July 17, 2009
100 Years Ago in the forward
Jumping up onto a tabletop in the mess hall of Ellis Island, one of the immigrants yelled out: “No one could eat breakfast today. The food they give us here isn’t fit for pigs. We are treated here like wild animals, kept in cages and given rotting food to eat.” The speaker, who recently had written a letter to the Forward regarding the poor conditions on Ellis Island, is one of those slated to be shipped back to Europe because he didn’t have the $25 now required to enter the United States. His speech made a deep impression on the rest of the immigrants, who decided to stop eating and start a hunger strike. The atmosphere frightened immigration officials, who must have thought that a revolution was in the works, so they sent guards into the mess hall with their revolvers drawn. Needless to say, this didn’t help the situation.
75 Years Ago in the forward
It is well known that Yorkville is the Manhattan neighborhood with the largest number of German immigrants. The Yorkville, the only movie theater in the neighborhood, caters to these immigrants. As a result, it is the only theater in the city that openly screens Nazi propaganda films as “art.” One would think that the owners of this theater would be German Nazi sympathizers, or even party members. But it turns out that one of the controlling partners is actually a Jew by the name of Joe Sheinman, who put up the money to buy the theater last year, exactly at the time when the press was full of stories about the terrible persecution Jews were suffering in Germany. The “Yidl of Yorkville,” as Sheinman is known, showed the first Nazi talkie in America — a film that every other movie theater in the United States rejected.
50 Years Ago in the forward
Although he recently made a special trip to Egypt, United Nations Secretary General Dag Hammarskjold received mixed messages from different members of Gamal Abdel Nasser’s government — some, on the one hand, saying that the illegal Suez blockade against Israel would be lifted, and those on the other, saying that the blockade would remain. Hammarskjold, who returned to Geneva, refused to discuss the issue in detail and said only that his trip to Cairo was “useful.” Forward analyst Leon Kristal concluded that this response meant that Hammarskjold returned from Cairo empty-handed. In the meantime, the Swedish ship Inge Toft, which was seized by the Egyptians after entering the canal loaded with Israeli goods bound for the Far East, still sits in Port Said, surrounded by Egyptian soldiers.
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning journalism this Passover.
In this age of misinformation, our work is needed like never before. We report on the news that matters most to American Jews, driven by truth, not ideology.
At a time when newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall. That means for the first time in our 126-year history, Forward journalism is free to everyone, everywhere. With an ongoing war, rising antisemitism, and a flood of disinformation that may affect the upcoming election, we believe that free and open access to Jewish journalism is imperative.
Readers like you make it all possible. Right now, we’re in the middle of our Passover Pledge Drive and we need 500 people to step up and make a gift to sustain our trustworthy, independent journalism.
Make a gift of any size and become a Forward member today. You’ll support our mission to tell the American Jewish story fully and fairly.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
Our Goal: 500 gifts during our Passover Pledge Drive!