Looking Back: November 18, 2011
100 Years Ago in the Forward
• West Point military academy student Joseph Izrael has been expelled for “poor behavior.” Izrael, who was born in Birmingham, Ala., and is the son of a tailor who served in the Civil War, claims he is a victim of anti-Semitism. He has a means of support in Adenauer, an Alabama congressman who knows the young man and says he was an excellent student in high school. A spokesman for West Point said that Izrael is not a victim of anti-Semitism, that the school has a number of other Jewish students and two Jewish professors, and that the reasons for his expulsion are legitimate. Adenauer has called for an investigation by the War Department into the matter.
75 Years Ago in the Forward
• The choice of German liberal and pacifist Carl Von Ossietzky as the winner of the Nobel Peace Prize is being viewed as a slap in the face to Germany’s Nazi government, which held Ossiezki prisoner in a concentration camp for a number of years and is absolutely furious about the decision. A Nazi press attaché has called the decision an “unbelievable scandal and an insult to Germany.” Because the Nobel Prize committee votes together with Norway’s parliament on the winners of the prize, it is obvious that the socialist government’s choice has caused the Nazis to react in this manner. The decision has so upset the German government that there are rumors swirling about that the Nazis are planning to cut diplomatic relations with Norway.
50 Years Ago in the Forward
• The official Soviet news agency Tass has accused Israel of using the recent reports of the arrests of Jewish communal leaders in Moscow and Leningrad to spread false claims that a new, anti-Jewish campaign is occurring in the Soviet Union. Tass spokesman Igor Orlov also attacked America’s labor secretary, Arthur Goldberg, for concerning himself with the “suffering” of Soviet Jews when nothing is being done about the activities of the American Nazi Party. Tass also reported that a Leningrad Jew by the name of Krayzman had been sentenced to death for betraying the socialist state.
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