April 24 In History
70: During the Jewish rebellion against Rome, Roman legions break through Jerusalem’s middle wall, but are driven back by the Jewish defenders.
396: As conditions for the Jews in the Roman Empire worsen, the Roman Emperors adopt a law that appears to be an anomaly. They issue a decree punishing anyone who insults Jewish leaders. "If any one dare publicly insult the Illustrious Patriarchs, he shall be subject to a sentence of punishment." [CTh 16.8.11] (Editor’s Note – I can find no explanation for this)
858: Start of the papacy of Nicholas I. During his papacy he issued “a very obscure order which is contained in a letter Bishop Arsenius of Orta, to whom he prohibits the use of Jewish garments.”
1342: Pope Benedict XII passed away. In 1337 Benedict’s effort to protect the Jews when Christian mobs in Germany Bavaria, Bohemia, Moravia and Austria attacked them because of false accusations of “host desecration,” proved futile. Benedict’s intervention on behalf of the Jews marks him as unusual. His failure is a testament to the strong power of these false allocations.
1288: A Christian body was placed in the house of the richest Jew of Troyes, France. The resulting tribunal condemned fourteen of the city's wealthiest men and women to be burned at the stake. This was part of a blood libel which the Dominicans and Franciscans used to “provoke a massacre of the local Jews.
1731: Daniel Defoe passed away. Apparently the author of “Robinson Crusoe had a rather low opinion of the Jews since he “depicted Jews as vicious and corrupt” according to “Britain in the Hanoverian Age.” For reasons yet not understood, Defoe’s “An Essay Upon Literature” was published in the same pamphlet with Toland’s “The Agreement of the Customs of the East Indians With Those of the Jews.”
1744: The Revenge, a British privateer commanded by Captain James Allen, intercepted the sloop Fortune, one of whose passengers was an English Jewish merchant named Isaac Mendez. When Captain Allen brought the Fortune to Newport, he filed papers claiming the cargo of the Fortune as his pirze. Mendez took exception with the claim and this would lead to tortuous litigation. [Editor’s note: There will be more to the story in THDIJH in May.]
1776: During the American Revolution The Pennsylvania Journal published a letter from Thomas Paine in which the famous pamphleteer uses quotes from the Bible including the books of Samuel and Hosea to show that a monarchy is a sinful form of government condemned by God. (As reported by Abraham Bloch) While most of the American revolutionaries had never met a Jew, they identified with the ancient Israelites through the lens of the Old Testament. They saw King George as a modern Pharaoh and compared their fight for independence with the Exodus from Egypt. Benjamin Franklin wanted a depiction of the Jews crossing the Red Sea to appear on the Great Seal of the United States.
1783: Emperor Joseph II granted the request of his Jewish subjects that they be able to continue to wear beards. At the same time he reaffirmed all of the other parts of the “Systematica gentis Judaicae regulation”
1800: The United States Library of Congress is established when President John Adams signs legislation to appropriate $5,000 USD to purchase "such books as may be necessary for the use of Congress". “The Hebraic Section … Israel, the Hebrew language, biblical studies, and the ancient Near East. began operation in 1914 as part of the Division of Semitic and Oriental Literature, and it concentrates on Jewish culture, Israel, the Hebrew language, biblical studies, and the ancient Near East.”
1824: Birthdate of Sabato Morais, the native of Leghorn, Italy who rise to become one of the earliest and most prominent Rabbis to serve the American Jewish Community. [This is based on an article published at the time of his death. Other sources show April 13, 1824.]
1838: Birthdate of Jules Levy, the native of London who was perhaps “the most celebrated” person to play the coronet during the 19th century
1842: In Cincinnati, a group of Jewish women met and established a Sunday School under the direction of Mrs. Louisa Symonds who would later resign her post due to the heavy work load. She would be replaced by Mr. Joseph Jonas.
1846: The Voice of Jacob contained a short article describing that described the two public Jewish schools at Kingston, Jamaica as “languid and unsatisfactory,” due the paucity of trained and qualified teachers.
1851: Charles Sumner began his twenty three year career as a U.S. Senator from Massachusetts. In 1864, he introduced an amendment to the United States Constitution that would define the United States as a “Christian government.” Congress rejected the proposal. (For more see A New Promised Land by Hasia R Diner, et al.)
1854: In New York, Ahawath Chesed began worshiping at their synagogue at Number 27 Columbia Street which would be there home for the next ten year when the growing congregation moved to a facility on the corner of 4thStreet and Avenue C.
1856: Birthdate of Henri-Phillipe Petain. In World War I, General Petain was a hero - the leader in the victory at Verdun. In World War II, he was head of the Vichy Government. The Vichy Government was allied with the Nazis and was an active participant in the deportation and death of thousands of Jews. Some of these were part of the very old French Jewish community. Others were relative new-comers who had sought refuge in France during the 1930's as the Nazi scourge began to sweep across Europe. Petain was not prosecuted for collaborating because of his previous military contribution and advanced age. Pierre Laval, the Prime Minister of the Vichy government did not escape punishment. Petain passed away at in 1951at the age of 95.
1861: "When the Richmond Blues left...for war" today, fifteen of its ninety-nine members were Jewish including Ezekiel J. ("Zeke") Levy
1864: Isaac Levy, a Virginian serving the Confederate Army wrote his mother from his post in South Carolina describing the Seder that he and his fellow soldiers had celebrated a few days earlier.
1869: Mlle. Janauschek is scheduled to appear in a benefit performance of "Deborah," the proceeds of which will go to the Hebrew Free School in New York City.
1871: An article published today entitled “Synagouge Consecreation” described the ceremony led by Rabbi S.M. Issacs as Derech Emunoh took over its new home in what had been the chapel of New York University.
1872(16th of Nisan, 5632): Second day of Pesach; first day of the Omer
1879(1st of Iyar, 5639): Rosh Chodesh Iyar
1881: The Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati, Ohio, the only Jewish “institution for advanced study in America” is dedicating a new building today. As a testament to the school’s strength, the administration was able to spend $25,000 to purchase one of the city’s old mansions and then spend additional funds to remodel it. The school began as a dream of community leaders in 1872 and opened its doors in 1875 to 17 pupils who used rooms at the Plum Street Temple for their classes
1881: It was erroneously reported today that King Charles I, the new King of Romania “has removed the disabilities of the Jews who comprise the largest foreign element of his population.”
1881: “Disraeli, Novelist and Orator” published today examines the career of the author turned politician. It concedes that nobody could have imagined the political heights he was to scale when his first novel came out. At the same time, throughout his 40 year career, he was victimized by the press as can be seen by the issues of Punch in which he was “assailed…with ridicule, sneer and caricature.”
1885: Birthdate of Romana Manczyk, the Warsaw native who became famous as Zionist activist Romana Goodman.
1885: According to today’s Boston Post, there is a colony of Jews living in China who came to that country two hundred years before the Christian era.
1887(30th of Nisan, 5647): Rosh Chodesh Iyar
1887: When the Hebrew Benevolent and Orphan Asylum Society held its 64thannual meeting this morning, Jesse Seligman was chosen to serve as President and Henry Rice was chosen to serve as Vice President. Currently, there are 482 orphans in the asylum, 277 of whom are boys. According to Myer Stern, the society’s secretary, 16 of the boys have recently “been provided with good positions.”
1889(23rd of Nisan, 5649): Salomon or Solomon Formstecher, a German rabbi and student of Jewish theology passed away. Born at Offenbach am Main in 1808 he earned a Ph.D from the Giessen University, he settled in his native city as preacher, succeeding Rabbi Metz in 1842 a position he held until his death. “During his long ministry he strove to harmonize the religious and social life of the Jews with the requirements of modern civilization. His aims were expressed at the Rabbinical Conference of Brunswick, Frankfurt, Breslau, and Kassel in the conferences of the German rabbis. The most important of his works is Religion des Geistes ("Religion of the Spirit," Frankfort-on-the-Main, 1841). It contains a systematic analysis of the principles of Judaism. The author endeavors to demonstrate that Judaism was a necessary manifestation, and that its evolution tends in the direction of a universal religion for civilized mankind. Judaism, in contrast with paganism, considers the Divinity to be a Being separate from nature, and allows no doubt of God's existence. Consequently any theogony, any emanation, any dualism must be rejected. Formstecher concludes his work with a history of Judaism which is a valuable contribution to Jewish religious philosophy.”
1889: It was reported today that some brokers at the NYSE who are not Jewish are accusing Isidore Wormser of leading a cabal of Jewish financiers in stock manipulation especially where the Reading Railroad is concerned. The charge is not anchored in reality since some of his cohorts are said to include the notorious Jay Gould and the very gentile James R. Keene.
1890: Sylvester Pennoyer was nominated for Governor today at the Democratic State Convention in Portland, Oregon, with the expectation that he could be able to carry the Jewish vote in the upcoming general elections.
1891: Henry Blumenthal took his father David Blumenthal out an insane asylum in Amityville, Long Island, today. He then took his father who had been a wealthy Jewish dry goods businessmen before his confinement to all of the banks where he had deposits, withdrew the funds that totaled over $30, 000 and then boarded a ship bound for Bremen, Germany
1893: “On The Watch For Converts” published today described the aggressive attempts by various Christian churches to convert Jews in response to which “a considerable number” of the Jews in New York “have formulated a plan for checkmating the vigorous efforts…to proselytize them from their ancient faith.”
1894: “Mr. Seligman’s Career” published today glowingly described the career of the recently deceased Jewish businessman and philanthropist Jesse Seligman who “came to New York in steerage” and was worth over $20,000,000 when he passed away.
1895: “Mr. Hutton’s Book On Jerusalem” published today provides a detailed review of Literary Landmarks of Jerusalem by Laurence Hutton.
1896: A new synagogue is scheduled to be dedicated this evening in Lancaster, PA.
1897: It was reported today that during March the United Hebrew Charities dealt with 3,326 applications for relief that affected 11,086 peoples. One thousand people received clothes, shoes and furniture while 319 people were taken to the doctor. Of the 950 people who registered for work, 589 were found jobs.
1898: On its 76th anniversary, the Hebrew Benevolent and Orphan Asylum Society met at the asylum’s building on 136th Street and Amsterdam Avenue.
1898: It was reported today that among those who attended the 5th annual reunion banquet of the Hebrew Technical Institute were Meyer Cushner, Maximilian Zipkes, James Hoffman, Joseph L. Gensler, Dr. Henry M. Leipziger, A. Lincoln Saruya and Edgar S. Barnay
1898: Spanish American War began with the sinking of the USS Maine. Fifteen Jews serving on the battleship were killed. Five thousand Jews served in the American Army, a ratio of 20% more than the general population. The first person of Colonel Roosevelt's Rough Riders to reach the top of San Juan Hill was reportedly a Jew named Irving Peixotto.
1898: The Adath Israel Fair which is a fundraiser for their new building in West Harlem is scheduled to come to an end.
1899: Birthdate of Russian-born, American educated Ascher Zaritsky. As Oscar Zariski he became one of the most influential mathematicians working in the field of algebraic geometry in the twentieth century. He passed away in 1986.
1902:The first step toward the creation of a permanent endowment fund for the United Hebrew Charities was taken today by William Guggenheim, a member of the Board of Directors, when he sent” Henry Rice, “the President of the organization…a check for $50,000 for that purpose and a promise of $50,000 more…”
1911: Birthdate of comedian Jack E Leonard. Born Leonard Lebitsky in Chicago, Illinois, Leonard was a heavy-set, cigar-smoking practitioner of an aggressive form of humor. His movie credits included the “Disorderly Orderly,” “The Fat Spy,” and “Target: Harry.” He passed away on May 9, 1973.
1914: Birthdate of Jan Karski, a liaison officer of the Polish underground who infiltrated both the Warsaw Ghetto and a German concentration camp and then carried the first eyewitness accounts of the Holocaust to a mostly disbelieving audience of Western leaders.
1915: The Armenian Genocide began when the Young Turks undertook the systematic annihilation of Armenian intellectuals and entrepreneurs within the city of Constantinople and later the entire Armenian population of the Ottoman Empire. The Jewish population of Palestine was aware of this slaughter. The leaders of its nascent military force, Hashomer, were especially cognizant of what had happened. They were determined that the Jews would not suffer a similar fate.
1916: Birthdate of playwright Stanley Kauffmann.
1916: The Easter Rising began in Dublin. Many Jews were attracted to the cause of Irish Republicanism. Among them Michael Noyk an Irish solicitor who joined Sinn Fein shortly after the Rising and defended several of the I.R.A. prisoners.
1918: The New York Times reposts that “The Jewish Administration Commission for Palestine has established bureaus in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv and is engaged in the actual work of laying the foundation for the Jewish state. Of immediate concern was the need for “large sums of money designed to save orange growers from ruin owing to their inability to market their crops due to the World War. Long term loans to the orange growers are imperative necessity.”
1919(24thNisan, 5679): A month before his 56th birthday Parisian born opera composer Camille Erlanger passed away.
1921: Vladimir Jabotinsky was sentenced by the British mandatory government of Palestine to 15 years of imprisonment for his participation in the Jewish self-defense corps. During Passover in 1920, Jabotinsky stood at the head of the Haganah in Jerusalem against Arab riots and was condemned by the British Mandatory Government to 15 years hard labor. Following the public outcry against the verdict, he received amnesty and was released from Acre prison.
1924: Birthdate of Detroit native Isadore Manuel Singer, a Professor of Mathematics at MIT who “is noted for his work with Michael Atiyah proving the Atiyah–Singer index theorem in 1962, which paved the way for new interactions between pure mathematics and theoretical physics.” (This breakthrough was accomplished by an American Jew and a native of the Sudan, raised in Egypt who now lives in Great Britain. Yes, peaceful collaboration is possible.)
1924: Birthdate of composer and pianist Yehoshua Lakner. Born in Bratislava, Lakner moved to what is now Israel in 1941. During his early years in Palestine, Lakner studied and played in small jazz band. Yehoshua Lakner's work has received numerous awards, including the Engel Prize of Tel-Aviv for his "Toccata for Orchestra" (1958). He was honored by the Zurich City Council for his theatre music (1969) and was awarded the Salomon David Steinberg Foundation's Music Prize, as well as a composer-in-residency from the City of Zurich (1987/88). Lakner taught at the Rubin Academy for Music in Tel Aviv and later used the computer to create multi-sensory musical experiences.
1932: Detroit Tigers Pitcher Izzy Goldstein, a native or Odessa, Russia, appeared in his first major league baseball game.
1932: Benny Rothman, the Jewish political activist, leads the Mass trespass of Kinder Scout,which resulted in substantial legal reforms in the United Kingdom.
1933: Soviet Union Foreign Commissar Maxim Litvinov appears on the cover of Timeand is the subject of the magazine’s feature article. Litvinov was the son of a wealthy Jewish banking family who became an ardent Bolshevik. Stalin will remove Litvinov, the Jew, when he decides to negotiate the non-aggression pact with Germany in 1939. Americans would come to know Litvinov during World War II when he served as the Soviet ambassador to the United States where he played a key role in lend-lease negotiations. Litvinov was unique among the original Jews Bolshevik leaders because he was one of the few to escape Stalin’s wrath and die of natural causes.
1933(28thof Nisan, 5693): Eighty-one year old Felix Adler passed away.
http://www.nysec.org/felixadler
1933: After meeting with President Roosevelt, Secretary of State Cordell Hull wrote to Norman Davis, the American representative to the Geneva Disarmament Conference that FDR would regard adjournment of the conference as a failure that might give Hitler an excuse to start a war. (In the first months of his Presidency, FDR saw that Hitler posed an undetermined threat to peace. He wanted to keep him at bay because he was dealing with the worst crisis in American history. What most people fail to understand with their twenty-twenty hindsight was that the United States was tottering on the brink of disaster and there was no guarantee that she could not followed the fascist model of Germany and Italy or the Communist model of the Soviet Union.)
1934: It was reported today that Abraham Stavsky, Zvi Rosenblatt and Abba Achimeyer have gone trial for the murder last month of Dr. Chaim Arlosoroff. “Achicmeyer is charged with inciting the alleged murderers by speeches and newspaper articles.” The other two defendants are charged with the actual murder with Rosenblatt having been named as the “trigger man.”
1937: Pastor Martin Niemöller, one of the foremost leaders of the German opposition forces to Hitler, preached that it is unfortunate that God permitted Jesus to be born a Jew.
1939: In apparent response to pressure from the British government the Greek government announced that a law prohibiting Greek vessels from carrying any more Jewish refugees unless their papers are strictly in order would be enforced. The move will strike a blow against the Greek economy since Greek ship owners and “brokers” had been able to make “exorbitant profits” from trafficking in Jewish misery.
1941: Birthdate of Richard Charles Albert Holbrooke “a top-ranking American diplomat, magazine editor, author, professor, Peace Corps official, and investment banker. He was the only person to have held the position of Assistant Secretary of State position for two different regions of the world (Asia from 1977 to 1981 and Europe from 1994 to 1996). Later, was the Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan under the Obama administration. Holbrooke was born in New York City, to Dan Holbrooke and Trudi Moos (née Kearl). Holbrooke’s mother, whose Jewish family fled Hamburg in 1933 for Buenos Aires before coming to New York, took him to Quaker meetings on Sundays. “I was an atheist, his father was an atheist,” says his mother, a potter now married to a sculptor. “We never thought of giving Richard a Jewish upbringing. The Quaker meetings seemed interesting.” Holbrooke’s father, a doctor born of Russian Jewish parents in Warsaw, died of cancer. His father changed his name to Holbrooke when he arrived in the United States in the 1930s. Such, however, is the family’s loss of contact with its roots that his original name is unknown. After Scarsdale High School Holbrooke received his A.B. from Brown University in 1962 and completed a post-graduate fellowship at Princeton University in 1970. He married Kati Marton in 1995. His marriage to Marton has led him to look more closely at his past. She was born into a family of Hungarian Jews but raised a Roman Catholic. In researching a book about Raoul Wallenberg, the Swedish diplomat in Budapest who saved Jews during World War II, Marton traveled to her native Hungary whence she and her parents had fled the Communists in the 1950s. It was there that an old friend of her mother’s told her that Wallenberg had come too late for Marton’s grandparents. It was the first she had heard about her Jewish roots. Like Madeleine Albright’s parents, Marton’s family hid their Jewish identity when they came to the United States. She learned that one of her maternal grandparents had died in the Auschwitz concentration camp. He passed away in 2010.
1941: The Nazis “closed” the Lublin Ghetto. The Lublin (Poland) Ghetto was established in March, 1941 and contained about 34,000 Jews. As of this date Jews could only leave if they had a special permit or were part of a labor group. The Lublin Ghetto was the first ghetto in the General Government to be liquidated, and the Nazis gained much experience, for future deportation actions. Jews from Lublin were the first victims of the newly constructed death camp at Belzec. Only 200-300 of formerly 40,000 Lublin Jews survived in hiding or were finally liberated in several concentration camps. About 1000 Jews survived the war in Soviet areas.
1942: The liquidation of the Wloclawek began today.
1942: Jews throughout Greater Germany were prohibited from taking public transport.
1942: Birthdate of singer and film star Barbra Streisand.
1943: Oliver Harvey, Anthony Eden’s Private Secretary described the British Foreign Minister’s attitude toward the Jews with an entry in his diary stating “Unfortunately AE is immovable on the subject of Palestine. He loves Arabs and hates Jews.” This entry explains why the British Foreign office did nothing to save the Jews of Europe from the Holocaust and gives some example of the type of society in which Churchill was forced to make his decisions.
1943: A twelve day joint Anglo-American conference designed to deal with the issue of refugees (and in reality Jewish refugees) comes to an end without taking any action to save the Jews of Europe including the opening of Palestine to settlement by Jewish refugees.
1943(19th of Nissan 5703): Rabbi Menachem Ziemba a distinguished pre-World War II Rabbi who had been born in 1883, known as a Talmudic genius and prodigy was gunned down by the Nazis during the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. “Rabbi Menachem Zemba was born in a suburb of Warsaw, Poland in 1883. A follower of the Gerrer chassidic dynasty, he was a great genius and Torah scholar. He joined the Warsaw rabbinate in 1935, and was recognized as a leading rabbinic figure in pre-war Eastern Europe.
Rabbi Zemba was a moral force in the Warsaw Ghetto, always striving to infuse the community with optimism and hope. He arranged clandestine locations in cellars and bomb shelters where girls and boys would study Torah. Although afforded opportunities to escape the ghetto, he refused to do so, insisting that his presence was needed by the Jews in the ghetto. Rabbi Zemba was a strong supporter of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, donating personal funds for ammunition and giving his whole-hearted blessing for the endeavor (see Jewish History for the 27th of Nissan). Five days after the fighting begun, on Shabbat the 19th of Nissan, the house were Rabbi Zemba was hiding was set afire by the SS. When attempting to escape, Rabbi Zemba was shot dead by the Nazis. May G-d avenge his blood. The rabbi was buried in the Ghetto, and in 1958 his body was flown to Israel where he was buried in Jerusalem amid a great funeral procession. Rabbi Zemba was a prolific writer. Unfortunately, most of his scholarly manuscripts were burnt in the Warsaw Ghetto. His few works which were authored before the war are still studied by Torah scholars world-wide. (As reported by Chabad)
1944: Two escapees from Auschwitz, Rudolf Vrba and Alfred Wetzler reached Zilina, in northern Slovakia, where they worked with Jewish leaders on their report. The two men provided separate but consistent accounts. Factual assertions were checked against records whenever possible. The 32-page report was sent to the British and United States governments, the Vatican and the International Red Cross. Most important, it went to the leadership of Hungary's Jews, next on Hitler's list.
1945: When Soviet troops entered the German capital, they found 800 Jews alive at Berlin’s Jewish Hospital.
1945: Holocaust survivor Dr. Hadassah Bimko Rosensaft, gave one of the first eyewitness accounts of the horrors of the Holocaust on a Movietone News newsreel that was filmed at the recently liberated Nazi concentration camp of Bergen-Belsen. "It is difficult for me to describe," she said, "all that we inmates experienced here in the camps. As a small, very small example I can relate that we inmates were thrown onto the earth of a filthy, lice-filled camp, without blankets, without bags of hay, without beds. We were given a 12th of a piece of bread daily and one liter of turnip soup so that almost 75 percent of the inmates were swollen from hunger. A severe typhus epidemic broke out, and the hunger and the typhus devoured us." Through the camera she told the world how the Germans had refused to give starving inmates food shipments sent by the Red Cross until shortly before the arrival of British troops, and how the camp's SS commandant had stolen large quantities of chocolate intended for Jewish children to enrich himself on the black market.
1946: Five thousand Jews attending a funeral for five Jews murdered by Poles at Nowy Targ, Poland, three days earlier were abused from rooftops and windows by anti-Semitic taunts.
1947: Birthdate of Roger David Kornberg an American biochemist and professor of structural biology at Stanford University School of Medicine who “was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2006 for his studies of the process by which genetic information from DNA is copied to RNA, "the molecular basis of eukaryotic transcription."
1948: During the siege of Jerusalem, on the first day of Pesach, Zipporah Porath “feasted on an omelet made from our special Pesach ration, which included Matzah and one egg each.”
1950: King Abdullah of Jordan annexed all of the land west of the Jordan River and the Dead Sea seized by his troop. The state of Jordan was formed by the union of Jordanian-occupied Palestine and the Kingdom of Transjordan. In the view of some, the creation of the original state of Trans-Jordan by the British after World War I was an illegal act since amounted to a partition of the Palestine Mandate. That is why there are those that contend that if the Arabs want a state in Palestine, they already have it. It is called Jordan. The creation of Jordan in 1950 was another act of illegality. The land west of the Jordan River including the eastern part of Jerusalem had been seized by the Jordanian Army during the Israeli War for Independence. Since the Arabs held what is now called the West Bank, east Jerusalem and Gaza in 1950, you would have expected that the Arab State of Palestine would have been created. The demand for an Arab state of Palestine in these areas only began after June, 1967.
1950: The government of Israel announced that it would not accept the annexation of eastern Jerusalem and the West Bank by Jordan. Israel said that it had accepted the occupation as part of the truce agreement subject to final peace negotiations. Israel expressed its displeasure at the possibility of British military installations being installed on her frontiers.
1955: The Bandung Conference came to an end. At the height of the Cold War, twenty-nine self-described non-aligned nations of Asia and Africa finish a meeting that condemned colonialism, racism, and the Cold War. One of the prime movers behind the conference was Prime Minister Nehru of India. The Israelis had wanted to attend. They saw themselves as a socialist country who had thrown the British out and was not officially aligned with either the Eastern or Western Blocs. However, Nehru did not want the Israelis there because it would upset the Arabs and the Moslems.
1958(4th of Iyar, 5718): Yom HaAtzma'ut
1958: Chaim Laskov, the recently appointed Chief of General Staff, “presided over a huge military parade in Jerusalem to mark the tenth anniversary of Israel's independence. This took place despite warnings by Jordan that such a parade would be considered an act of aggression. During the parade, Laskov displayed Israel's latest military hardware, including weapons captured from Egypt in the Sinai and from Syria during clashes in the Hula Valley.”
1961, Professor Salo Baron testified at the trial of Adolf Eichmann in Jerusalem. Baron explained the historical context of the Nazi genocide against the Jews. He further explained that in his birthplace, Tarnow, there had been 20,000 Jews before the war but, after Hitler, there were no more than 20. His parents and a sister were killed there1961, Professor Baron testified at the trial of Adolf Eichmann in Jerusalem. Baron explained the historical context of the Nazi genocide against the Jews. He further explained that in his birthplace, Tarnow, there had been 20,000 Jews before the war but, after Hitler, there were no more than 20. His parents and a sister were killed there
1962: Dodger Legend Sandy Koufax pitched his second 18-strikeout game.
1965(22nd of Nisan, 5725): 8th day of Pesach
1968: Mauritius becomes a member state of the United Nations. During World War II, the British used Mauritius as detention camp for Jews fleeing Hitler’s Europe who were trying to enter Palestine despite the White Paper. http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/vjw/Mauritius.html
1976: Birthdate of Nathan Rabin, an American film and music critic
1980: Barbara Tuchman delivers the Jefferson Lecture in the Humanities. The announcement contains the following:
Barbara Tuchman, who was born in 1912, never earned a graduate degree in history, but her best-selling books made history come alive for millions of readers and earned two Pulitzer Prizes for their author. Raised in a privileged New York family, Tuchman traveled extensively with her parents before attending Radcliffe College, where she studied history and literature. After her graduation, she wrote about the Spanish Civil War for The Nation, and then worked at the Office of War Information during World War II, traveling in Asia. These reporting stints sparked Tuchman's interest in the history of war. Tuchman’s first book, Bible and Sword: England and Palestine from the Bronze Age to Balfour(1956), expressed strong sympathy for Zionism. She is best known, however, for two books that won Pulitzer Prizes: The Guns of August(1962), about the First World War, and Stilwell and the American Experience in China, 1911-1945 (1972). The Guns of Augustwas later made into a movie of the same name. Although her relationships with professional historians were sometimes strained, Tuchman did garner recognition, serving as the president of the Society of American Historians (1970-1973), and as president of the American Academy of Arts and Letters (1979).Tuchman was the first woman invited to deliver the Jefferson Lecture in the Humanities under the auspices of the National Endowment for the Humanities. An invitation to give the Jefferson Lecture is the highest honor the federal government confers for distinguished intellectual achievement in the humanities. In her lecture, presented on April 24, 1980, Tuchman took "Mankind's Better Moments" as her title and theme, reflecting her general optimism about the human condition. Tuchman repeated the lecture in London a week later, the first time that a Jefferson Lecture had been repeated abroad, marking her international renown as a writer. Tuchman published her last book, The First Salute, just a year before her death in 1989.
1983: In article entitled “Discovering Herod’s Israel,” Nitza Rosovsky describes the various building projects of the cruel king including those at Caeseria, Massada and Jerusalem remnants of which can be seen today as well as the opportunities for students to take part in archaeological digs during the summer.
1985: According to Israeli businessman Yaacov Nimrodi, today he canceled the sailing of the merchant ship, the Westline which had been scheduled to leave Eilat filled with weaponry for Iran as part of a deal that Americans would come to know as Iran-Contra.
1986(15thof Nisan, 5746): Pesach
1987: Howard Stern held a free speech rally at Dag Hammarskjold Plaza New York City.
1990: Securities law violator Michael Milken pled guilty to 6 felonies.
1992: Catcher Jesse Levis appeared in his first major league baseball game wearing the uniform of the Cleveland Indians.
1992: George Steinbrenner dropped his suits against baseball.
1993: ABC news analyst Jeff Greenfield married Karen Gannett.
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