September 6 In History
3761 B.C.E.: The first day of the Hebrew Calendar. "The epoch of the modern Hebrew calendar is Monday,
October 7, 37
61
BCE
, being the tabular date (same daylight period) in the proleptic Julian calendar corresponding to 1 Tishri AM 1 (AM = Anno Mundi = in the year of the world). This date is about one year before the traditional Jewish date of Creation on 25 Elul AM 1! A minority place Creation on 25 Adar AM 1, about six months after the modern epoch. Thus adding 3761 to a Gregorian year number will yield the Hebrew year number beginning in autumn (add 3760 for that ending in autumn). This holds until the Gregorian year 1
BCE
. After that (due to the lack of year 0), adding 3760 to the Gregorian year yields the Hebrew year beginning in autumn (3759 for that ending in autumn). Because the Hebrew year drifts relative to the Gregorian year, this actually only works until the year 22,203, but it's a fairly good rule of thumb." IF this makes any sense to any of you, you are a better at this than I am. I included it because I found it, not because I understand it.
394: The Christian Roman Emperor Theodosius I defeats and kills the pagan usurper Eugenius on the second day of the Battle of the Frigidus. This marked the final triumph of Christendom in the
Roman Empire
. The pagans, including those found among the Roman nobility could and did convert. For the Jews, it was a different matter. In one of those strange twists of fate, the victory actually helped to weaken the Empire and led to a further of the split between the Western and Eastern empires.
1556: The reign of Suleiman the Magnificent came to an end. Suleiman provided a welcoming Oriental home to the Jews as could be seen by arrival and rise to power of Dona Garcia and Joseph Nassi, the settlement of thousands of Jews on the shores of Lake Kinnerth and the rebuilding of the walls of Jerusalem. He was willing to protect Jews against all-comers including the powerful Pope Paul IV who had wanted to subject the Jews of Ancona to his Inquistion.
1628: The Puritans settle Salem which will be incorporated into the Massachusetts Bay Colony which was also controlled by the Puritans. The Puritans were heavily influenced by what they called “The Old Testament.” They saw themselves as “modern Israelites.” The name of the town “Salem” is a form of the Hebrew word Shalom. Oliver Cromwell, the most famous leader of the English Puritans, was a key player in the return of the Jewish people to the British Isles. English Puritans were part of the early Christian Zionist movement which championed the return of the Jewish people to Palestine hundred years before Herzl held his first congress in Switzerland. While the American branch of the Puritans was influenced by Jewish tradition in the form of the Old Testament, the Puritans had no use for Jews (or anybody else) who did not conform to their stringent form of Christianity.
1666: Birthdate of Czar Ivan V. During his reign his elder sister Sophia supported a program of persecution aimed at Jews and pagans.
1683: Jean-Baptiste Colbert passed away. He was Finance Minister to Louis XIV at the time of his death. Colbert’s drive to improve the economic condition of
France
under the Sun King led to him champion the cause of the Jewish people. In 1671, Colbert convinced Louis XIV “to issue a charter of liberty for Jews under royal authority.
Marseilles
merchants, upset over the king’s declaration of their port as an open harbor where Jews could freely trade, complained” to Louis. Colbert wrote the official reply for Louis which was striking in its candor. “Commercial envy will always impel the Christian merchants to persecute Jews.” But before they complained too much Christians merchants should “ take into consideration the benefits the government derives from the industrial activity of the Jews, which comprises all parts of the world, thanks to their association with their coreligionists.”
1705: On this day an auto-de-fe took place in
Lisbon
. An 1846 review of a work called The Inquisition and Judaism appearing in The Occident and American Jewish Advocate provided the following description of the event. "In the public
square
of
Lisbon
there were led out to the stake a number of hapless victims, declared criminal by the tribunal of the Inquisition, for being suspected and afterwards convicted of Judaism, a crime than which that abominable institution knew none greater."
1729: Birthdate of German Jewish philosopher Moses Mendelssohn. Regardless of how one views his work, he was an important Jewish figure of the 18th century. To some he was the third Moses (the other two being the Biblical lawgiver and Moses Maimonides) with whom a new era opens in the history of the Jewish people. To others, he was a step into the beginning of assimilation and loss of identity for Jews and the dilution of traditional Judaism. He passed away in 1786. None of his grandchildren were Jewish.
1794: Gabriel and Lucy Freeman were married in
Wilkes County
,
GA.
Gabriel’s father was a Jew from
England
. In an all too common occurrence on the American frontier, he married a Methodist woman.
1812(29thof Elull, 5572): In the first of what Americans call the War of 1812, Erev Rosh Hashanah
1840: Mehemet Ali released the surviving Jewish prisoners bringing an end to the infamous Damascus Affair.
1847: Henry David Thoreau leaves Walden Pond and moves in with Ralph Waldo Emerson and his family in Concord, Massachusetts. Emerson supported the efforts of many unconventional literary figures including the Jewish poetess Emma Lazarus. Their first meeting when she was seventeen led to a mentor-mentee relationship that included a correspondence that lasted until his death.
1850(29thof Elul, 5610): Erev of Rosh Hashanah
1861(2ndof Tishrei, 5622): In the first year of the American Civil War, Jews on both sides observe the second day of Rosh Hashanah.
1860: According to an article published today predicting how the people of Baltimore will vote in this fall's election states that " those interested in lager-bier concerns, tobacco establishments, including Hebrews and others, not scrupulous of working and making money on Sundays, may go against reformers, who now rigidly enforce the Sunday law, causing all such concerns to be peremptorily closed during the Sabbath." The author of the article failed to make the connection between Jewish opposition to the reformers and the fact that they were being led by a former "Know-Nothing," a now defunct political party that was anti-immigrant.
1861(2ndof Tishrei, 5622): 2nd day of Rosh Hashana
1861: During the Civil War, Union forces under General Grant take control of Paducah, KY, helping to keep that state from falling into Rebel hands. A year later, the Jews of Paducah would be victims of one of the most overt act of anti-Semitism in U.S. history when they are expelled from their homes by the same General Grant. President Lincoln would rescind the order showing that the American Jewish experience was indeed different. Grant never explained the order but the Jews apparently did not hold it against him. They supported him when he ran for President. And Grant was no anti-Semite as can be seen by his support for Washington’s traditional congregation, Adas Israel.
1869. Birthdate of author Felix Salten author of the children’s classic Bambi. Born Siegmund Salzmann in Budapest, Hungary he moved to Vienna as a toddler because the Jews had been granted full citizenship in the Austrian capital. Salten was inspired to write Bambi after a trip to the Alps, in 1923. In 1933, he sold the rights, and he did not make any money from the Disney movie based on Bambi released in 1942. He moved to Switzerland to escape the Nazis. He died there in 1945.
1879: The Hebrew Sheltering Guardian Society opened today in New York City.
1879(18th of Elul, 5639): Leonard Montefiore, son of Nathaniel Montefiore, of London, England, grand-nephew of Sir Moses Montefiore, and nephew of the late Sir Anthony Rothschild, died this morning of acute rheumatism, at the Ocean House, Newport. He was only 27 years of age.
1879: A large crowd gathered today at New York’s Temple Beth-el to hear Rabbi Kaufmann Kohler’s inaugural address which was given in German. Kohler is succeeding his father Rabbi David Einhorn as spiritual leader of the large, prestigious Reform congregation. Rabbi Kohler’s future sermons will be given in English.
1879: “The Religious Condition of Germany” published today Jews make up 1.2% of the nation’s population, 9.9% of the students in the gymnasia, 8.4% in the commercial schools and 5% of the students in “the higher grammar schools.”
1880(1st of Tishrei, 5641): Rosh Hashanah
1880: The Memphis Avalanche Appeal printed a notice today stating that “‘Jewish ladies’ like Hattie Schwarzenberg, Birdies Hiesse and Mattie Goldsmith will tomorrow receive at their home the country boys who came to the city for the high holy days.”
1888(1st of Tishrei, 5649): Rosh Hashanah
1889(2nd of Tishrei, 5660): Rosh Hashanah Second day
1899: With the release of the last will and testament of Clara, Baroness, von Hirsch, widow of the late Baron Moritz von Hirsch, The Times of London and The New York Times published a list of the bequests and legacies which includes $600,000 to a home for Jewish working girls in New York.
1899: Birthdate of composer and showman Billy Rose. Born William Samuel Rosenberg in
New York City
, Rose first gained fame as the fastest stenographer in
America
. He began his show business career as a lyricist before going on to become a Broadway producer and nightclub owner. He produced Billy Rose's Aquacade at the 1939 World's Fair. He gained additional notoriety for his marriage to and then his divorce from Jewish funny lady, Fanny Brice. Rose made theatrical history in 1943 with his Broadway production of Carmen Jones. An adaptation of George Bizet's opera Carmen, the story was transplanted to World War II
America
by lyricist and librettist Oscar Hammerstein II and featured had an all-black cast. It was later made into a movie for which Dorothy Dandridge received an Academy Award nomination as Best Actress. This was the first such nomination for a African-American female actress Thus the play and the movie provided numerous African-Americans a showcase for their talents that might otherwise have not existed. Rose also founded the
Billy
Rose
Sculpture
Garden
in
Jerusalem
. He passed away in 1966.
1901: President William McKinley was assassinated by Leon Czologosz in Buffalo, NY. You may be surprised that McKinley supported a Jewish homeland in
Palestine
. In 1891, he was one of many notables that signed petition that was presented to President Harrison which said, in part, “Why not give
Palestine
back to them again? According to God's distribution of nations, it is their home - an inalienable possession from which they were expelled by force." “They” and “them” refers to the Jewish people. McKinley’s assassination fanned the flamed of those who wanted to end immigration and who were opposed to anybody living in
America
who was from eastern and southern
Europe
, including the mass of Jewish immigrants which had been coming from those parts of the world since the 1880’s.
1902: “The Jewish World published a detailed balance sheet of the accounts of the Jewish Colonization Association the trust created by the late Baron de Hirsch with a donation of $50,000 for the purpose of helping persecuted Russian Jews.” The Association was best known for establishing colonies of European Jews in Argentina. Israel Zangwill had recently challenged he administrators to produce a public accounting of the Association’s here-to-for secret financial dealings.
1904: Birthdate of "Slapsie" Maxie Rosenbloom light heavyweight boxing champ from 1930 to 1934. Born in Harlem, Rosenbloom gained his nickname because sometimes he seemed to slap his opponents instead of punching them. Rosenbloom fought during a period when Jewish fighters dominated several of boxing various divisions. Rosenbloom enjoyed success in
Hollywood
when he finished fighting. He passed away in 1976.
1911: As the Melvin Bellis Affair raged, Dimitri Bogrov, a young Jewish terrorist tried to shoot Czar Nicholas II while he attended the Kiev Opera. He missed and ended up killing Pytor Stolypin, the powerful minister of the interior. Bogrov was summarily hung for his crime.
1911: Following the outbreak of anti-Semitic riots at Tredegar, Wales, the Monmouthsire Welsh Baptist Association, meeting at Blackwood refused to pass a motion expressing sympathy for the plight of the Jews. “One delegate argued that ‘resolutions did more harm than good and they encouraged the Jews. There were about 100 Jews at Tredegar now, and if they had many more resolutions they would have 500 there.’”
1913: Rabbi Henry Pereira Mendes, President of the Union of Orthodox Congregations wrote a letter to the New York Timesin which he described the emerging doctrine of Zionism which had included a political variant, a practical variant and now contains a “spiritual” variant championed by such intellectuals as Achad Ha’am.
1918(29thof Elul, 5678): Erev of Rosh Hashanah
1923: in a letter replying to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency's recent inquiry in regard to the introduction of Jewish immigrants to Australia, the Australian Government stated that it “is not in a position at present to offer any special encouragement to Jews at present resident in southern European countries to migrate to Australia"."The Australian assisted immigration activities of the Commonwealth are for the present being confined mainly to the introduction of farmers, farm workers and female domestic servants from Great Britain, and the British government is cooperating with the Commonwealth Government in facilitating such immigration", states the official Secretary to the N.Y. Commissioner for the Commonwealth of Australia.
1923: JTA reported today that “Max Warburg, the well-known Jewish banker of Hamburg, has announced that he will file a suit for libel against the anti-Semitic organ "Der Hammer".The Paper which is the organ of the so-called "Aryan faction" charged that Warburg's banking firm had profited greatly by the war. The "Hammer" further charges that Warburg had been very intimately connected with the German military and official headquarters and had exploited the knowledge gained from these sources for his own profit. Warburg brands both of these charges as absolute lies declaring that his banking firm far from making money through the war, had actually suffered a considerable loss as a result of it. Mr. Warburg is a brother of the New York banker and social worker, Felix Warburg, of whom the "Hammer" spoke as the leader of the "banking world in America". This assertion, too, Herr Max Warburg characterizes as false.”
1923: JTA reported today that “The Hungarian government has promised to legalize Zionist activity in Hungarian government has promised to legalize Zionist activity in Hungary.The change of attitude on the part of this government was announced by Israel Cohen, General Secretary of the British Zionist Organization, following his conference with the Hungarian officials.”
1923: JTA reported today that “Dr. Leo Motzkin, engineer Tiomkin and Rabbi Jochelman of London will compose the delegation of the Jewish World Relief Conference which will visit the United States on behalf of the organization. A delegation will also be sent to South America and northern Europe with a view to awakening the public sentiment of the various countries to the need of continuing the relief work in Europe.”
1923: JTA reported today that “officials of the Belgian government attended the funeral of Rabbi Armand Bloch, the Belgian chief Rabbi since 1891. As a tribute to the exceptional patriotism displayed by the late rabbi during the war and the German occupation, the funeral was marked by military honors.”
1923: JTA reported today that Reuter's news service has declared “that the report of the anti-Zionist London "Daily Express" that 400 employees of the Palestine Administration were slated for dismissal in the interests of retrenchment of expenses is unfounded.” According to Reuters it was decided some time ago “to start a gradual reduction of the number of employees, but it was never contemplated to make it as sweeping as the Express report indicated. Moreover, instead of the Palestine natives losing their jobs, as the Express story stated, natives are gradually replacing the British officials.”
1924(7th of Elul, 5684): Fifty-six year old Nachman Syrkin passed away. Born in Russia, he was a founding member of the labor Zionist movement who is created with being the first to promote the use of collective settlements in Palestine. He died in New York before he could make Aliyah and it would take until 1951 for his remains to be re-interred at Kibbutz Kinneret
1924: “Aaron Benjamin, a delegate of the Immigration Aid Society to the Jewish World Relief Conference in Carlsbad, sailed today aboard the SS Aquitania, for New York. It is understood here, that he will make definite proposals to the Hias concerning the co-operation between this body and the Jewish World Relief Conference in the aiding of Jewish immigrants.”
1924: JTA reported today that “The Government of the French Republic has conferred the Order of the Legion of Honor on Rabbi Mosche Sitruk, Chief Rabbi of Tunis, on the recommendation of the Resident General of Tunis.” [Rabbi Sitruk served in this position from 1921 until 1927. Rabbi Israel Zeitoun was his predecessor and Rabbi Nissim Yarhi was his successor.]
1927: Dr. Lee K. Franked member of the Jewish Agency Commission, who returned today on the Isle be France from an extended visit to Palestine on behalf of the Commission declined to make any statement as a result of his study. "I cannot make any statement until the Jewish Agency Commission meets." Dr. Frankel told the representative of the Jewish Daily Bulletin on his arrival. (As reported by JTA)
1929:According to a preliminary estimate of the rioting, made by the Zionist Executive, Jewish damages amount to several million dollars and 1,000 families, homeless and reduced to destitution, need $1,000 each for rehabilitation.” More than 1,500 refugees from areas under attack including Gaza and Hebron are staying in school houses in Tel Aviv.
1929:Criticism of the British authorities in Palestine, charging "betrayal" of the Jews during the Arab uprisings, is incorporated in a statement sent to the Zionist Organization of America today by Dr. Wolfgang von Weisl, a German newspaper man, who was in Jerusalem during the outbreak. He accused the British of a massive cover-up over the incident at the Wall. The government said that 2,000 Arabs “’visited’ the holy site of the Jews” and that a table was broken by “the pressure of the crowd and Jewish prayer books were burned.” Based on his visit to the site and meetings with the Jews who were there, the “Jews had been beaten” during the “visit.” The table on which the Torah scrolls are placed had not been broken; it had been stolen y the mob. They also stole a variety of other items including chairs wash bowls and towels. Dr. von Weisl saw heaps of ashes which he assumed were burned copies of the books of Psalms and Lamentations.
1929: Henry Goldman of Rochester New York “made public” a letter written on June 18, 1929 by Jacob Goldman a former student at New York University living in Tel Aviv “telling of demonstrations by young Aras and the circulation of songs calling Moslems to ‘take up the sword’ against the foreign ruler and the Jews.’”
1936: In an article entitled “Toscanini’s Palestine Concerts,” G.E.R. Gedye, The New York Times correspondent in Vienna reported on a conversation with Professor Bronislav Huberman that included details of the completion of Toscanini’s scheme for a Palestine symphony orchestra that will include an opening festival in Tel Aviv on December 26.
1937(1stof Tishrei, 5698): Rosh Hashanah
1938(10th of Elul, 5698): “In Tiberias, an Arab dressed in peasant clothes entered a Jewish owned shop, drew a revolver and shot the proprietor dead and then fired on an aged Jew, wounding him fatally, then aimed at another Jew and Arab in the shop, wounding both.”
1938(10th of Elul, 5698): While traveling on the highway between Haifa and Tel Aviv Yechiel Weizmann, Chaim Weizmann’s brother and Yechiel’s son were injured when their car overturned after being fired on by gunmen lying in ambush. Another passenger, the son a prominent Haifa lawyer, died in the crash.
1938(10th of Elul, 5698): A Jewish policeman was killed and another was severely wounded when Arabs attacked the orange groves at Pardress Hanna.
1938: Romanian King Carol resigned leaving the way for Ion Antonescu, the former Minister of Defense to take power. This paved the way for
Romania
to become a National Socialist (fascist) state complete with an SS-like anti-Semitic police force called the Iron Guard. During the war
Romania
was an ally of
Germany
. The Iron Guard would join the SS in the mass killings of Jews. In
Romania
264,000 people (43% of the Jewish population) would be murdered.
1938: Pope Pius XII informally tells Belgian pilgrims that anti-Semitism is a movement in which Christians should not involve themselves. However, Pius says, each Christian has the right "to defend himself, to take means to protect himself against all that threatens his legitimate interest."
1939:
Germany
occupied
Cracow
,
Poland
. The Nazi noose grew tighter around one of the largest Jewish populations in
Europe
.
1939: As the Nazi blitz across
Poland
continued the Germans set fire to the Jewish quarter of Piotrkow. People fleeing were gunned down by the Nazis
1941: Despite establishment of ghetto at
Vilna
,
Poland
, Jews were daily taken away. On this day, 3,434 Jews were taken to Ponar to be shot
1941: The Germans establish a "working ghetto" at
Vilna
,
Lithuania
.
1941: All Jews over age 6 in German territories were ordered to wear the Star of David.
1942(24th of Elul, 5702): More than 1000 Polish Jews are killed by Nazis in the streets of the Warsaw Ghetto.
1942: Over the next two weeks, early 48,000 Jews from
Warsaw
are deported to the Treblinka extermination camp. Not all of the selected made it to the trains. One thousand would be shot in the streets over the next two days
1942: The Nazis ordered the liquidation of the
Bialystok
ghetto.
1943:Hanns Albin Rauter ordered the entire Hillesum family to be placed on the next transport to the death camps.
1943: Thirteen year old Zedenk Weinberger was shipped from Theresienstadt to Auschwitz today. He was never heard of again. The Czech boy who had arrived at Theresienstadt in the summer of 1942 at the age of 12 had written a poem entitled “Vadem” a poem which described the desperate plight of the Jews as they confronted what he called “the German weasel” who “wants more and more blood.
1943: German and Estonian soldiers marched through the Vilna Ghetto with orders to seize two thousand Jews for Nazi work camps. The Resistance Movement led by Abba Kovner was prepared to fight. Kovner had divided his force into two battalions. The fighters assembled at their rallying points as the Nazis began moving through the ghetto. One of the battalions was surrounded by the Nazis before its arms arrived. The unit had been betrayed, probably by an unnamed informer working for the ghetto’s Jewish governing body. When word of the betrayal of the unit reached Kovner he prepared his battalion for battle and called upon the Jews of the ghetto to rise against their oppressors. The Jews did not heed his call, responding instead to the governing Jewish body that still believed it could some how save more Jewish lives by wheeling and dealing with the Nazis. Many considered Kovner and his colleagues to be rebellious youth who would make matters only worse. The failure of the uprising led Kovner to eventually lead his followers out of the ghetto and become resistance fighters hiding in the neighboring swamps and woods. For more about this fascinating chapter in Jewish history, read The Avengers by Rich Cohen.
1944(1stof Tishrei, 5755): Unbeknownst to everybody, the last Rosh Hashanah of WW II.
1944(1stof Tishrei, 5755): The sister-in-law and niece of artist Felix Nussbaum were murdered at Auschwitz. When his brother died in December, it marked the end of the Nussbaum family.
1944: Today, Salmen Gradowski, who had been forced to work as a Sonderkommando at Auschwitz, “buried the notes which he had managed to write over the previous nineteen months…in which he described his own deportation and subsequent events in the camp.” He put the notes, which were discovered after the war, into a metal canister and buried them in one of the pits of human ash. A letter buried with notes said, “I have buried this under the ashes, deeming it the safest place where people will certainly dig to find the traces of millions of men who were exterminated.” According to Sir Martin Gilbert, who supplied this story, “Gradowski dedicated his notes to the members of his family ‘burnt alive at Birkenau,’ his wife Sonia, his mother Sara, his sisters Estera-Rachel and Liba, his father-in-law Rafael and his brother-in-law Wolf. In his letter he also wrote: ‘Dear finder, search everywhere, in every inch of soil. Dozens of documents are buried under it, mine and those of other persons, which will throw light on everything that was happening here. Great quantities of teeth are also buried here. It was we, the Kommando workers, who expressly have strewn them all over the terrain, as many as we could, so that the world should find material traces of the millions of murdered people. We ourselves have lost hope of being able to live see the moment of liberation.’” Shortly after burying the canister, Gradowski was murdered. [Editor’s note – I apologize for this lengthy entry. It is the normal style. However, in writing it, it is as close as we can come to saying Kaddish for those for whom there is nobody to say Kaddish. With the approach of Rosh Hashanah (2010), it seemed like the least we could do.]
1944: An Einsatzkommando unit commanded by SS Captain Hauser entered Topolcany, Slovakia, to quell a Jewish uprising. Many leaders of the local Jewish community were arrested and killed, including former Deputy Mayor Karl Pollak, his wife, and Moritz Hochberger, who were set upon by SS troopers.
1944: Of the people with Anne Frank on a transport to
Auschwitz
, 549 Dutch Jews are gassed. Anne is saved for the time being because she is 15 years old. If she were 14, she would be immediately killed. Like all prisoners, she is tattooed and her head is shaved.
1949:Allied military authorities relinquish control of former Nazi Germany assets back to German control. This is another example of the realities of the Cold War trumping the quest for justice for the victims of Axis atrocities.
1951: Pitcher Duke Markell made his major league debut with the St. Louis Browns
1953: Sons of Jacob, the Conservative Congregation in Waterloo, Iowa, dedicated its new facility on Mitchell Avenue. The congregation was found in August of 1905.
1955: A Pogrom began in Istanbul that is aimed at the city’s Greek minority. Unfortunately, the Jewish and Armenian communities became targets of the mobs as well. The attacks were well planned in advance. The triggering event was the false news that the house in Thessaloniki, Greece, where Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, the father of modern Turkey, was born in 1881, had been bombed the day before. According to some reports, Ataturk was descended from Spanish Jews who had come to the Ottoman Empire seeking refuge from the Inquisition.
1963:Larry Sherry collaborated on a five-hit shutout tonight as the Los Angeles Dodgers maintained their five-game National League lead
1966: "Star Trek" premiers on NBC TV. Little did most people realize that Captain Kirk and Mr. Spock were played by Jewish actors.
1970:In the Dawson's Field hijacking four jet planes bound for New York City were hijacked by members of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.
TWA Flight 741 from Frankfurt and rSwissair Flight 100 from Zürich-Kloten Airport landed at Zerqa, also known as Dawson's Field, a remote desert airstrip in Jordan formerly used as a British Royal Air Force base.[1]
The hijacking of El Al Flight 219 from Amsterdam was foiled; hijacker Patrick Arguello was shot and killed, whilst his partner Leila Khaled was subdued and turned over to British authorities in London. Two hijackers prevented from joining the El Al flight instead hijacked Pan Am Flight 93, a, Boeing 747 diverting the large plane to Beirut and then Cairo rather than the small Jordanian field.
A fifth plane, BOAC Flight 775 from Bahrain, was hijacked on September 9 by a PFLP sympathizer and brought to Dawson's Field in order to pressure the British to free Khaled.
David Raab, a seventeen year old from Trenton, N.J. was among the Jewish hostages. He would write his account of the event in Terror in Black September.
1972: The Munich Massacre comes to an end. At 3:24 a.m., Jim McKay who has been reporting the events on ABC received the official confirmation:
“ When I was a kid, my father used to say "Our greatest hopes and our worst fears are seldom realized." Our worst fears have been realized tonight. They’ve now said that there were eleven hostages. Two were killed in their rooms yesterday morning, nine were killed at the airport tonight. They’re all gone.
1978(4th of Elul, 5738): Benjamin Sonnenberg, a Russian-born American press agent who represented celebrities and major corporations, who was best known for the lavish entertaining he did for his clients and other notables at his Manhattan townhouse located at 19 Gramercy Park South passed away today at the age of 77. Sonnenberg was born in Brest-Litovsk, Russia, now part of Belarus. He emigrated to the United States with his family in 1910. He briefly attended Columbia College and worked for a newspaper in Flint, Michigan Returning to New York City, his first work in the public relations field was writing stories for the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee. He started his own business in 1924, where among his initial clients were Manhattan hotels for which he generated newspaper coverage of their notable guests. Sonnenberg had a knack for self-promotion, as a means to make himself seem more important to the public and to his existing and prospective clients. Early in his career, he would ride the subway most of the trip and then take a taxi to show up at theater openings. In restaurants, he would have the restaurant manager send a bus boy to wander around the tables announcing that there was a phone call for Sonnenberg. A self-described "cabinetmaker who fashioned large pedestals for small statues", Sonnenberg represented such individuals as Samuel Goldwyn, Robert Lehman, William S. Paley and David O. Selznick.[1] His corporate clients included CBS, Lever Brothers, Lipton Tea and Pan American World Airways. While his company, Publicity Consultants Inc., was nominally located in offices on Park Avenue, his real business was done in his five-story townhouse in the Gramercy Park neighborhood of Manhattan, where he was renowned for his lavish entertaining for his clients and his contacts in the press.[1] As his son would later describe in his memoir Lost Property: Memoirs and Confessions of a Bad Boy, "our home, my home, was a stage for his work". As dictated by his will, he directed that “my executors as soon as practicable after my death to destroy all data, files and correspondence", which would combine with the reticence of his friends to make it difficult to write about his exploits. His will also specified that the contents of his townhouse were auctioned off by Sotheby's in June 1979. Crowds of 30,000 came to view items over a nine-day period, and the $4.7 million generated at auction were the third-highest in auction history at the time, behind Norton Simon's $12.7 million and the $7.5 million for items from the estate of Geraldine Rockefeller Dodge. The top-selling lot in the sale was for a John Singer Sargent portrait of Millicent Leveson-Gower, Duch