November 26, 2010

100 Years Ago in the forward

Two Jewish businessmen, Morris Taub and Louis Brown, were sent up to Sing Sing Prison six months ago after they were convicted of cooking the books of their cotton goods company so that they could get more money out of their creditors. After being found guilty of perjury in the third degree, they were expected to serve anywhere from two-and-a-half to four years in the upstate New York prison. But things got interesting recently, after a court in the Appellate Division overturned the men’s conviction and they were both freed. It turned out that Taub and Brown had made honest mistakes in their ledger, and as a result they were able to leave Sing Sing on appeal.

75 Years Ago in the forward

In the wake of continuing attacks on Jewish students by gangs of nationalist Polish students at the University of Warsaw in Poland, the Jewish Labor Bund attempted to organize a large-scale protest. Only an hour before the protest was to begin, the Warsaw police informed activists that they were not permitting it in order to preserve public order. In an attempt to quell further unrest, the university’s rector met with the head of the Polish nationalist students, but no result was achieved. The nationalists have demanded that stipends for Jewish students be curtailed and that Jewish students be separated from Polish students and perform work in separate laboratories.

50 Years Ago in the forward

Israeli Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion predicted that by the year 2000, the Soviet Union would be a free and democratic country. He based this prediction on the fact that the USSR will have far too many university graduates in order to maintain a dictatorship. He made the prediction during a visit to the Union of Living Congregations, a Reform synagogue on Manhattan’s Fifth Avenue. Ben-Gurion also predicted that cancer would be cured by the year 2000 and that it might be possible for a Jew to become president of the United States.

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