History events
1264 — (22nd of Av, 5024) The Statute of Kalisz (Charter of Jewish Liberties) was issued by King Bolesław the Pious of Poland. It guaranteed Jews personal and property inviolability, protection for their public and private religious observances, while Jews were required to enrich the treasury
1486 — (15th of Elul, 5246) Twenty men and five women were burned after being sentenced at an auto-de-fe in Toledo on the charge of Judaizing
1826 — (13th of Av, 5586) Due to a blood libel, the authorities closed all synagogues in the Belarusian town of Velezh. The case had begun three years earlier, when a twelve-year-old holy fool, Anna Yeremeyeva, dreamed of the Archangel Michael, who told her that on the first day of Easter, a Christian soul would be tortured by Jews, which Anna then shared with those around her. Indeed, on the first day of Easter, a local peasant’s three-year-old son went missing… The investigation would start and then be suspended; witnesses would appear and disappear. Jews were arrested in entire families. The case ultimately came to nothing only in 1835, following the intervention of Count Nikolay Semyonovich Mordvinov.
1903 — (23rd of Av, 5663) Returning from Saint Petersburg to Europe, Herzl arrived in Vilnius. He was met by local community leaders, guests from other cities, and a crowd of thousands. The carriage set off, but Ephraim the Shoemaker grabbed the rear wheel with such force that he stopped it. Herzl stood up to understand what had happened, when a cry rang out: «David, King of Israel, long may he live and prosper!» and the crowd took up the chant: «Hurrah!» As Herzl was leaving, Cossacks appeared and brutally dispersed the Jews who had come to the station, though this occurred on the night of the 17th.
1904 — (5th of Elul, 5664) The newspaper «Yenisei» in its «Chronicle» section published an article titled «The Celebration of the Opening of a Jewish School.» On that day, a newly built two-grade Jewish school, located next to the synagogue, was consecrated. The governor, the mayor, and other guests were present. A prayer was read by the rabbi.
1920 — (2nd of Elul, 5680) The Minister of Military Affairs of Poland, Kazimierz Sosnkowski, signed an order to establish a camp for interned Jews in Jabłonna (see August 12, 1920). On September 9, due to news of the camp leaking to the press and alarming the public, it was closed. At the time of its closure, 17,000 Jews were held in the camp.
1928 — (30th of Av, 5688) Jewish colonization work in Crimea for which a sufficient sum will be made available through the $10,000,000 Rosenwald fund was given further impetus and opportunity by the decision of the All-Russian Zik, the Central Executive Committee, to allot an additional area in Crimea of 109,000 hectares where 15,000 Jewish families may be settled as farmers.
1933 — (24th of Av, 5693) Three hundred Polish Jews including a group of 140 chalutzim leave for Palestine
1936 — (28th of Av, 5696) An eight year old Jewish boy was killed and nineteen Jews were injured by the explosion of a bomb thrown by an Arab from a train window into one of the principal streets of Tel Aviv today as the train was passing the city en route to Jaffa.
1938 — (19th of Av, 5698) Arabs killed three people when they kidnapped a Jewish family today at Atlit
1929 — (10th of Av, 5689) A demonstration by the Arabs of Jerusalem under the slogans «Down with Zionism.» This was a response to a demonstration by Betar youth the previous day. The atmosphere in the city reached a fever pitch.
1939 — (1st of Elul, 5699) The 21st Zionist Congress began in Geneva. It lasted 10 days. 527 delegates unanimously approved a resolution containing sharp criticism of the MacDonald White Paper and declaring the Zionists’ readiness to fight against the restrictions on Jewish settlement in Eretz-Yisrael envisioned by it. B. Katznelson called for drastically expanding the scope of «illegal» immigration, viewing it as the only means of saving European Jewry from genocide. Closing the congress, which ended six days before the start of World War II, Chaim Weizmann said, among other things: «I pray for only one thing: that we all meet again.»
1941 — (23rd of Av, 5701) Shoah. In Kostopil (Rovno region), 480 Jews were shot. On the same day, the Security Police returned 13,500 Jews to Bessarabia via Yampil (Vinnytsia region). A group of Jews was killed in Zvenyhorodka (Cherkasy region).
1942 — (3rd of Elul, 5702) Shoah. In Kysylyn (Volyn region), over 500 Jews were shot. On the same day, another 300 Jews were shot in Shumsk and 380 in Bila Krynytsia, while 200 Jewish artisans were transferred to a prison in Kremenets. Another 6,500 Jews were transported from Lviv to Bełżec
1943 — (15th of Av, 5703) Nazi troops enter the Jewish ghetto at Bialystok, Poland and over the next four days destroy the more than 30,000 Jews inside.
1948 — (11th of Av, 5708) Three months after the establishment of the State of Israel, ….. an agreement was signed between the Bank Leumi and the temporary Government. The official charter appointing the Bank as the Government’s financial agent was signed by Hoofien and the Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion. On that very day, the official bank notes of the new state, bearing the name of the Anglo-Palestine Bank and the signatures of Hoofien and Barth, were distributed. The Israeli pound becomes legal tender
1949 — (21th of Av, 5709) Netiv HaLamed-Heh ( נְתִיב הַל»ה, Path of the 35) a kibbutz in central Israel located in the Valley of Elah, was established today by demobilized members of the Daled Company of the Palmach’s Harel Brigade
1956 — (9th of Elul, 5716) A squad of Fedayeen attacked Egged Bus 391 traveling from Tel-Aviv to Eilat murdering three soldiers and a female civilian passenger and wounding an additional three civilian passengers
1969 — (2nd of Elul, 5729) At a meeting of representatives of Zionist groups from the USSR (Riga, Moscow, Leningrad, Kharkiv, Minsk, and Tbilisi), a decision was made to establish an All-Union Coordination Committee.
1972 — (6th of Elul, 5732) Terrorist attack. The explosion of a booby-trapped tape recorder in the baggage compartment of an El Al flight on the Rome-Tel Aviv route was weak, but the plane was forced to return to Italy
1994 — (9th of Elul, 5754) The first ever Papal Nuncio to Israel presented his credentials in Jerusalem
2006 — (22nd of Av, 5766) Second Lebanon War. Day 36. The deputy secretary-general of the Shiite terrorist organization «Hezbollah,» Sheikh Naim Qassem, stated in an interview with the organization’s television channel «Al-Manar» that «United Nations Resolution 1701 does not obligate us in any way and does not apply to us at all.»
2012 — (28th of Av, 5772) 72,051 visitors passed through Ben Gurion Airport, thereby setting an all-time record. The high volume at the airport is explained by students returning to Israel before the start of the school year. The total number of passengers that day was 69,200, and the total number of flights was 395
People
1648 — (28th of Av, 5408) Rabbi Joshua Höschel ben Joseph passed away in Cracow. Born at Vilnius in 1578, he studied both the Kabbalah and the Talmud. He wrote Maginne Shelomoh and She’elot u-Teshubot Pene Yehoshua’
1664 — (5th of Elul, 5424) Johannes Buxtorf II., Christian Hebraist, died
1843 — (20th of Av, 5603) Polish banker and philanthropist Jacob Epstein, the founder of the Jewish hospital at Warsaw whose service as an officer in the insurrectionist army during the Polish uprising did keep him from being apponted banker of the treasury commission of the Kingdom of Poland and named as a “hereditary honorary citizen” by Czar Nicholas I passed away today.
1845 — G. Lippmann was born — a French physicist, winner of the Nobel Prize in 1908. He died on July 13, 1921
1913 — (13th of Av, 5673) In “Brest, a town called Brest-Litovsk, then part of the Russian Empire, but today Belarus” Zeev and Hassia Biegun” gave birth to Menachem Begin, Prime Minister of Israel and winner of the Nobel Peace Prize