September 17, 2004
100 YEARS AGO
• Rosa Rosenthal, whose husband managed to disappear after she gave birth, can’t find a job that will allow her to take her newborn with her. With no job, Rosenthal has no money to feed either herself or her baby. Not knowing what else to do, she took out an advertisement to sell her five-week-old girl for $200. Unfortunately for Rosenthal, there isn’t a big market for babies and there was little interest. One man came to take a look, but said that $200 was too much for the baby, especially since it was a girl. If had been a boy, perhaps he would have made an offer.
75 YEARS AGO
• Haj Amin al-Husseini, grand mufti of Jerusalem, took responsibility for fomenting the recent Arab attacks on the Jews of Palestine, admitting they were not spontaneous riots but planned in advance. Al-Husseini is no stranger to the Jews of Palestine: He was a standout during the anti-Jewish riots of 1920-21 and was sentenced by the British to 15 years in prison for murder. In order to mollify the fiercest anti-Zionist Arabs, he was freed by the British High Commissioner and appointed grand mufti, even though there were more popular candidates.
• Louis Marshall, Jewish activist and philanthropist, died this week at the age of 73. He died in Zurich, Switzerland, where he had been for a meeting of the Jewish Agency. Marshall was one of the most prominent attorneys in the United States. A life-long fighter for Jewish rights, he was one of the founders of the American Jewish Committee, as well as its president. As an attorney, he battled anti-immigration laws and helped to settle the great cloak-makers strike in 1910, which served as an example of later strike settlements. Marshall, who could speak Hebrew and Yiddish, also was a political adviser and attempted to convince the American government to break relations with Russia following the Kishinev pogrom.
50 YEARS AGO
• Egyptian President Nasser argued this week that Israel must give up the Negev Desert because the Jewish state’s occupation of it has physically separated Egypt from the rest of the Arab world. We believe that Egypt and the other Arab countries must have this land, he said, adding that the Arabs will not wait long to find a solution to this problem. However, he hoped that world opinion eventually would force Israel to give up the land. He said that Israel’s occupation of the Negev was a violation of United Nations resolutions vis-à-vis the negotiated truce between the two countries.
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