Cutie Cantor: Believed to be the youngest cantor in the world, 12 year old Kalmele Weitz arrived in New York City in July, 1928 from Posen, Germany. He had already been singing half his life. Image by P&A Photos/ Forward Association

1914 • 100 years ago

Forverts Calls For Demonstration

More than 10,000 demonstrators showed up to protest the tyranny of capitalism that is responsible for a blood-drenched war. They were prodded, in part, by an editorial in the Forverts requesting the presence of all socialists to attend a protest meeting in New York City’s Union Square: “In Europe, the governments are demanding that citizens fulfill their patriotic ‘duties.’ In New York, the Socialist Party is calling all members, friends and sympathizers to exercise their socialist duties.” Speakers appeared from every country in Europe, all demanding a cessation to the current hostilities in whatever their language was. Our comrade, Jacob Pankin, was one of the first to speak, and he did so to a rousing ovation. Max Goldfarb and others also spoke in Yiddish and received strong responses from the massive crowd.

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1939 • 75 years ago

Arab Villager a Kibbutz Hero

An Arab villager is now a hero to the northern Negev kibbutz settlement of Kfar Menahem for warning the residents there of mines that terrorists placed in their fields. The kibbutz, which was recently re-established after having been abandoned because of Arab attacks, was named for the Zionist leader and current president of Jewish National Fund, Menahem Ussishkin. After the Arab villager saw the mines being planted, he informed Jewish residents of the kibbutz; the residents, in turn, alerted military authorities. One of the British soldiers who was attempting to defuse a mine was wounded in the process. In a related incident, truck driver Tsvi Fridman was seriously wounded after driving over a mine that had been planted on the road between Kfar Hasidim and Sadeh Ya’akov.

1964 • 50 years ago

Nazi Criminal Turns Himself In

A Nazi war criminal, Hans-Walter Zech-Nenntwich, has turned himself in to West German police after escaping from a German prison. At the prison, he had been serving a four-year sentence for his participation in the destruction of the Jews of Pinsk. Zech-Nenntwich who escaped with the help of prison guards, was bundled into an airplane with his lover and secretly flown to Egypt, a major destination for escaped Nazis. He allegedly moved to a variety of countries in Africa before returning to Germany. In an interview he gave in Cairo, Zech Nenntwich said that the Organization of Former Nazi Officers had arranged his escape, although the German government said that it is not certain such an organization actually exists.

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