Jan 2, 2009
100 Years Ago in the Forward
Ida Weiner, a 22-year-old bookkeeper, was shot to death by 26-year-old egg seller Izzy Cohen at the train station in Elizabeth, N.J. Cohen had won Weiner’s heart by showering her with presents, though the woman’s parents considered him “not too bright.” Weiner had regrets and broke up with Cohen, plunging him into a state of depression. He began to stalk Weiner, who worked at Bamberger’s in Newark, spending hours waiting for her at the train station. After shooting Weiner, Cohen turned the gun on himself. He was still alive after shooting a bullet into his head, so he ran to the train tracks and laid down on them just before a train came by. The train lopped off Cohen’s legs and flung his body into a ditch. Amazingly, Cohen was still alive. A group of men who had come running after hearing the gunshots brought him to the hospital, where he died about an hour later.
75 Years Ago in the forward
Polish politician Vladislav Studnicki has come up with a “brilliant” plan to deal with the “Jewish problem” in Poland. This plan would be for Poland to take over administration of the Palestine Mandate from Great Britain, transfer all of the Arabs currently living there to a nearby country and have all the Jews of Poland move in. Jews would remain Polish citizens, and young Jewish men would be able to serve in the Polish military Ρ in the Land of Israel. While Studnicki is touting his plan as a solution to the Jewish problem in Poland, neither the Jews of Poland nor the British Ρ not to mention the Arabs Ρ have formulated a response to his idea.
50 Years Ago in the forward
A bomb was discovered in a Palm Beach, Fla., synagogue after local journalist Harold Flag received a phone call warning of it. “Listen and listen good,” the caller said to Flag. “I just put four sticks of TNT in the Jewish synagogue on North Flagler Street. It’s set to blow in 11 minutes. This is not a fake. I swear.” The line then went dead. Flag immediately called the police, who waited at least 11 minutes before going in. When they entered, they found a shoebox on which was written the letters KKK, the initials of the Ku Klux Klan. Inside the box was an incendiary device attached with wires to a clock. The police said the box looked completely harmless but was actually quite dangerous, so it was a good thing that no one had touched it. They cut the wires leading to the bomb and sent it to FBI laboratories in Washington, D.C.
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