Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Culture

February 18, 2011

100 Years Ago in the Forward

The bodies of two girls were found in a tenement on Manhattan’s Lower East Side. Both had been asphyxiated by gas. It is unknown how this tragedy transpired. The girls, 16-year-old cousins Clara and Toyve Gershovitch, shared a room in a boarding house. They had apparently gone to a friend’s house for Friday night dinner and returned at 11p.m. In the morning, the landlord noticed that the girls hadn’t gone to work, so he knocked on the door. After not getting a response, he opened the door to find both girls lying dead in their beds. Recent immigrants from Podolsk, Russia, they had been in the country for two months.


75 Years Ago in the Forward

In the wake of the assassination of Swiss Nazi leader Wilhelm Gustloff by a Jewish student, the Swiss government has banned the Nazi Party and all related organizations in Switzerland. The move was well received by both the Swiss press and public, as the Nazis and the Italian fascists have provoked much trouble there over the past few years. In Germany, the reaction to the assassination was harsh, with Hitler threatening to punish the entire Jewish community. As a result, panicked German Jews have flooded the immigration offices, doing whatever they can to get out of Germany.


50 Years Ago in the Forward

Jewish organizations based in Algiers, Algeria, are formulating plans to help poor Jews immigrate to countries other than Israel. The political and social status of Algerian Jews is currently quite shaky, and since the burning down of one of Algiers’s largest synagogues in January, the situation has worsened. Among the countries being discussed as possible locales for immigration are Canada, Australia and a number of Latin American countries.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.