FROM OUR ARCHIVES
65 YEARS AGO
Police in Paris sifted through mounds of seized documents and riot weapons after staging lightning raids on Communists throughout France. The meetings and demonstrations éwere in response to the arrival of the new NATO commander Gen. Matthew Ridgeway, who had replaced Dwight Eisenhower. The rallies switched to riots after the acting secretary-general of the Communist Party and the editor of l’Humanité were arrested and formally charged with actions against the security of the state.
East German authorities were in a race against time to seal off the border with the West by midnight. They ordered over 10,000 West Berliners out, warning they would be cut off from the West, and that the only road linking the divided city would be permanently blocked from movements in either direction. The move was a reprisal for West Germany’s signing of the Bonn conventions ending the occupation. East German Communists said the security measures were to keep out “Western spies and agents.” Ditches six meters deep and wide were being dug along the border. Barbed-wire barricades were going up to close roads.
50 YEARS AGO
The major maritime powers, including the US and the Soviet Union, began moving ships to the Mediterranean, with the Soviets sending the first of 10 warships to pass through the Straits. The American aircraft carrier Intrepid passed through the Suez Canal to the Red Sea the night before, though sources indicated that the carrier’s stated destination was the Western Pacific. The US Sixth Fleet in the Mediterranean was on alert since the flare-up in the Middle East began, and the fleet commander expressed aggravation over the movement of Soviet ships in and around the fleet’s formations. He described the intrusion as “someone coming to a party uninvited, knocking over your china, and elbowing your guests.” Meanwhile, attempts to form an international naval force to ensure “free and innocent” shipping through the Gulf of Aqaba were being made by the US and Britain . The Soviet Union told France that the Vietnam War had made it difficult to hold a Four-Power meeting on the Middle East, as the U.S. was then engaged in “aggression” themselves.
25 YEARS AGO
In a rare scolding of IDF leaders, prime minister Yitzhak Shamir said that the defense forces had to take stricter measures in their training sessions to ensure that there were no repetitions of the sudden deaths of two IDF soldiers due to heat stroke. An investigation had shown that Yaron BarDor and Eran Ofer, both 19, were not deprived of water by their officers as previous reports had suggested, but rather the two succumbed to the 45-degree temperature. “Two of our boys died without cause,” Shamir declared. “The public and soldiers’ families in particular place their trust in the IDF, and they must feel it is doing all that it can to protect the lives of its soldiers.”
The High Court of Justice temporarily barred the demolition of the home of the suspected murderer of Bat Yam schoolgirl Helena Rapp. The order was issued at the request of the suspect’s father, who contended that his son lived in a separate residence from the family home in a Gaza refugee camp.