July 23, 2010
100 Years Ago in the forward
Morris Drechsler owns a barbershop in Brooklyn and is a very busy man. Opening early and closing late, he felt bad that he didn’t see his wife and children very much, and as a result, he asked one of his workers, an immigrant by the name of Morris Kozovsky, to spend some time with them in his stead and take them to shows and to the park. The arrangement seemed to be working out fine until recently, when Mrs. Drechsler disappeared with Kozovsky, taking her 9-month-old baby and leaving the 2-year-old in the house. Terribly distraught and not knowing what to do, Drechsler went to Kozovsky’s room and found all manner of items belonging to his wife. Then a call came to his barbershop, telling him his wife had left him for good.
75 Years Ago in the forward
In a speech given in Berlin recently, one of Hitler’s top hooligans, Julius Streicher, announced that the Jews would eventually be driven out of Germany. Streicher made clear that he was explaining this issue in order to prepare average Germans to accept the fact that Jews would eventually be legally banned from living in Germany. This process has already begun: Five hundred Jewish children from the ages of 6 to 14 were kicked out of a summer camp, as it was decided that Jewish and German children should not mix. Also in Berlin, Jewish stores have been smeared with graffiti, including “This is a Jewish store,” and “Aryans don’t buy here.” Some Jews, however, aren’t putting up with this: When a group of young Nazis attacked a Jewish-owned ice cream store, the owner and his workers fought back, beating them badly.
50 Years Ago in the forward
When Israeli Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion formed the latest coalition government, no one could figure out why he left one Cabinet post — the ministry of Postal Services — empty. Some people suspected that he planned to keep it for himself. But the reality is that Mapai’s coalition comprised only 60 spots in a 120-seat Knesset. This meant he required one more Knesset member in order to get the majority he needed. So, to whom did socialist Ben-Gurion go in order to fill the spot? Straight to an ultra-Orthodox party, the Poalei Agudat Yisrael, and its leader, Binyamin Mintz, who is now probably the first ultra-Orthodox Jew serving as a Cabinet minister in a socialist government.
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