FROM OUR ARCHIVES

65 YEARS AGO

January 25, 1953 East Germany’s last two Jewish community leaders fled to West Berlin. They had waited until the last moment to help organize group escapes of other Jews in Berlin, a Jewish spokesman said. He would not give the names of the two leaders. East Germany was uneasy over the increasing stream of refugees to the West since it was losing thousands of good workers, allied officials said.

The leaders of the communist-dominated East Berlin Jewish community set up a week earlier were named by the East German AND news agency. It quoted them as saying there was no antisemitism in East Germany since antisemitism was punishable by law.

For the first time in four years, an end-of-season sale was proclaimed by the General Association of Merchants in Israel covering all men’s and women’s clothing. Following the recent decontrol of household utensils, large quantities of every kind of kitchenware were also put on sale, including the all-purpose “Wonder Pot,” formerly obtainable only by newlyweds.

25 YEARS AGO

January 25, 1993 A letter by eight Chabad-affiliated rabbis against identifying the Lubavitcher Rebbe as the messiah brought into the open divisions within Chabad created by the “Welcome King Messiah” campaign. “We strongly protest against the announcements that have appeared in recent weeks which are causing damage to the honor of the rebbe and to our sympathizers, and which are pushing away many Jews from getting closer to Judaism in general and hassidism in particular. We call from the bottom of our hearts to all who are doing this to stop immediately,” the letter said. One of the rabbis who signed the letter, but would not be identified when talking about it, was quoted as saying: “We once were accepted by everyone. Now we are looked at differently, both within the hassidic camp and without... This is not what the rebbe wants.”

An attempt by the World Jewish Congress to stop Steven Spielberg from filming part of his next movie at Auschwitz was met with a largely negative response. The objection to the filming of Schindler’s List at Auschwitz was raised by WJC vice president Kalman Sultanik. He was quoted in The New York Times as saying he feared that the movie production would disturb the dignity of the site of the extermination camp. Sultanik even submitted a protest to the Polish ambassador to the US. Various comments from Jewish leaders on the WJC action seconded the concern for the dignity of the Auschwitz site, but expressed the conviction that a filmmaker of Spielberg’s standing would treat the subject with sensitivity, and in the process educate millions about the horrors of the Holocaust.

10 YEARS AGO

January 25, 2008 The IDF closed down Highway 10 along the Israeli-Egyptian border from Gaza to Eilat in a concrete sign of heightened Israeli concern that the breached border between Gaza and Egypt would lead to increased terrorism against Israel. Defense officials expressed concern that terrorists were among the hundreds of thousands of Gazans to swarm into Egypt in the previous 48 hours and would try to launch attacks from Sinai along the long border into Israel.