December 20

History events
1497 — (25rd of Tevet, 5258) Isaac Abravanel completed the “Yeshu’ot Meshiḥo» (The Salvation of His Anointed)
1863 — (10st of Tevet, 5624) Hevrat Mefizei ha-Haskalah (Society for the Promotion of Culture Among the Jews of Russia) was founded was founded in Russia
1937 — (16st of Tevet, 5698) The Palestine Post reported ….. that Simon Less, 24, a milkman, was killed near the Jerusalem quarter of Beit Hakerem. Shlomo Ben-Nun, 27, a policeman, was kidnapped and later murdered by armed Arabs near Kfar Hittin. A police squad killed one Arab terrorist and jailed another. Jewish buses were shot at and a number of passengers were wounded. In Berlin, Herr von Schwabach, a prominent half-Jewish banker, committed suicide when refused permission to marry his Aryan fiancée. The Lwow University closed owing to renewed anti-Jewish violence
1942 — (12st of Tevet, 5703) Нolocaust. ….. The Nazis shot 560 Jews in the Rakow forest. The story of the massacres that took place at the Rakow forest is typical of the Nazi atrocities during the WWII. The Nazis liquidated the ghetto of Piotrokov, the first ghetto built by the Germans in Poland. While most of the inhabitants of the ghetto were deported to be murdered at Treblinka, one group of 560 Jews was shot to death in the forest outside of town
1945 — (16st of Tevet, 5706) Fifty-two Palestinian Jews detained at a camp at Latrun halfway between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv…were transferred to military custody today and deported to Eriterea. ….. The British believe that the Jews are part of an underground terrorist organization” but have not formally charged them with any crimes. The 52 join 300 Jews already imprisoned at Eriterea under similar conditions. When other prisoners at Latrun found out about the deportations they began a hunger strike
1948 — (18th of Kislev, 5709) Canada recognized the state of Israel
1950 — (11st of Tevet, 5711) Ten short-wave diathermy machines and other medical equipment were donated to Israel today by the American Committee for the National Sick of Palestine as special ceremonies held in the offices of the J. Beeber Company
1964 — (15st of Tevet, 5725) Prime Minister Levi Eshkol formed his cabinet and became head of the Israeli government. Under Eshkol’s leadership, the Israeli forces won the Six Days War, which among other things, resulted in the re-unification of the city of Jerusalem
1976 — (28th of Kislev, 5737) Israel’s Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin resigned. Rabin was forced to resign over a financial indiscretion that took place while he had been Ambassador in Washington. His resignation opened the way for the election of the Likud and Menachem Begin. Up until then, Labor had controlled the Israeli governments chosen since 1948.
2002 — (15th of Tevet, 5763) An Israeli rabbi was shot and killed on the Kissufim corridor road in the Gaza Strip while driving with his wife and six children to attend a pre-wedding Sabbath celebration in Afula

People
1816 — (1st of Tevet, 5577) Simon Bondi who wrote, together with his brother Mordecai, the «Or Ester» (Light of Esther), a Hebrew dictionary of the Latin words occurring in the Talmud, passed away today in his native Dresden
1946 — (27th of Kislev, 5707) In Tel Aiv Itzhaak Geller (Gellér Izsák), a retired army sergeant major, and Manzy Freud a distant relative of Sigmund Freud gave birth to Israeli psychic Uri Geller
1968 — (29th of Kislev, 5759) Eighty-four-year-old Israeli author and Editor Max Brod, the editor of the works of Franz Kafka of whose estate he was executor and whose most work was The Redemption of Tyco Brahe passed away today