FROM OUR ARCHIVES
65 YEARS AGO
On June 26, 1947, The Palestine
Post reported that in contrast to the negative attitude that UNSCOP had received in Jaffa, the UNSCOP members were warmly received in Tel Aviv. The Tel Aviv public and officials welcomed them with singing and clapping and put before them a staggering amount of information. Mayor Yisrael Rokach told them of his plans to enlarge the city by another 75,000 persons.
Colonial secretary Arthur CreechJones stated in the House of Commons that British officials of the District Commissioner’s Office and the Superintendent of Police had attended the funeral of Ze’ev Werber, a member of the Hagana, an illegal underground movement, because his actions had prevented the blowing up of Citrus House in Tel Aviv, which housed the British Army headquarters, and had therefore saved numerous British lives. Steps were taken to recognize Werber’s gallantry, but the compensation for his family depended on the Palestine government.
The underground Stern Group failed to kidnap, in broad daylight in Jerusalem’s King George Street, a British official, Alan Major, the administrative officer of the Liaison Branch, set up by the Mandatory Government to cooperate with UNSCOP. This was the Stern Group’s second failed attempt to kidnap a British official. As a crowd of passersby, alarmed by Major’s wife, started to gather, attackers armed with drawn revolvers escaped into a side street.
Strong disciplinary action was taken against two police officers who allowed the escape from custody in Jerusalem of Maj. Roy Farran, the suspected kidnapper and murderer of 16-year-old Alexander Rubowitz. Farran’s whereabouts were still not known. Rubowitz, the official statement stated, was believed to be pasting Stern Group leaflets on May 6, 1947, when he disappeared.
50 YEARS AGO
On June 26, 1962, The Jerusalem Post reported that in Buenos Aires anti-Semitic thugs, claiming to avenge the execution of the Nazi criminal Adolf Eichmann, kidnapped an 18-year-old girl, Graciela Narcisa Sirota, a science student, and slashed a swastika on her right breast with a penknife, and burned her body with cigarette butts. DAJA, the Federation of Argentine Jewish Associations, sent a telegram to president Jose Maria Guido, complaining of ineffectual police action in searching for the guilty criminals.
In Tel Aviv, the president of the US-Israel Chamber of Commerce, Nathan Straus III, said that the number of US firms operating in Israel had reached 200.
Israel had signed a mutual aid and commercial pact with Liberia.
According to a new ordinance, owners of vehicles that emitted visible exhaust fumes after the five seconds that it took the motor to warm up, would face six months in jail, or a IL 2,000 fine.
Jewish refugees were fast leaving Algeria. Almost 8,000 such refugees reached Marseilles in six ships during a single day.