April 23, 2010
100 Years Ago in the Forward
Brooklyn’s district attorney has interviewed more than 20 Jewish businessmen who were fleeced by a gang of Jewish horse poisoners. The poisoners were rumored to have bilked more than $30,000 out of dozens of businessmen in Brooklyn and on Manhattan’s Lower East Side. Currently, three of the horse poisoners have been arrested. At least a dozen more arrests are anticipated. Exacerbating matters, associates of the gang have been threatening potential witnesses with violence if they testify against their friends. The poisoners were caught when they pressed Israel Goldberg, owner of the Star Ice Cream Co., to pay them off in exchange for not harming his horses. Goldberg contacted the police, and they provided him with marked bills, with which he paid the gang. After the transaction took place, police moved in and arrested three Brownsville residents: George Furst, Joseph Tablinsk and Hyman Gelman.
75 Years Ago in the Forward
One Jew, Shimshon Teichman, was badly injured in a pogrom in the town of Riki, not far from Warsaw, Poland. After the newspaper run by the antisemitic, nationalist political party the Endecja printed stories about how Jews killed Jesus, hooligans ran wild in the city’s streets, attacking Jewish passersby and smashing the windows of Jewish-owned stores. Also, in Kharkov, Upper Silesia, hooligans smeared antisemitic phrases on the windows of Jewish-owned stores, calling for a boycott of those businesses. The front of the Jewish Community Council building was also defaced and had anti-Jewish posters pasted on it. Taking advantage of the Easter holiday, these antisemites are exploiting traditional attitudes and putting them into action.
50 Years Ago in the Forward
The government of Iraq has taken the first steps toward creating an army of Palestinian Arabs that would fight Israel and liberate Palestine. Some 48 Palestinians volunteered for the four-month course, which will provide them with officer training. The creation of such an army has long been discussed in the Arab world, but until now it has never come to fruition. Iraqi President Hisham Kassem said that his country will give moral and material support for the creation of a Palestinian army. The majority of volunteers are students, most of them refugees, although a few recent inductees have come from Jerusalem and Gaza.
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