History events
1236 — (6th of Av, 4996) In Anjou, France, “crusading monks trampled three thousand Jews to death and destroyed the community.” (The History of the Jewish People)
1932 — (6th of Tammuz, 5692) The foundation stone of the Oscar Straus School was laid at Nathanyah. The event was attended by several many Jewish and Arab notables. The project is being sponsored by the Naotaiah Colonization Agency (Palestine Settlers Service of NYC.)
1936 — (20th of Tammuz, 5696) The Palestine Post reported that Joseph Katz, 16, was killed and four quarry workers seriously injured when their bus was ambushed on a side road off the Castel bends on the Jerusalem-Jaffa Road. Senior Arab public servants submitted a memorandum to the high commissioner recommending a total stoppage of Jewish immigration. Four dunams of fruit-bearing trees were destroyed near Hadera.
1941 — (15th of Tammuz, 5701) Holocaust. ….. At Vilna 1,600 Jews are tortured then driven into a barn and burned alive; The Jewish residents of the Polish town of Jedwabne are accosted by their Polish neighbors and by peasants from outlying areas, and are marched to the central market. In a day-long ordeal, the Jews are tortured and subsequently herded into a barn, which is set ablaze with kerosene. The massacre is not carried out by the Germans, who maintain only a token presence in Jedwabne on this day
1948 — (3rd of Tammuz, 5708) War of Independence. ….. During Operation Dekel, the 7th Armored Brigade, a battalion from the Carmeli Brigade along with some elements from the Golani Brigade captured Kuwaykat, Jiddin and Khirbat; With the end of the truce, a company of sixteen and seventeen year old boys under the command of twenty-one year Oded Chai set out to take the high ground west of Jerusalem. Chai, who was a veteran of the Jewish Brigade died almost as soon as the attack had begun, the victim of a sniper’s bullet. The new commander, Elaihu Lichtenstein rallied the troops with a new battle cry, “For Oded” and reached the summit of the hill. That hill is now known as Mount Herzel; Israeli forces attacked a bridgehead that the Syrians had established on the west bank of the Jordan River. The Syrians had seized the bridgehead during what was supposed to be the Four Week Cease Fire. The Syrian air force dominated the sky above the battlefield. The Syrian artillery outraged the Israeli guns. Despite ten days of see-saw fighting, the bridgehead would remain in Syrian hands; An Egyptian Spitfire (yes the same Spitfires that had won the Battle of Britain) dropped a number of bombs on the Jewish sector of Jerusalem killing three children; Two attempts by the Arab Legion to break into the New City (Jerusalem) were thwarted
1951 — (6th of Tammuz, 5711) The Jerusalem Post reported that ….. the government had decided to subsidize the import of hides in order to keep shoe prices at their present level; that the Ministry of Labor investigating the cause of the Castel quarry disaster in which seven workers lost their lives resolved to issue strict regulations on the handling of explosives and to impose severe penalties to discourage workers from violating specific instructions; that electricity consumption restrictions were eased throughout the country; that one thousand newcomers arrived from Romania
1969 — (24th of Tammuz, 5729) One Israeli soldier was killed and seven were wounded” today as Israel fought an artillery duel across the Suez Canal with Egypt while responding to Arab attacks “in the Jordan Valley” and “on the Golan Heights; The body of the lone Israeli captured by Egyptian commandos when they raided an Israeli tank depot on June 9, 1969 is found
1981 — (8th of Tammuz, 5741) PLO units that had occupied southern Lebanon turning into “a state with a state” unleashed a massive rocket attack on northern Israel.
People
1915 — (28th of Tammuz, 5675) Birthdate of Saul Bellow
1938 — (11th of Tammuz, 5698) Alexander Zaid, who was born at Zima in 1886 and was “one of the founders of Bar Giora and Hashomer passed away today
1957 — (11th of Tammuz, 5717) Sholem Asch, a Polish-born American Jewish novelist, dramatist, and essayist in the Yiddish language passed away
1962 — (8th of Tammuz, 5722) Rabbi Yehuda Leib Maimon ….. passed away. Born in 1875 in what was then a part of the Russian Empire, he was one of the founders of the Mizrachi movement in 1902. He would later help develop the movement in the U.S. during WW I after he had been expelled from Palestine by the Turks. He returned to Palestine in 1919 where he worked to develop the Jewish home during the inter-war years. The highpoint of his career may have come when he helped draft Israel’s Declaration of Independence, a document of which he was a signatory
2001 — (19th of Tammuz, 5761) Two Palestinian terrorists shot 45 year old Yosef Twito near Moshav Ahisemekh