History events
70 — (11th of Iyar, 3830) During the Siege of Jerusalem, Titus, the commander of the Roman legions and the son of Emperor Vespasian, opens a full-scale assault on Jerusalem and attacks the city’s Third Wall to the northwest
1427 — (13th of Iyar, 5183) All Jews were ordered expelled from Berne, Switzerland. Expulsions of Jewish communities continued unabated throughout the 15th century: Treves, 1419; duchy of Austria, 1421; Cologne, 1424; Zurich, 1436; archbishopric of Hildesheim, 1457; Schaffhausen, 1472; Mayence, 1473; Warsaw, 1483; Geneva, 1490; Thurgau, 1491; Spain, Sicily, Sardinia, Lithuania, 1492; Mecklenburg and Arles, 1493; Portugal, 1497; Nuremberg 1499; Provence, 1500
1682 — (12th of Iyar, 5442) Great auto da fé at Lisbon
1945 — (27th of Iyar, 5705) Theresienstadt was liberated by the Soviet Army. Located in the Czech town of Terezin (Theresienstadt was its German name), the ghetto gained some measure of fame as a show place where the Nazis brought representatives of the International Red Cross to show how well the Jews were being treated in the Third Reich
1948 — (1th of Iyar, 5708) The Jewish Agency sent one of its most formidable negotiators, Golda Meir, on a second secret mission to King Abdullah of Transjordan; Tzfat (Safed) was secured by the Haganah; Units of the Moslem Brotherhood were driven back after they had attacked Kefar Darom
2011 — (6th of Iyar, 5771) On Independence Day, the Central Bureau of Statistics reported that Israel had a population of 7,746,000, 75% of which is Jewish. In the past year 178,000 babies were born and 24,500 immigrants made aliyah
People
1810 — (6th of Iyar, 5570) Rabbi Joshua Ha-Kohen Perahyah, author of Vayikra Yehoshua passed away today
1914 — (14th of Iyar, 5674) Sixty-three year old Israel Dov Frumkin who moved to Palestine at the age of 9 and was an earlier developer of modern Jewish culture including the revival of Hebrew as a modern language as can be seen by his work the newspaper Havatzelet passed away today in Jerusalem
1943 — (5th of Iyar, 5703) A Bundist member of the Polish government in exile, Szmul Zygielbojm, committed suicide in London to protest the lack of reaction from the Allied governments. In his farewell note, he wrote: «I cannot continue to live and to be silent while the remnants of Polish Jewry, whose representative I am, are being murdered. My comrades in the Warsaw ghetto fell with arms in their hands in the last heroic battle. I was not permitted to fall like them, together with them, but I belong with them, to their mass grave. By my death, I wish to give expression to my most profound protest against the inaction in which the world watches and permits the destruction of the Jewish people.