Looking Back: September 21, 2012
100 Years Ago
1912 Louis Budinsky, a resident of Manhattan’s Lower East Side, went straight to the police after having received a letter stating that if he didn’t come up with $100, all his horses would meet an ugly end. Budinsky then received a phone call from the horse poisoners, and he told them that he couldn’t afford $100 dollars. He negotiated the extortion rate to $30. The extortionists told him to meet them at a nearby restaurant with the cash. Budinsky showed up — with three marked $10 bills supplied by the police and two undercover detectives. During the meeting, the extortionists got cold feet and asked Budinsky to come with them to the West Side. As they were heading there, the detectives pounced on and arrested Zev Cohen and Sam Kuper for extortion.
75 Years Ago
1937 A number of anti-Semitic attacks occurred in Warsaw, Poland, coinciding with the start of Sukkot. Dozens of Jews were wounded and six were hospitalized in critical condition. The attacks began at night, as hooligans armed with iron bars attacked the synagogue on Gzhibovska Street, smashing its windows and attacking Jewish passersby. They also smashed windows of nearby Jewish-owned stores and homes. The attackers managed to disappear before the police arrived. Similar attacks occurred in a number of other towns in Poland. With such activities occurring frequently, it is also being reported that signifi cant numbers of Jews want to emigrate from Poland.
50 Years Ago
1962 It is being reported in Israel that plans are afoot for serious Middle East peace talks in Washington. President Kennedy is said to have plans to invite Israeli Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion and Egyptian strongman Gamal Abdel Nasser to the White House, although not at the same time. The meeting is meant to fulfi ll one of Kennedy’s campaign promises: to bring together the leaders of the Arabs and Israelis. A White House spokesman claimed to know nothing of the plan, and Israel’s delegate to the United Nations was also in the dark. Other sources in New York, however, claimed that the planned meeting is already a “fact.”
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