During the Paris Peace Conference, one of the major initiatives undertaken by the Allies is recognition of minority rights in European states. While addressing the rights of minorities in general, the Polish Treaty specifically mentions Jewish cultural and civil liberties.
A Muslim pilgrimage festival erupts into violence against Jews in Jerusalem, leaving nine dead and hundreds wounded.
Yosef Haim Brenner, a pioneer of Modern Hebrew Literature, is murdered by an Arab gang during the 1921 Jaffa Riots.
Unable to immigrate to the US, many European Jews immigrate to the land of Israel. Between 1924 and 1929, the period known as the Fourth Aliyah, 82,000 Jews arrive in Palestine.
November 23, 1926 Rafi Eitan, whose intelligence career ranges from the high of capturing Adolf Eichmann in Argentina to the low of handling U.S. Navy analyst Jonathan Pollard as a spy, is born on a…
The same day that Adolf Hitler is appointed Chancellor of Germany by President Paul Von Hindenburg, Recha Freier establishes the Committee for the Assistance of Jewish Youth.
As part of the Zionist strategy to engage the British government in political negotiations, Chaim Weizmann airs his grievances against the British government for reversing their pro-Zionist policy.
Fueled in part by the brief rule of a pro-Nazi party after a coup, Baghdad erupts in anti-Jewish violence known as the Farhud.
Nazis draw up a plan for the “Final Solution” of European Jewry in the Berlin suburb of Wannsee.
After being mistaken as an enemy ship, the SS Struma, carrying nearly 800 Jewish refugees hoping to immigrate into Palestine, including 70 children, is sunk by a Russian submarine in the Black Sea.
In his final communication, ZOB commander Mordechai Anielewicz outlines the success of the revolt even in the face of almost certain defeat.
A joint communiqué is issued, and it is clear that no widespread action to rescue Jews will be forthcoming. This bolsters the Zionist argument for a Jewish homeland.
In a letter written to Leon Kubowitzki, head of the Rescue Department of the World Jewish Congress, US Assistant Secretary of War John J. McCloy states that the War Department would not order the bombing of Nazi Death Camps because they did not see it as a priority for US military resources.
Hannah Senesh (Szenes), the poet and Haganah fighter who parachuted into Nazi-occupied Europe to rescue Jews, is executed by Hungarian firing squad in a Budapest prison courtyard.
April 15, 1945 The British 11th Armored Division liberates the Nazis’ Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in northern Germany, discovering 60,000 starving prisoners, most of them seriously ill, and 13,000 unburied corpses. They are the remnants of…
May 5, 1959 Some 2,500 people, including Israeli Interior Minister Israel Bar-Yehuda and Polish Ambassador Antoni Bida, gather at Kibbutz Lohamei HaGetaot in the western Galilee for a commemoration of the first Yom HaShoah (Holocaust…
The trial of Adolf Eichmann, architect of the Nazi Final Solution, begins in front of a special panel of three judges at the Beit Ha’am community center in Jerusalem.
Moshe Hess, a 19th century Zionist, is reburied in the Kibbutz Kinneret cemetery beside other fathers of socialist Zionism.
Former Egyptian Olympic fencer and leader of the Cairo Jewish community, Salvator Cicurel passes away.
The United Nations passes UN Resolution 3379, which defines Zionism as a form of racism and racial discrimination. It passes with a vote of 72 in favor, 35 against, and 32 abstentions.
At Ben-Gurion Airport, five recently released Soviet Jewish prisoners are welcomed by Prime Minister Menachem Begin and cheering crowds. The five had been convicted in a 1970 hijacking plot, attempting to escape the anti-Semitic policies of the Soviet Union at the time.
Chez Jo Goldberg, a Jewish deli in Paris, is attacked by two terrorists wielding grenades and machine guns. Six people are killed and twenty-two injured. The attack is believed to have been planned and carried out by the Abu Nidal Organization, an international Palestinian terrorist group.
Members of the Palestinian Liberation Front hijack the cruise ship Achille Lauro off the coast of Egypt. The ship had departed from Genoa, Italy on October 3rd with 748 passengers on board for an 11-day cruise with planned stops in Naples, Alexandria, Port Said, and Ashdod, Israel.
World-famous Soviet refusenik Anatoly Shcharansky is released after eight years in a Siberian labor camp and flies to his new life as Natan Sharansky in Israel.
