Bird’s Eye View: Built by the Zeppelin company, the USS Los Angeles was an airship given as World War I reparation to the United States by Germany. The Allies permitted the U.S. to have the airship for commercial and experimental uses only. Seen here in 1930 flight over Lower Manhattan. Image by Forward Association

1914 • 100 years ago

Man Using Immigrant Women

For many years, one of the well-known figures on Manhattan’s Lower East Side was a ship ticket salesman named Max Wax. If one needed to purchase a ticket from Europe to America, Wax was the go-to man. But Wax appears to be in big trouble after it was discovered that he had been escorting a number of attractive young females who were traveling alone from Ellis Island, claiming that they were his “cousins.” Miss Greenstein, a representative of the Council of Jewish Women who had long heard of Wax’s activities with female immigrants, exposed this fact. The girl in question was one who had previously been deported back to Europe because of an eye problem but had returned to New York and was allowed to remain, thanks to Wax. But the council discovered that Wax had threatened that the woman must live with him or something awful would happen to her. Official complaints against Wax have now been lodged.

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1939 • 75 years ago

Four Ships Look For Home

A report has arrived from Beirut, Syria, that there are four ships wandering around the coastline of Palestine that, combined, contain more than 2,500 Jewish refugees and that are looking for a port to disembark. The British, as is now well known, have stopped permitting refugees from entering Palestine. A “lucky thing” happened to one of the ships when an epidemic of some sort broke out among the passengers: While some passengers died, the ship was permitted to dock in Beirut so that the sick passengers could receive medical attention. Another of the ships ran out of food and was permitted to dock briefly in Tripoli so that food could be purchased for the passengers. A third ship was refused entrance into the port of Beirut and was driven away. Only the captains of the first three ships reported that a fourth ship exists. Its exact location is unknown, but the ship was last seen traveling the Lebanese coast.

1964 • 50 years ago

Witness Takes Down Eichmann

Among the witnesses that appeared during the ongoing trial of the underlings working for Adolf Eichmann during the extermination of Hungarian Jewry was one woman who worked as a secretary for the Gestapo in Budapest. The witness claimed that Eichmann, the man who murdered millions of Jews on orders of the “Führer,” never achieved the honors he thought were owed him and, in fact, never ranked higher than a colonel. She added that it infuriated Eichmann that those working under him had equal or only slightly lesser ranks. She also said that her boss frequently attempted to get his underlings in trouble, claiming that they were alcoholics who drank at Jewish-owned bars. In her testimony, she added that Eichmann himself was often drunk.

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