Looking Back: June 8, 2012

100 Years Ago in the Forward

A Bronx courtroom exploded when Netty Pavlovitch jumped over the barrier and attacked the defendant in the case, 58 year-old Joseph Capischi, who is on trial for seducing a 14 year-old Jewish girl: Pavlovitch’s daughter, Stella. Pavlovitch had to be restrained by a number of police officers, who barely managed to wrest the defendant from her grip. She was removed from the courtroom as her daughter took the stand to describe how Capischi brought her to a brothel on 110th Street. She tried to escape, she said, but Capischi held her against her will. Upon hearing the testimony, Pavlovitch couldn’t help but attack the man who stole her daughter.

75 Years Ago in the Forward

Despite attempts by the U.S. State Department to save him, the Nazi German government has executed 21-year-old American citizen Helmut Hirsch by guillotine. Hirsch was arrested in Stuttgart by German police last December. It was claimed that he was found to be in possession of explosives that he planned to use against state buildings in order to destabilize the government. Hirsch, who was born in Germany to parents with American citizenship, allegedly also had plans to assassinate Adolf Hitler. Evidence as to his crimes, however, was not forthcoming. Reports in the German press indicate that the hangman performed his duties while wearing a top hat and white gloves.

50 Years Ago in the Forward

A West German newspaper has reported that the offices of Di Yidishe Tsaytung, one of Buenos Aires Yiddish newspapers, were raked with machine gun fire, leaving many bullet holes in the metal shutters that covered the front of the building. Thanks to the fact that the attack occurred in the middle of the night, no one was injured. The building that houses the paper is always guarded by a police officer, and when three city workers that were nearby heard the shots, they dived to the ground. The vandals also shot up a nearby Jewish-owned clothing store. In Bahia Blanca, vandals smeared a statue of Baron de Hirsch with tar and damaged a number of cars belonging to Jews. It is suspected that these acts are in retaliation for the recent execution of Adolf Eichmann.

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