FROM OUR ARCHIVES
65 YEARS AGO
October 2, 1952
Actor Kirk Douglas arrived in Israel to being filming in the Galilee for his next movie, The Juggler. Douglas disclosed to reporters that his family were Jewish immigrants from Russia named Danielowitz. He signed the Immigration Department papers in Hebrew and gave Hebrew autographs to fans at the airport. The Juggler was the first Hollywood film to be shot entirely in Israel. It tells the trials of a Holocaust survivor who finds himself among other refugees in Israel.
Several shops in Haifa, who allegedly were selling phonograph needles made in Germany, recently received a note informing them that if the goods were not removed from their shops within seven days they would “suffer the consequences”. The note was signed “National Youth”.
The West German government’s information bulletin said that the Soviet Union was offering anti-Jewish films to Arab countries in an attempt to increase tensions between them and Israel. The films were said to have been the works of Veit Harlan, who had produced anti-Semitic Nazi propaganda films such as Süss the Jew under Goebbels.
50 YEARS AGO
October 2, 1967
A man who was clinically dead when he arrived at Hadassah hospital in Jerusalem had fully recovered from his infirmity and would be shortly discharged. The man, who collapsed near the Western Wall, received cardiac resuscitation treatments for several hours until life was restored.
A religious group in Tel Aviv announced plans to oppose the recent wave of “motor touring” on Shabbat to the West Bank and Golan Heights and particularly to the holy places. “The National Organization for the Sabbath” said it would press the Knesset to pass a national Shabbat law. It planned to station a corps of “Shabbat activists” at various places to guard the sanctity of the day. The Tel Aviv Religious Council separately passed a resolution condemning the increase of touring on Shabbat and called on the public to observe the day.
25 YEARS AGO
October 2, 1992
Immigrant children who arrived from Ethiopia only 18 months earlier were already showing Western dental problems, primarily cavities due to high sugar intake and inadequate brushing, according to pediatric dentists at the Hadassah School of Dental Medicine. Dental students and their teachers there said they were amazed to see damage to teeth so soon after the youngsters’ arrival. Sugar consumption is minimal in Ethiopia, where the population regularly uses a splinter of wood to clean their teeth. Many of the immigrants got their first taste of sugar when they were showered with candy on the planes that brought them to Israel. But the dentists also reported damage to the children’s milk teeth and permanent teeth caused by premature extractions performed in unsterile conditions in Ethiopia.
The US government reportedly invited Israel to become part of its new Global Protection System (GPS, though not to be confused with the Global Positioning System). GPS was an effort to regroup international cooperation in missile defense in a new multilateral effort that would include Russia, as well as many of America’s previous Cold War allies. Israel was already the largest foreign participant in Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative known as the “Star Wars” program.
– Daniel Kra