September 17, 2010

100 Years Ago in the Forward

A tragedy occurred when a car hit 43-year-old Samuel Cohen on the corner of Delancey and Suffolk streets on Manhattan’s Lower East Side. Brought to the hospital, Cohen later died from his injuries. The police dispatched an officer to inform Cohen’s family, who lives at 49 Avenue D, of the death. The problem was that the police officer accidentally went to 49 Avenue B, where he found another Cohen family and told them that their patriarch had been run over and killed. Terribly upset, the family went to the hospital immediately to retrieve their deceased patriarch. On the way, however, they ran into Morris Cohen, who was remarkably alive and healthy. They informed the police, who eventually managed to inform the correct Cohens of their tragedy.

75 Years Ago in the Forward

To thunderous applause at a rally in Nuremburg, Germany, Adolf Hitler announced the creation of a set of new anti-Semitic laws that apply to German Jews. The laws are as follows: 1) A German citizen can have only German blood; 2) Only citizens can enjoy full political rights; 3) Marriage between Germans and Jews is prohibited; 4) Intimate relations between Jews and Germans are prohibited; 5) Jews may not employ German housekeepers under the age of 45; 6) Jews are not permitted to use the swastika flag (now the official flag of Germany); 7) Jews are permitted to use Jewish colors. These new laws essentially deny citizenship to the Jews of Germany.

50 Years Ago in the Forward

Sheindel Feil, 50, came to New York from Pittsburgh in an attempt to meet with Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev. Feil, who came to the United States as a refugee from Poland in 1951, is seeking the Soviet leader’s help in finding her son, Moniek, whom she last saw in a children’s home in Uzbekistan during the war. Feil has written dozens of letters to Soviet officials, but she has not been able to find out what happened to her son, whom she and her husband sent to the children’s home because both of them were suffering from malaria and could not care for him. She is hoping to approach Khrushchev directly regarding this matter.

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