History events
1939 — (23th of Tishrei, 5700) In an address to the Reichstag, Hitler offers peace to England and France, but only if Germany’s former colonies are returned, Germany is allowed to join world trade, and Britain and France allow Germany to solve the «Jewish problem.»
1944 — (19th of Tishrei, 5705) Нolocaust. ….. During Sukkoth Chol Hamoed, a two day uprising begins at Auschwitz. Sonderkommando Jews from Poland, Hungary, and Greece, who are forced to transport gassed corpses to crematoria at Auschwitz, attack SS guards with hammers, stones, picks, crowbars, and axes. They also blow up one of the four crematoria with explosives smuggled into the camp from a nearby munitions factory. Russian POWs throw an SS man alive into a crematorium furnace. The SS fights back with machine guns, hand grenades, and dogs. 250 Jews are shot outside the camp wire. An additional 12 who escape will later be found and executed
1946 — (11th of Tishrei, 5707) Eleven kibbutz settlements were established in a single night: Urim, Beeri Kedma, Nirim, Neavtim, Hatzerim, Mishmar Ha Negev, Kfar Darom, Tkuma (moshav), Gal-On, Shoval
1973 — (10th of Tishrei, 5734) Yom Kippur War. ….. Normal life grinds to a halt in Israel on Yom Kippur which also happens to fall on Shabbat. At four o’clock in the morning, Israeli intelligence had hard proof that war would break out before sundown on October 6. The information had come from the head of Mossad. Moshe Dyan, the Defense Minister, refused the request of the IFD Chief of Staff General Elazar to mobilize and launch a pre-emptive strike against Syria. The Nixon Administration had warned the Israelis not to strike first or to take any action which the Arabs could claim was provocative. Elazar appealed to Prime Minister Golda Meir. Meir strikes a compromise. She will allow a mobilization, but it is only to be partial one. Prime Minister Golda Meir convened an emergency meeting in Tel Aviv with senior defense officials at 8:05 this morning. Six hours before the outbreak of the war, Israeli preparations for a general offensive by Arab armies finally began. The warnings of the intelligence source were being taken seriously, as was the fact that the Russians were pulling families out of Egypt and Syria, a sign of approaching war. But U.S. intelligence was not predicting war. Minister Yisrael Galili said a source had suggested the war could be prevented by leaking information that would reach the Egyptians and Syrians, so they would knew their plans for attack had been discovered
1973 — (10th of Tishrei, 5734) Yom Kippur War. ….. War erupted in the Middle East as Egypt and Syria attacked Israel during the Yom Kippur holiday. The two Arab states attacked with hundreds of planes and more than a thousand tanks. By the end of the day, the Egyptians have established three bridgeheads across the Suez, Syrian artillery is shelling Israeli settlements and Israelis were being told to black out their windows in case of an air raid. By the end of the day 200,000 Israeli soldiers, most of whom were mobilizing reservists faced 300,000 Syrians and 850,000 Egyptians
1973 — (10th of Tishrei, 5734) Yom Kippur War. ….. For action today simply described as delaying enemy armor, Captain Zvika Greengold earned Israel’s Medal of Valor. The events that earned him Israel’s highest commendation are as follows. Twenty-one-year-old Lieutenant Greengold was home on leave when Egypt and Syria launched a coordinated surprise attack on two fronts. He was not attached to any unit as he was about to take a course for company commanders. Once he realized war had broken out, he hitchhiked to Nafekh, a command center and important crossroads in the Golan Heights, where he initially helped with the wounded, as no tanks were available. When two damaged Centurion tanks were repaired, Greengold was put in charge of them and sent with hastily-assembled scratch crews down the Tapline Road. Greengold’s «Koah Zvika» (Zvika Force) spotted Syrian tanks belonging to the 51st Independent Tank Brigade of the Syrian Army which had broken through the line and were advancing unopposed northwest along the road to Nafekh. Greengold’s two tanks engaged the opposing T-55s at 2100 hours, with Greengold destroying six. Later, he had lost contact with his other tank when he spotted the advancing 452nd Tank Battalion. He engaged the enemy, taking advantage of the darkness and moving constantly to fool the Syrians into thinking the opposition was stronger than it was. Greengold destroyed or damaged ten enemy armored vehicles before the confused Syrians withdrew, believing they were facing a sizable force. Even Greengold’s superiors were deceived; as the fighting wore on, he did not dare report how weak he actually was over the radio for fear it would be intercepted; at best he could only hint «the situation isn’t good». At a time when Force Zvika was only one tank, Colonel Yitzhak Ben-Shoham, the brigade commander, assumed it to be «of at least company strength». For the next 20 hours, he fought, sometimes alone, sometimes in conjunction with other tanks, displaying an uncanny knack for showing up again and again at the critical moment to tip the scales of a skirmish. He had to change vehicles «half a dozen times» as his tanks were knocked out. He soldiered on, even after he was wounded and burned. When Nafekh itself came under attack from a fresh force of T-62s, he rushed over to bolster the defense. In a lull in the fighting, an exhausted Greengold got out of his latest tank and dropped to the ground, murmuring, «I can’t anymore.» Afterward, he claimed 20 enemy tanks destroyed; other estimates place his tally at 40 or more
1973 — (10th of Tishrei, 5734) Yom Kippur War. ….. On the first night of the Yom Kippur War five boats led by flotilla commander Michael Barkai sailed north to engage in the first-ever missile battle at sea off the main Syrian port of Latakia. The feisty Barkai told his captains that their objective was to draw the Syrian missile boats out of harbor. «If they don’t come out, I mean to sail in and get them with guns.» Two Syrian picket boats were encountered well off the Syrian coast. The first, a torpedo boat, was sunk with gunfire. The second, a minesweeper, was hit with missiles, the Gabriel’s first blood. Three Syrian missile boats already at sea turned to meet the intruders. With their 25-kilometer advantage, the Syrians got in the first salvo. The Israeli boats raised their electronic umbrella and charged. In naval headquarters, officers monitoring Barkai’s radio net heard him report the Syrian launch. His voice was level but taut. Herut Tzemah braced. The lives of 200 men as well as the fate of the missile boat program hung now on whether he had assessed the Styx’s parameters correctly. The radio remained silent for the two minutes it took for the Syrian missiles to complete their flight. Then Barkai’s voice. «They missed.» The three Syrian boats ran for harbor, but one, the only one with missiles remaining, turned on the closest Israeli pursuer. As the two boats raced at each other, the Syrian fired first. The Israeli vessel again put up its electronic and chaff umbrella and at maximum Gabriel range launched two missiles. The Styx and Gabriel missiles passed each other, the former hitting the sea, the latter exploding on the deck of the Syrian vessel. A second Syrian boat was sunk a few moments later. The Soviet-built vessels had no countermeasures and were doomed once the Israelis reached Gabriel range. The captain of the third Syrian boat, realizing the situation, ran his vessel onto the shore to escape
1973 — (10th of Tishrei, 5734) Yom Kippur War. Shmuel Gonen who had “inherited the IDF Southern Command from Arik Sharon” on July 15, faced an Egyptian force of five infantry divisions, three mechanized divisions and two armored divisions that included 1,400 tanks with one division at the front that included 294 tanks.
1973 — (10th of Tishrei, 5734) Yom Kippur War. The 162nd Division under the command of Major General Avraham Adan began the first three days of desperate attempts to drive the Egyptians back across the Suez Canal.
People
1787 — (24th of Tishrei, 5548) Abraham Firkovich, Karaite scholar, born
1884 — (17th of Tishrei, 5645) Birthdate of Felix Weltsch, a German-speaking Jewish librarian, philosopher, author, editor, publisher and journalist who was a close friend of Max Brod and Franz Kafka, he was one of the most important Zionists in Bohemia
1953 — (27th of Tishrei, 5714) Doctor Rahel Hirsch the German born doctor ….. who became the first woman in the Kingdom of Prussia to be appointed as a professor in medicine passed away. Born in 1870 in Frankfurt am Main, she was one of eleven children of Mendel Hirsch, the director of the girls’ school of the Jewish religious community in Frankfurt am Main. From 1885 to 1889, she took a degree in education in Wiesbaden. She then worked until 1898 as a teacher. After her doctorate she was assistant to Friedrich Kraus at Charité. Since she was Jewish, the takeover by the Nazis meant she could not practice medicine. In October of 1938 she moved to London, where one of her sisters lived. Since her degree was not recognized by the British, she worked as a laboratory assistant and later as a translator. The last years she spent plagued by depression, delusions and persecutory fears
2003 — (10th of Tishrei, 5764) Aviel Barclay has become the first certified Soferet, or female Torah scribe
2013 — (3rd of Cheshvan, 5774) Ninety three year old Rabbi Ovad Yosef, the spiritual leader of the Sephardi community passed away today