FROM OUR ARCHIVES

65 YEARS AGO

On March 30, 1952, The Jerusalem Post reported that Germany agreed on “global” compensation. The Israeli delegation had obtained a formal assurance from the German delegation in The Hague that in the “first stage” of the compensation conference the Germans would undertake to reach a formal agreement on a global sum of collective recompense payable to Israel.

Germany would return to the family of European peoples as an equal partner in a few weeks, when a contractual agreement was to be signed with the Western Allies, chancellor Konrad Adenauer said in Bonn.

The West German delegation would not act that week upon the claim of the Conference on Jewish Material Claims as a whole, it was disclosed by Dr. Franz Boehm, leader of the delegation. He said both delegations had agreed to discuss the claim in a sub-commission.

According to the most reliable German and British sources, most senior German officers who volunteered and became attached to the Egyptian armed forces were frustrated with local conditions, extraordinary demands and the general attitude of their Egyptian colleagues and were expected to return shortly to Germany.

Syria’s president, Col.Adib Shishakly, had lost no time in stepping up his anti-Israel campaign, first in Jordan and Lebanon, and now in Syria, where he had “climbed a mountain of revenge,” according to Damascus Radio.

50 YEARS AGO

On March 30, 1967, The Jerusalem Post reported that in Tel Aviv, JeanPaul Sartre had concluded that there existed two mutually irreconcilable points of view which precluded any possibility of understanding between Israel and the Arab world at the present moment. He believed these two points of view was Israel’s insistence that Arabs recognize the territory which it now occupied and the Arab insistence that refugees must return before any other step towards peace could be taken.

However in Paris, the influential daily Figaro wrote that Israel appeared to have found a place in the Middle East as a nation, and therefore “peace was no longer impossible.”

The Netherlands had told Brazil that it wanted the Nazi war criminal Franz Stangl, arrested in São Paulo, put on trial, foreign minister Joseph Lunz declared. Stangl was said by the War Crimes Documentation Center to be responsible for the deaths of at least one million Jews.

25 YEARS AGO

On March 30, 1992, The Jerusalem Post reported that foreign minister David Levy announced that he would resign from the cabinet, following what he described as a long series of humiliations, but he also told his supporters that “Likud is my home.” Some observers described his step as a move towards another ploy to gain power. Both Foreign Ministry officials and diplomatic observers were stunned by Levy’s decision.

In Cairo, amid a courtroom uproar caused when alleged Israeli spy Fares Musrati stripped off his pants, the Egyptian judge remanded him and his daughter Faika to an additional 45 days in custody.

Defense officials were considering the issuance of an advisory statement cautioning Israeli tourists who planned to visit Turkey, Egypt, Greece, or Cyprus, top level defense sources stated.

Israeli officials were silent on a British newspaper report that Israel told the US that Saudi Arabia had transferred Patriot missiles technology to China.

– Alexander Zvielli