Looking Back: February 10, 2012
100 Years Ago in the Forward
A resident of Manhattan’s Lower East Side, Freda Levinson, 19, decided to get revenge on her ex-boyfriend, William Kaufman, also from the Lower East Side, after, she claimed, he reneged on a promise to marry her. After hearing the bad news, Levinson bought a bottle of carbolic acid and waited behind the stoop of Kaufman’s tenement. When Kaufman came home and started to walk up the steps, Levinson leaped out and sprayed him with the acid, yelling, “Take what you deserve!” Levinson and Kaufman both wound up in the hospital with terrible burns on their faces. Kaufman lost one of his eyes, and Levinson is expected to be permanently blind. Kaufman and his family admit that he and Levinson used to go out, but they say there were never any plans for a wedding. In addition, the two are cousins.
75 Years Ago in the Forward
A statement released by OZE, the Russian Jewish Health Organization, reveals that Jewish children in Eastern Europe are currently living under extremely difficult conditions. Many, the report says, are simply starving. According to TOZ, a Jewish health organization based in Vilna, Jewish children are dying of hunger. In Poland, where conditions appear to be the worst, 31,000 Jewish children are fed daily by OZE, and this is typically their only meal of the day. Conditions are also bad in Latvia and Romania, where 6,000 Jewish children rely on OZE for their one daily meal. Relief organizations in all these countries have been flooded for requests for basic items, like clothing and shoes.
50 Years Ago in the Forward
Soviet Vice Premier Lazar Kaganovitch has been shot and grievously wounded under mysterious circumstances. He is currently in a Moscow hospital in critical condition and is not expected to survive. Kaganovitch, 64, was the last remaining Jew to hold a high-level Soviet post. He was also a hardcore Stalinist, and was in a bitter battle with sworn enemies Soviet Premier Nikolai Bulganin and Communist Party General Secretary Nikita Khrushchev. As noted, the circumstances surrounding the shooting of Kaganovitch are mysterious and the attack is being considered an assassination attempt.
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