June 29, 1946 The British military launches Operation Agatha, a two-week series of raids and arrests of Jewish resistance fighters, on a day that comes to be known as Black Sabbath. Involving some 17,000 soldiers,…
A Land Transfer Committee report reveals that Arabs in Palestine willingly continued to sell land to Zionists in the early 1940s despite the British legal prohibition on doing so.
November 1, 1945 The newly formed Jewish Resistance Movement sets off explosions at more than 150 sites along the railway system of British Mandatory Palestine and blows up three British gunboats in the Jaffa and…
The Harrison Report, an inquiry into the conditions of displaced persons camps in occupied Germany, reveals that many of the rumors of poor treatment of Jews are indeed true and that “we appear to be treating the Jews as the Nazis treated them, except that we do not exterminate them.”
Eliyahu Golomb, prominent leader of the Jewish defense effort in Palestine, passed away at the age of 52.
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…
Rattled by numerous attempts on his life, and fearing for the safety of his family, MacMichael steps down in August 1944.
Berl Katznelson, a leader in the Labor Zionist movement, dies suddenly at the age of 57 in Jerusalem. His advocacy for the creation of a labor-based society in Israel would eventually form the basis of the Mapai party, which was created in 1930 and would dominate Israeli politics until the late 1970′s.
At the 1944 Republican Party National Convention, New York Senator Thomas Dewey’s strong support for the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine captures the attention of Zionists in Palestine and, more notably, American Jewry.
Some 156,000 Allied troops land at Normandy and begin their fight to liberate France and ultimately all of Europe from the Nazis. D-Day is the largest seaborne invasion in history.
The agricultural outpost of Mitzpe Gevulot was established.
In his final communication, ZOB commander Mordechai Anielewicz outlines the success of the revolt even in the face of almost certain defeat.
The Biltmore Conference will set the framework for Zionist policy in the years during and after World War II.
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.
Nazis draw up a plan for the “Final Solution” of European Jewry in the Berlin suburb of Wannsee.
Louis Brandeis, retired United States Supreme Court Justice and celebrated American Zionist, passes away in Washington DC at the age of 84.
The Palmach, an elite strike force of the Haganah, goes on to play a significant role in the 1948-1949 war.
November 25, 1940 A Haganah bomb does more damage than intended to the immigrant transport ship SS Patria, which sinks within 16 minutes in Haifa’s harbor, killing 267 people, including members of the British crew,…
A close associate of Theodore Herzl, Max Bodenheimer is the first president of the Zionist Federation of Germany and is a leader in the establishment of the Jewish National Fund (JNF). He dies in Jerusalem.
Originally working as laborers in surrounding agricultural communities, the founding members of Givat Brenner establish agricultural and industrial infrastructure for the kibbutz, quickly making it financially stable and self-sustaining.
The SS St. Louis, a ship carrying Jewish refugees fleeing from Nazi Germany, returns to Europe after being refused entry into both Cuba and the United States.
The 1939 White Paper signaled Britain’s readiness to relegate the Jews in Palestine to minority status in a future majority-Arab state.
March 15, 1939 Kol Tzion HaLokhemet (“Voice of the Fighting Zion”), the underground radio network operated by the Irgun, sends out its first broadcasts across Palestine as Esther Raziel-Naor hits the airwaves. The network broadcasts…
The Mufti has enormous power in his hands, yet he chooses non-engagement with the British, who controlled Palestine.
