travelers. While it is true that two-thirds of the American Abraham Lincoln Brigade were communists, many Jews were not. One volunteer wrote: "I am as good an anti-fascist as any communist. I have reason to be. I am a Jew and that is the reason I came to
Spain
. I know what it means to my people if Fascism should win." Hyman Katz from
New York
did not tell his mother that he was determined to leave for
Spain
. When wounded, he decided to explain why he enlisted against her wishes. He wrote: "Don't you realize that we Jews will be the first to suffer if fascism comes?" Samuel Levinger from
Columbus
,
Ohio
, son of Rabbi Lee J. Levinger, was killed in battle at Brunette. Throughout the war, the father remained a loyal friend of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade. In-depth research, especially in the last 10 years, has proven that the extent of Jewish presence in that crucial war was truly impressive. Though Jews were only 10% of the Polish population, 45% of the Polish volunteers - 2,250 out of 5,000 - were Jewish. Jews, 4% of the
US
population, formed 38% of its volunteers. In
France
, 0.5% of the population and 15% of the volunteers were Jews.
Britain
, with a Jewish population of 0.5%, had 11% to 22% Jewish volunteers.
Palestine
had a Jewish contingent of 500, 498 Jews and two Arabs. For some reason, Jews from
Palestine
were distributed among diverse national units. There were Palestinian Jews in the Hungarian "Rakosi" Battalion, in the French "Six Fevrier" Battalion and others. The most conspicuous Jewish presence in the Spanish Civil War emerged from a group called the "Naftali Botwin Company." Naftali Botwin, a 24-year-old Jewish radical, was executed in
Poland
in 1925 for assassinating a Polish Secret Service agent. The special Jewish company was formed in the Palafox Battalion of the Polish Dombrowsky Brigade in December 1937. The company issued a Yiddish newspaper. The orders were written in Yiddish. It had a distinct Jewish banner, and the last stanza of the company's hymn proudly proclaimed "...how Jewish Botwin soldiers drove out the fascist plague!" The Botwin group was the only one in which Jews fought as a distinct group. Hence it became the major symbol of Jewish presence in
Spain
. In general, the International Brigades were utilized by the Popular Front as shock troops in the most dangerous places that drew the heaviest casualties. The Botwin Company was no exception - 120 of its men were thrown into an assault at the battle of Estramadura, in the defense of
Madrid
; only 18 survived. The company's courage earned it the "Medalla de Valor" from the Spanish government. Whatever motives brought volunteers of the International Brigades to
Spain
, with the Jews the ideological motive was dominant. Many of them may have been socialists or communists, but they clearly perceived that simultaneously they were fighting a sworn enemy of the Jewish people. The Jewish-Zionist angle was no less significant than the socialist-communist. It is no coincidence that the first casualty of the International Brigades was Leon Baum from
Paris
, and the last casualty was Haskel Honigstern, who was given a state funeral in
Barcelona
. The Spanish poet Jose Herrera wrote of him: "Haskel Honigstern, Polish worker of the Jewish race, son of an obscure land, killed in the light of my homeland." It is also no coincidence that when Juan Negrin, head of the Republican government, announced in September 1938 the unilateral withdrawal of the International Brigades from Spain for diplomatic reasons, the Botwin Company formed the rear guard of the troops as they withdraw across the border into France. Jewish participation in the Spanish Civil War put to a lie the assertion that Jews are by nature "timid and non-combative... that Jews did not resist the Nazi murderers because... submission is in their national character." When the first shots of World War II were fired, in the prologue of that ghastly war, Jews were not only present in overwhelming numbers, but they incontrovertibly proved their heroism.
1938(18th of Tammuz, 5698):Tzom Tammuz
1938(18th of Tamuz, 5698):Three more Jews were killed today – two of them were watchmen at an orange grove and one was a workman from Tel Aviv. At the same time, “the Jewish owner of watch factory in Acre was seriously wounded” by Arab attackers.
1938: Credible reports are circulating in Palestine that some of the attacks on Arabs are “merely part of Nazi intrigue to gain Arab sympathy and impair British prestige in the Near East.”
1939(1st of Av, 5699): Rosh Chodesh Av
1940(10thof Tammuz, 5700): Hauptscharführer Blank murdered Werner Scholem at Buchenwald. A Jew and a Communist, he was arrested in 1933 by the Nazis who shipped him to Buchenwald when it was opened in 1938. He was held there until he was shot by the Nazi officer. He was the brother of Gerhard Scholem who gained fame as Gershom Scholem first Professor of Jewish Mysticism at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
1940: The Vichy French government issued orders prohibiting employment of aliens (Jews) not born in
France
. This is one more example of how eager those at
Vichy
were to serve their new Nazi comrades.
1941(22nd of Tamuz, 5701): Twelve hundred Jews are murdered at Slonim, Belorussia
1941 Alfred Rosenberg is appointed Reich minister for the
Occupied
Eastern
Territories
to administer lands seized from the
Soviet Union
.
1941(22nd of Tammuz, 5701): This marks the first day of the a fourteen day slaughterof the Jews at Kishinev in the Soviet Union; During those 14 days over 10,000 Jews would be slaughtered by the Nazis and their local collaborators
1942: The 2,000 Jews from
Holland
reached
Auschwitz
. All but 449 were given their numbered tattoos. The 449 were gassed.
1942: A Nazi delegation headed by SS chief Heinrich Himmler tours the death camp at
Auschwitz
, where Himmler observes a mass gassing of inmates.
1943: Birthdate of Shlomo Ben-Ami, the native of Tangiers who made Aliyah in 1955 and earned a doctorate from Oxford. After serving as head of the School of History at Tel Aviv University, he served as Israel’s Ambassador to Spain before pursuing a career in politics.
1943: Yitzhak Wittenberg, a partisan leader, surrendered to the Gestapo to prevent the razing of the Vilna (Lithuania) Ghetto.
1945: The Potsdam Conference opens in Potsdam, Germany. The leaders of the Big Three, Harry Truman, Winston Churchill and Joseph Stalin with the aim of settling outstanding issues related to the end of World War II in Europe including the fate of conquered German and liberated Poland. It was the fist meeting between the U.S. President and the Soviet leader. It was the last meeting with Churchill who would be replaced during the conference the new Laborite Prime Minister Clement Atlee. For public consumption, it appeared that the war time Allies were committed to punishing Germany for its Nazi atrocities. The relations between Truman and Stalin soured from this time forward into what became the Cold War. An argument can be made that Truman’s decision to recognize Israel was a product of this Cold War environment.
1947: Supposedly Raoul Wallenberg died in a Soviet prison on this date. An air of mystery still surrounds the death of one of the few people who came to the aid of the Jews during the Holocaust. Since nothing was done to establish the fate of Ambassador Wallenberg after he was last seen going to the headquarters of the Red Army in Budapest, nobody really knows if he was shot in Moscow, died in prison, or lived out a long anguished life in the Gulag.
1948: A two-pronged attack by Israeli forces designed to drive Arab Legion forces from the eastern section of Jerusalem failed. The
Old
City
would remain under Jordanian occupation until 1967. During this time, Jews were barred from the
Old
City
and no Arabs demanded that the
Old
City
be made the capital of a Palestinian state.
1948: During Operation Dekel, Israeli forces took the villages of Hittin and Nimrin.
1951: The Jerusalem Post reported that the Ministry of Finance denied charges that the Custodian of Enemy Property had transferred valuable land in Tel Aviv to high government officials and Mapai and Histadrut leaders, at prices far below the prevailing market valuations. Minister of Finance Eliezer Kaplan, vigorously denied such charges and intended to take legal actions against the editor of Haboker, the General Zionist daily, and the mayor of Tel Aviv, Israel Rokach, for having spread such allegations. The Knesset Finance Committee asked the State Comptroller to investigate the whole affair.
1956(9th of Av, 5716): Tish'a B'Av
1959(11th of Tamuz, 5719): Eugene Meyer publisher and owner of the Washington Post passed away. Meyer is the father of Katherine Graham. While Graham has earned a reputation for making the Washington Post into one of the nation’s leading papers, the process was actually begun by her father who took over the bankrupt paper and proceeded to vanquish several stout competitors including the now defunct Times Herald and Evening Star.
1960: Binyamin Mintz, a member of Agudat Israel Workers, began serving as the Communications Minister of Israel
1969: Israeli trucks drive through the Sinai heading for the east bank of the Gulf of Suez. They are carrying the equipment for the commandos who will be attacking the
Green
Island
, the Egyptian for in the middle of the
Gulf of Suez
.
1979: Birthdate of Nathan B. “Nate” Bruckenthal, the Petty Officer 3rdClass who became the first Coast Guardsman to be killed in action since the Viet Nam war when he was killed by suicide bombers during a waterborne assault on the Khawr Al Amaya oil terminal
1981: In response to a major rocket attack on northern Israel by the PLO from southern Lebanon, the AIF launched a massive attack on PLO headquarters in downtown Beirut. Civilian casualties were inevitable given the Palestinian military for hiding among non-combatants. The AIF also attacked PLO positions in southern Lebanon from where the rocket attacks were launched.
1981: Two girls were wounded in Katyusha bombardments on the
Galilee
.
1994: Pitcher Andrew Lorraine made his major league debut with the California Angels.
2001(26th of Tammuz, 5761): Yehiel De-Nur, a Polish born Israeli author whose writings often employed themes based on his time at Auschwitz, passed away.
2003(17th of Tammuz, 5763): Tzom Tammuz
2003:
New York
Review of Books features a review Stalin's Last Crime: The Plot Against the Jewish Doctors, 1948–1953 y Jonathan Brent and Vladimir P. Naumov
2005:Haaretzreported that The Federal Bureau of Investigation is probing whether two
United States
citizens arrested recently planned to carry out an attack on the Israeli consulate in
Los Angeles
and a synagogue in the area. The two suspects who had recently converted to Islam had been arrested for taking part in at least ten robberies. Evidence of their involvement in a possible attack against Jewish institutions came to light after their arrest.
2006: In accordance with instructions of the Home Front Command, the Carmiel Festival, scheduled to begin on
July 18, 2006
will be postponed until October because of the Hezbollah attacks on northern
Israel
.
2007: An exhibition of manuscripts of scientist Sir Isaac Newton – never before revealed to the public which opened on June 18, 2007, at the Jewish National and University Library at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, at an exhibition opening comes to an end today. The manuscripts include details of
Newton
's alchemy experiments, his interest in ancient history and apocalyptic prophecies. Furthermore, they reveal his deciphering of what he considered to be ''secret knowledge'' – knowledge encoded in the sacred texts of ancient cultures and other historical records – including his attempts to extract scientific information from the biblical and Talmudic descriptions of the Tabernacle and the
Temple
.
Newton
's writings on Judeo-Christian prophecy reveal that he thought of himself as a kind of prophet. These manuscripts back up speculations that Sir Isaac Newton was a Grand Master of the Priory of Sion secret society (1691-1727), a post also said to have been held by the likes of Leonardo Da Vinci, Botticelli and Victor Hugo, and which inspired Dan Brown's bestseller, 'The Da Vinci Code. Of special interest in this exhibition are manuscripts and illustrations relating to the
Temple
as well as a passage copied by
Newton
from Maimonides' writings; manuscripts containing
Newton
's comments on Hebrew expressions, and excerpts from the Shema prayer;
Newton
's calculations of the end of the world, which he estimated to be in 2060; and
Newton
's rejection of the Trinity. For further details about the exhibition, please visit the following site:
http://jnul.huji.ac.il/dl/mss/newton
2008: In
Kensington
,
Maryland
, Robert Wexler, a six-term
U.S.
congressman from
Florida
, discusses and signs Fire-Breathing Liberal: How I Learned to Survive (and Thrive) in the Contact Sport of Congress (written with David Fisher) at Borders Books
2008:The military funerals for Eldad Regev and Ehud Goldwasser the two Israeli soldiers abducted in 2006 by Hezbollah, whose bodies were returned yesterday as part of a prisoner swap take place today in their respective hometowns. Ehud Goldwasser is laid to rest at
10 A.M.
in the military cemetery in Nahariya and Eldad Regev is buried at
2 P.M.
in Haifa
2008:Robert Magnus, who served as the 30th Assistant Commandant of the Mari