History events
1831 — (26nd of Cheshvan, 5592) The formal establishment of the congregation that came to be called The Great Synagogue (known in Hebrew as Beth Yisrael — «House of Israel») took place today in Sydney, Australia
1917 — (17nd of Cheshvan, 5678) Arthur Balfour, British Secretary for Foreign Affairs, sent Lord Rothschild a letter declaring the government’s sympathy and support for the Zionist cause. Known as the Balfour Declaration, this document helped to supply the legal and international political underpinnings for the nascent Zionist movement
1922 — (11nd of Cheshvan, 5683) Founding of the moshav Balfouriyyah on the fifth anniversary of the Balfour Declaration
1931 — (22nd of Cheshvan, 5692) Students of Warsaw University launched an attack against their Jewish colleagues which included an attack on first-year Jewish law students who were driven from the University grounds.
1941 — (12nd of Cheshvan, 5702) Нolocaust. The Germans begin the construction of an extermination center at Belzec, Poland
1942 — (22nd of Cheshvan, 5703) Нolocaust. ….. The Nazis begin deportations in the Bialystok region. Reportedly, 3,000 to 6,000 Jews were deported from Siemiatzycze. Hundreds were shot while trying to revolt against the round up. The resistance was led by Herschl Shabbes. Hundreds of Jews managed to escape from the actions. Some Poles helped the Jews hide while others didn’t. Those who were caught assisting a Jew were shot. When the train of Siemiatzycze Jews reached the Treblinka station, one car was heard singing «Hatikvah’. Some of the people were stripped naked in near freezing temperatures, taken to the fields and shot dead. All the rest but 152 of the 3,200 were gassed. As part of the Action in the Bialystok region, hundreds of small towns would be raided, their Jews rounded up for deportation. The total of captured Jews was estimated to be above 100,000. There were too many to be processed immediately. Interim camps were then set up. Eventually most of them would be transported to Treblinka over the next several weeks and months; In the Lithuanian town of Marcinkance, 370 Jews who refuse to board trains for deportation bolt for the ghetto boundaries. In the mêlée that follows, 360 Jews and many guards are killed. Between deaths and successful escapes, not one Jew is left to board the trains; n Zolochev, Ukraine, the chairman of the Jewish Council is murdered by Germans after refusing to sign a paper saying that the liquidation of the ghetto was necessitated by the spread of a typhus epidemic. The poet S. J. Imber, the nephew of the author of Hatikvah is among the 2500 Zolochev Jews deported to Belzec; In Zolochev, Ukraine, the chairman of the Jewish Council is murdered by Germans after refusing to sign a paper saying that the liquidation of the ghetto was necessitated by the spread of a typhus epidemic; 1942: Wolfram Sievers, head of Germany’s Ancestral Heritage Society, requests skeletons of 150 Jews. SS chief Heinrich Himmler approves a plan to establish a collection of Jewish skeletons and skulls at the Strasbourg Anatomical Institute in France, near the Natzweiler-Struthof concentration camp; The Nazis shipped the Jews of Rujenoy were shipped to Treblinka. Among them was the family of Yitzhak Shamir, who according to the future Prime Minister of Israel, were not able to leave for Palestine when that opportunity was still a possibility because they could not afford the £1,000 fee demanded by the British
1943 — (4th of Cheshvan, 5704) Нolocaust. ….. Nazis liquidated Riga ghetto sending the remaining 1,000 Jews from the Riga Ghetto to Birkenau; The Germans commenced operation «Harvest Festival» — the destruction of the survivors of the Warsaw ghetto uprising who were held captive since April. Within a few days 50,000 Jews would be shot in ditches at Majdanek. At Trawniki, all the Jews were machine-gunned down. Of the 500,000 Warsaw Jews driven away from the ghetto and placed in camps between July 1942 and May 1943 only about three hundred survived; In Genoa, “the hunt for Jews began…when two German police agents entered the office of the Jewish community and forced the custodians, Linda and Bino Polacco, to turn over membership lists and summon members to a meeting at the synagogue the following morning
1945 — (26nd of Cheshvan, 5706) Anti-Jewish riots broke out in Egypt
1948 — (30nd of Tishri, 5709) On the anniversary of the Balfour Declaration, the Israeli military cancelled the blackout in West Jerusalem. The city blazed with lights and its citizens crowded the streets and cafes to taste the future they had fought for.
1949 — (10nd of Cheshvan, 5710) Weizmann Institute of Science was dedicated in Rehovot
1955 — (17nd of Cheshvan, 5716) A force of paratroops from the 890th Battalion augmented by a Nahal company attacked the Egyptian emplacements at Sachba while units from the Golani Brigade’s 12th Battalion attacked Egyptian emplacements at Ras-Siram this evening in the start of Operation Volcano
1956 — (28nd of Cheshvan, 5717) Sinai Campaign. ….. Israel captured Gaza, Sheham and El Arish (the Egyptian capital of the northern Sinai) during the war with Egypt; Much to everybody’s surprise Israeli tanks came to within ten miles of the Suez Canal. The IDF captured sixty armored cars and forty modern tanks from the retreating Egyptians. These weapons were part of the large mass of modern weapons that the Soviets had supplied Nasser in exchange for Arab support and much of the future Egyptian cotton crop. The weapons were much better than anything the IDF had and would be incorporated into the arsenal of the Israeli military forces; During the Sinai Campaign, the specter of a wider war opened when the Syrian embassy in Washington informed the United States government that Syria had ‘decided to implement immediately’ the joint Egyptian-Syrian defense pact; U.N. Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjöld informed Israel that the General Assembly had passed a cease fire resolution
1988 — (22nd of Cheshvan, 5749) Yitzchak Shamir led Likud to victory in the Israeli election
2006 — (11nd of Cheshvan, 5767) Following a call by Baruch Marzel, Itamar Ben-Gvir and Hillel Weiss for a holy war against the upcoming Jerusalem Gay Pride Parade, a demonstration today in Meah Shearim led to rioting with “thousands of protestors blocking roads with burning garbage cans
People
1840 — (6nd of Cheshvan, 5601) Birthdate of Mark Antokolski, the Wilno native who gained famed as a sculptor. Among his early works were «Jewish Tailor», «Nathan The Wise», «Inquisition’s Attack against Jews» and “The Talmudic Debate»
1898 — (17nd of Cheshvan, 5659) William II. of Germany receives a Zionist deputation headed by Dr. Theodor Herzl, at Jerusalem
1921 — (1st of Cheshvan, 5682) Rabbi Zalman was among four Jews murdered when Arabs rioted in Jerusalem on the fourth anniversary of the Balfour Declaration injured an addition 20 people
2000 — (6th of Cheshvan, 5761) Ayelet Shahar Levy, 28, and Hanan Levy, 33, were killed and ten others were injured in a car bomb explosion near the Mahane Yehuda market in Jerusalem for which The Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility
2001 — (16th of Cheshvan, 5762) Shoshana Ben Ishai, 16, of Betar Illit and Menashe (Meni) Regev, 14, of Jerusalem were killed when a Palestinian terrorist opened fire with a sub-machine gun shortly before 16:00 at a No. 25 Egged bus at the French Hill junction in northern Jerusalem. 45 people were injured in the attack