September 29, 2006
100 Years Ago in the Forward
Twenty-year-old Molly Schwartz of 209 E. 7th Street in New York City drank poison in her fiance’s Third Avenue jewelry store. Her future husband, Samuel Gilbert, said that Schwartz had come to see him at his workplace to complain that the two of them never would live a comfortable life together because he wasn’t wealthy enough for her. Shortly thereafter, Schwartz asked Gilbert to get her a glass of water, which he did. Upon his return, he found her lying lifelessly on the floor of the shop. He immediately took her to Harlem Hospital. She is in critical condition.
75 Years Ago in the Forward
The Central Organization of German Jews in Berlin has received a number of unsigned letters threatening attacks and torture to avenge the imprisonment of a group of Hitlerists after they attacked a number of Jews this past Rosh Hashanah. One of the letters threatened that synagogues would be destroyed; that Jews found on the Kurfurstendamm, Berlin’s main shopping district, would be doused with gasoline and burned alive, and that Jewish families would be kidnapped and held in basements until they die. The organization published an open letter to the German government, asking why they were doing nothing to prevent the activities of the Nazis. The letter also claimed that the followers of Hitler were simply waiting for an opportunity to bring on more attacks.
50 Years Ago in the Forward
After Jordanian soldiers murdered six Israeli civilians last week, groups of Israeli soldiers crossed the border into Jordan and attacked military positions there. Some 50 Jordanian troops were killed. How many Israeli soldiers participated is not known, since the attacks were not officially planned by the military and seem to have been spontaneous. The Israeli Cabinet called a special meeting to discuss the current problems along its borders with Jordan and Egypt, and the Israeli delegate to the United Nations is also meeting with Dag Hammarskjöld in connection to the issue.
