FROM OUR ARCHIVES

65 YEARS AGO

Philip Auerbach, former chief of the Bavarian Jewish community and of the Bavarian Restitution Office, sentenced by a German court to two and a half years’ imprisonment a few days earlier, committed suicide. He had been convicted of taking bribes, embezzlement and illegal use of an academic title. The trial itself was criticized for its strong antisemitic aspects. Many of the people involved in the trial had National Socialist pasts and a few were former members of the Nazi Party. Though some prosecution witnesses retracted their testimonies, with one later found guilty of perjury, he was nevertheless convicted. In his suicide note he wrote: “I have never enriched myself personally, and I cannot bear this dishonorable judgment. I fought to the end, but in vain.” [He was posthumously exonerated in 1954.]

Reports received of the changed attitude towards Jews in Poland were confirmed by the death sentences on two prominent Lodz Jews in separate trials. No mention of the trials was allowed to appear in the Polish press. Saul Kaplan and a man named Svitzky were charged with private trading in various gold articles and in foreign currency. For such charges, which were common in Poland, hundreds of non-Jews received prison sentences. The death sentences followed the liquidation of Jewish cooperatives, which were established under communist encouragement. It appeared that the communist regime had decided to try and exploit the ever latent antisemitism in Poland and to try and distract attention from its responsibility for the ever growing economic difficulties.

50 YEARS AGO

A Jerusalem Post editorial criticized IDF chief chaplain Rabbi Shlomo Goren for conducting evening prayers with a group of 50 others, including other IDF chaplains, on the Temple Mount. “The Temple is not the army’s business, and it cannot be the business of the army’s chief chaplain. It thus becomes the army’s business to step in and define the proper activities of its own highest religious representatives before grave damage is done,” the editorial concluded.

Two meters of soil would be removed from a 25-meter area in front of the Western Wall, and steps would lead down to this area, according to the Religious Affairs Ministry. This would be “only a provisional first stage” of the longrange plan to beautify the area. In this stage, the deepened area would be paved with stones and reserved for those coming to pray. It would contain a movable partition for the separation of men and women. Ultimately, a competition would be held for a final plan for the area. A ministry spokesman said the rabbinate would have to approve the religious validity of any final plans.

25 YEARS AGO

Lives and millions in shekels of public funds would be saved with the purchase of a NIS 41,000 boat for rescue and recovery missions at the Dead Sea. Until then, security forces had to use military helicopters and to transfer boats overland from Haifa to carry out searches for swimmers who ventured too far away from the beach. Previously, each rescue operation on the Dead Sea cost the state about NIS 500,000. – Daniel Kra