Today in Jewish History

1190: Crusaders killed 750 Jews in Bury St Edmonds England. The logic of the Crusaders was why wait to kill infidels in the Holy Land when you can kill them right here at home. Just because these infidels were Jews and the infidels holding the Holy Land were Moslems did not seem to bother these noble knights and their supporters.

1229: Frederick II, Holy Roman Emperor declared himself King of Jerusalem during the Sixth Crusade. In what be lesson for modern times, Frederick’s use of diplomacy succeeded where the use of force by others had failed. His sixth crusade was not a military venture; a fact which drew the ire of the Roman Catholic Church. Instead, after landing in Palestine, he negotiated with the Moslems and gained control of Bethlehem, Nazareth and Jerusalem for a period of ten years.

1389: A priest living in Prague, Czechoslovakia was hit with a few grains of sand by small Jewish boys playing in the street. He became insulted and insisted that the Jewish community purposely plotted against him. Thousands were slaughtered, the synagogue and the cemetery were destroyed, and homes were pillaged. King Wenceslaus insisted that the responsibility rested with the Jews for venturing outside during Holy Week.

1799: Haifa was captured by Napoleon. This marked “high-water mark” in Napoleon’s conquest of Palestine. The next day French forces reached Acre. It was defended both by British warships and local townspeople including the Jewish inhabitants. By June, Napoleon would give up and return to Egypt.

1869: Birthdate of Neville Chamberlain, the British Prime Minister who signed the infamous Munich Agreement with Hitler. He returned to England with the words, “I bring you peace in our times.” Instead there was war within the year. At the same time Chamberlain’s government followed a pro-Arab policy in the Land of Israel which resulted in the infamous White Paper that effectively ended Jewish immigration at the time when the Jews needed a homeland more than ever in our entire history.

1906: A dark day in history since it marked the birth of Adolf Eichmann, the Gestapo officer who contributed so much to the Final Solution. Eichmann is the only person to ever be executed by the state of Israel. He was convicted of genocide.

1930: Arthur James Balfour passed away at the age of 81. Balfour was a prominent British politician who served as Prime Minister from 1902 to 1905. During World War I, Balfour served as Foreign Minister. It was while serving in this position that he gained his place in Jewish History by giving his name to the Balfour Declaration, which read in part, "His Majesty's Government view with the favor the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will their best endeavors to facilitate the achievement of this object..." The Balfour Declaration came to be one of the basic documents in the Jewish diplomatic efforts to establish what would become the modern state of Israel in 1948.

1937: The Palestine Post (later renamed Jerusalem Post) reported that 17 Jews, two policemen and one British soldier were injured by a bomb thrown at the Egged bus terminal on Jerusalem’s Jaffa Road. Two Arabs were detained on suspicion. Later four Arabs were injured when bombs were thrown into Arab-frequented cafes on Mamilla Road and in Romema. Police dogs picked an Arab farmer, Mohammed Kamel, as the murderer of Samuel Gottfried, 26, of Rosh Pina.

1941: This week, 200 Jews would die from hunger in Warsaw ghetto. The prior week, 400 died of hunger.

1943(11th of Adar II, 5703): At Auschwitz, 26-year-old underground fighter Lonka Kozibrodska died of typhus.

1944: Hitler summons the Hungarian Regent, Admiral Horthy for talks. Horthy guaranteed the delivery of 100,000 Jewish workers for the German war effort. Yet he was still hesitant about a general deportation of the rest of the country's 750,000 Jews. At 9:30 that evening, German troops begin to enter Hungary.

1950: “Dr. George Josephthanal, director of the Absorption Department of the Jewish Agency” announced “that a sea and air operation aimed at moving 90,000 Jews out of Iraq into Israel would be initiated next month at a cost of sixty million dollars.”

1962: The Evian Accords put an end to the Algerian War of Independence, which began in 1954. The end of the Algerian War marked the beginning of a change in French policy towards the Arabs, and therefore, towards Israel. While fighting the Arab nationalist in Tunisia, Morocco and Algeria, the French saw the Israelis as allies. This accounts for French willingness to supply the IDF with military equipment including jet fighter planes and to join in the Suez War of 1956. Once De Gaulle decided to end French fighting with Arab nationalist, he sought to create a French sphere of influence among its former colonies. Supporting Israel was now a detriment to French policy aims. In 1967, De Gaulle would oppose Israel’s right to defend itself in what would become the Six Day War going so far as to deny delivery of naval vessels to the Israelis for which the Jewish state had already paid.

Search for related posts