August 13, 2010

100 Years Ago in the Forward

There have been strange goings-on in the large tenement house at 161 Monroe Street, on Manhattan’s Lower East Side. Fourth-floor resident Yetta Grossenberg told police that she was getting ready to leave her apartment, when suddenly she heard wild screaming coming from down the hallway, followed by gunshots. As neighbors ran to the scene to find out what happened, they found a woman lying in a pool of blood. A man, a certain Rabinovitch, also was wounded. Both were taken to the hospital. The police believe that Rabinovitch had asked the unnamed girl to marry him and was rebuffed, so he shot her and then tried to kill himself. Rabinovitch claims that thieves who had come to burglarize the couple had fired the shots. In fact, just a few weeks ago, an apartment in the same building was burglarized, to the tune of $60 and a pile of jewelry.

75 Years Ago in the Forward

There is a hotel in Midtown Manhattan that attracts large numbers of German tourists, many of them Nazis. The hotel also houses a number of Jewish guests, who are not happy about having to stay in the same establishment as the Nazis. They complained to the management, but were told that nothing could be done. One of the Jewish guests managed to get ahold of a list of room numbers of Nazi Germany’s latest arrivals to the hotel, 186 guests in all. He bought the same number of newspapers and slid a newspaper under each door at 5:30 a.m. He then pounded on the doors and yelled, in German: “Your morning paper has arrived.” The Jewish guest disappeared as the Nazi guests woke up and opened their doors, to find copies of the Forverts on their doorsteps.

50 Years Ago in the Forward

The 63rd national convention of the Jewish War Veterans of the United States of America met recently in Miami. Among the matters discussed was the possibility of supporting a return boycott of the products of the countries belonging to the Arab League. Leaders of the Jewish War Veterans also handed out a list of American companies that, under pressure from the Arab League, have refused to do business with Israeli companies. The leaders recommended that both Republican and Democratic candidates be made aware of this issue and attempt to do something about it.

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