This Day, October 9, In Jewish History

OCTOBER 9 In Jewish History

768: Carloman I and Charlemagne are crowned Kings of The Franks. Charlemagne treated to his Jewish subjects well, even if it meant parting from the doctine of the Church. For example, he extended the rights previously granted to the Jews of Narbonne by his father. Jews “mingled freely at the Frankish court in defiance of canon law…Disputes between Jews were resolved in Jewish courts.” The increased protection and freedom offered to the Jews by Charlegmagne resulted in increased commercial and financial activity, especially trade with the Islamic world.

1238: In Spain, King James I of Aragon founded the Kingdom of Valencia. In 1263, James I presided over the disputation between Nachmanides and a convert to Christianity named Paul Christian.

1334: Casmir the Great (Poland) renewed the Charter of Boleslav, granting Jews the freedom of residence in all areas of the kingdom. This document was instrumental in encouraging Jews to begin to flee Germany and move east.

1547: Christening of the Don Miguel de Cervantes, the author of Don Quixote. According to some sources, Cervantes mother, Lenor de Cortinas was a descendant of Conversos, Jews who chose Christianity over death or despoliation of their wealth.

1635: Colonial American Separatist Roger Williams was banished from Massachusetts for preaching that civil government had no right to interfere in religious affairs. (Williams was seeking to establish freedom of worship through the separation of church and state.) Rhode Island would provide the model for the rest of the United States on this issue. In addition to which, William's policy would Rhode Island an attractive place for Jews to settle during the colonial and Revolutionary War periods.

1701: The Collegiate School of Connecticut (later renamed Yale University) is chartered in Old Saybrook, Connecticut. In 1805, Moses Simons became the first Jew to attend Yale. Seventeen years later, Judah P. Benjamin attended Yale Law School, making him the school’s second Jewish student. Benjamin left without graduating. According to recent records 1,200 of Yale’s 5,300 undergraduate students are Jewish while 200 of the 1,200 graduate students are Jewish. The school offters 45 Jewish courses and a minor in Jewish studies but no major.

1840: Birthdate of British painter Simeon Solomon.

1845: The Sephardic Synagogue of Kingston, Jamaica celebrated taking possession of a new Sefer Torah." The service was conducted by the Rev. Isaac Lopes, minister of the congregation.

1859: Birthdate of Colonel Alfred Dreyfus

1892: Construction began on a building that would be called the Frances Jacobs Hospital in Denver, Colorado. Frances Jacobs, known as Colorado's "Mother of Charity," devoted her life to community service. She is the only woman included among the sixteen Colorado pioneers depicted through stained glass portraits in the state's Capital Rotunda. Born in Kentucky and raised in Cincinnati, Jacobs moved with her husband to Colorado in 1863; they settled in Denver in 1870. Jacobs quickly became involved in Denver's Jewish and non-Jewish communities. Jewish issues were especially important to Jacobs. Soon after moving to Colorado with her husband in 1874, she became president of the Hebrew Benevolent Ladies Society (today known as Jewish Family Service of Colorado). By 1872, she was president of the Hebrew Ladies' Benevolent Society and in 1874 helped found the nonsectarian Denver Ladies' Relief Society. She pushed for the creation of Denver's first kindergarten and helped organize Denver's Charity Organization Society, a forerunner to the United Way, in 1877. Jacobs also pushed the Denver Jewish community to attend to the care of the many Jewish tuberculosis sufferers who came to Denver. At that time, the only known treatment for tuberculosis was clean air and sunshine; since Denver had both of these resources in abundance; it became a popular destination for infected immigrants from the industrial Northeast. When these immigrants arrived in Denver, they found no facilities available to treat or even shelter them, and the community ignored their plight. Jacobs did her best to help those who were ill on an individual basis, but worked to convince the Jewish community to help, leading to the construction of the hospital, whose motto became "None may enter who can pay, and none can pay who enter". Jacobs died, at the age of 49, weeks after the hospital's cornerstone had been laid. The hospital's trustees voted to name the hospital after her. Today the institution is known as the National Jewish Medical and Research Center, and is the only medical and research center in the United States devoted entirely to respiratory, allergic, and immune system diseases. Jacobs died, at the age of 49, weeks after the hospital's cornerstone had been laid. The hospital's trustees voted to name the hospital after her. Today the institution is known as the National Jewish Medical and Research Center, and is the only medical and research center in the United States devoted entirely to respiratory, allergic, and immune system diseases.

1898: Herzl has another audience with Grossherzog Friedrich of Baden. On the same day Herzl is received by Foreign Minister Bernhard von Bülow and Reich’s Chancellor Hohenlohe.

1911: Birthdate of Joe Rosenthal. In 1945, at the age of 33, Rosenthal snapped the most famous of all World War II photos – The Raising of the American Flag on Iwo Jima.

1911: Birthdate of Jacob L. Trobe, the son of an Orthodox rabbi, who as a representative of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee was among the first relief workers to enter the concentration camps.

1917: Sarah Aaronsohn, a World War I pro-British spy living in Palestine who had committed suicide after she was captured by the Ottoman authorities was buried in the cemetery in Zichron Yaakov.

1919: Black Sox scandal The Cincinnati Reds defeat the Chicago White in the World Series that would become known as the Black Sox Scandal. According to many “experts” Arnold Rothstein, a Jewish born gambler of unsavory reputation, supplied the money to bribe selected members of the White Sox. Abe Attell, a former boxer known as “The Little Hebrew,” was Rothstein’s bagman.

1922: Birthdate of Fyvush Finkel. A veteran of the Yiddish Theatre, Finkel won an emmy for his role as a lawyer in the television hit “Picket Fences.”

1939: Himmler declared that 550,000 Jews living in Polish provinces should be relocated

1941: Hans Frank told the ministers of the General Government in Cracow; "As far as Jews are concerned . . . I want to tell you quite frankly that they must be done away with one way or another."

1941: The Nazi-allied government led by Marshal Ion Antonescu began deporting Jews to camps located in Transnistria, an occupied area in the former Soviet Union.

1942: Anne Frank, hidden with her family in an Amsterdam warehouse, wroe in her diary: “The British radio speaks of their (the Jews) being gassed.”

1942: In Brussels, Belgium, five of six leading members of the Belgian Jewish community are released from incarceration following the intervention of Cardinal Joseph-Ernst van Roey and Belgium's Queen Elizabeth.

1942: Thousands of Jews from Miedzyrzec, Poland, are deported to the Treblinka death camp.

1944: At Birkenau, on Simchat Torah. 650 boys involved with the Birkenau revolt were locked in the barracks together. Most of them would be tortured and then killed on October 20.

1944: The SS arrests three Jewish women at the Auschwitz munitions factory for complicity in the smuggling of explosives used in the uprising of October 6-7

1945: After his trial in Paris, Pierre Laval, head of the Vichy Government is executed by firing squad. General Petain was the titular head of the Vichy Government. Laval really ran the show. Vichy was the name of the French collaborationist government that worked with the Nazis during World War II. Vichy’s supporters included France’s own, home-grown anti-Semites. The Vichy government was so eager to ingratiate itself with the New German Order, that it was rounding up Jews and turning them over to the Nazis before the Nazis asked them to do so.

1947: President Truman learned that the Arab League Executive had requested its member nations to dispatch troops to the Palestine border as part of a plan to invade the Mandate Territory. Truman responded by instructing Secretary of State Marshall to support the planned partition of Palestine.

1948: During the War for Independence, Egypt launched a major attack in the Negev. This attack constitutes a major violation of the UN brokered truce. This Egyptian offensive along with other violations will lead to a major Israeli military effort later in the month of October.

1951: Birthdate of actor Robert Wuhl who played the title role in the HBO hit “Arli$$.”

1952: The Jerusalem Post reported that since 1948, Youth Aliya had absorbed more than 5,000 young people from Morocco. Their parents were given a choice of three types of educational institutions: Orthodox, traditional (keeping of Sabbath, festivals and kashrut), and non-religious.

1956: Arab terrorists cross the border, murdering two Israeli workers at Even Yehuda and cutting off the victims’ ears.

1958: Pope Pius XII passed away 19 years after being elevated to the Papacy. The Pope’s role in the Holocaust has been too well documented to need to be covered here.

1963: Birthdate of journalist Daniel Pearl who was brutally murdered by Moslem terrorists on February 21, 2002.

1967: French author Andre Maurois passed away at the age of 82.

1973: On the third day of the Yom Kippur war a pessimistic Moshe Dayan addresses a group of journalist leading them to believe that Israeli forces are in such precarious shape that they will have to surrender most of the Sinai to the advancing Egyptians and make a stand in the eastern edge of the peninsula. Prime Minister Golda Meir is so alarmed by Dayan’s emotional about-face that she refuses to let him address the nation on television in the evening. Israeli news broadcasts reported for the first time that the Egyptian attack had driven Israeli forces from the east bank of the Suez Canal. While Syrian artillery was able to shell villages in the Jezreel Valley, Israeli planes had attacked installations in around Damascus. Inadvertently, one of the attacks had hit the Soviet Cultural Center in the Syrian capital. In a television later in the evening an Israeli general pointed out that the Soviets had been arms into the Arab states for the past six years creating a military imbalance of striking proportion. He also said that Israeli forces would not cease operation action until the Arab states learned that they could not violate a truce with impunity without paying a high price.

1973: Birthdate of Erin Daniels. Born Erin Cohen the Vassar College grad is known for her career as a television actress.

1974: Oskar Schindler, the Schindler in “Schindler’s List” passed away.

1981: Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Thomas T. Johnson ruled in favor of Mel Mermelstein, finding that he had provided sufficient evidence to prove his claim that Jews were gassed in the gas chambers at Auschwitz. The Court issued a judgment requiring Institute for Historical Review (IHR)to pay Mermelstein $50,000, plus $40,000 for personal suffering, and write a public apology to Mermelstein.

1987: Claire Boothe Luce passed away. Most people remember her as the wife of Henry Luce, the man who created the Time-Life publishing empire. Others remember her as a Republican Party political figure and ambassador. But Mrs. Luce considered herself first and foremost a playwright, a role that brought her great success before World War II. In 1939, she wrote Margin for Error, a comedy about policeman assigned to protect the German consul in New York. The Consul is a Nazi. The police officer is an American Jew. And the play was considered the first successful anti-Nazi play to reach Broadway.

1988: Active polio viruses have been discovered in sewage and a water purification plant in four more Israeli cities, bringing the total number of infected areas to nine, Israel Radio said today. Officials at the Tourism Ministry said they had not been consulted before the decision was made. They expressed concern that the move to inoculate most of the population would frighten tourists planning to visit Israel. Dr. Walter A. Orenstein, director of the immunization division at the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta and a member of a team of experts here to advise the Israelis, said, ''We're seeing a number of cases in people who had oral polio vaccine in the past.'' That is the same form of vaccination most North Americans were given as children. Ten Israelis have been diagnosed with polio since an outbreak of the disease began early last month. Officials originally said they believed the outbreak was confined to north-western Israel, around the town of Or Akiva, where the first two cases were discovered. Open sewage in Or Akiva was thought to be the source of the disease, and the town's entire population of 5,000 was inoculated. But then other people in Hadera, Acre, Ramle and Lod, near Tel Aviv, became infected with the virus. Israel Radio reported this morning that water and sewage tests have revealed active polio viruses in the Haifa water purification plant and in the sewage systems of Yahud, Petah Tikva and Tiberias. On Thursday, in response to advice from the team of foreign health experts, the Health Ministry announced that all residents up to the age of 40 would be vaccinated. Israeli officials had been reluctant to order mass inoculations because it is believed that 90 percent of the population has natural or acquired immunity to polio. But the foreign experts recommended the move because Israelis in that age group were inoculated with a less potent oral vaccine. Palestinians in the occupied territories, where no cases of polio have been reported, were traditionally given the more powerful injected vaccine because of their poorer living conditions. As a result, Mr. Orenstein told Israel Radio today that there is ''suggestive evidence that there may be some susceptibility problems in some of the young teen-agers and adults'' throughout Israel. He said that though the cases were still small in number, the ''proportion is much greater in adults.'' When asked if North American immigrants living in Israel should also receive a polio booster, Mr. Orenstein said, ''If it were me, I'd participate with the rest of the population. We think the risk is low, but we don't think the risk is zero.''

1989: Penthouse Magazine's Hebrew edition hits the newsstands

1990: Saddam Hussein threatens to hit Israel with a new missile.

1994: Holocaust survivor, successful businessman and founder of the NYC Marathon, Fred Lebow, passed away.

2003: The Israeli Gesher Theater starts its tour of Moscow. The Moscow critics have already called the tour the biggest event of the theater season. The Gesher Theater was founded in 1990 in Tel Aviv by Russian immigrants.

2004: The first National Day of Commemorating the Holocaust was held in Romania. October 9 was chosen as a date for this event because it marks the beginning of Romanian deportations of Jews to Transnistria, in 1942.

2004: Jews begin the cycle of Torah readings with Bereshit.

2004: Philosopher Jacques Derrida passes away at the age of 74.

2005: The Romanian Minister for Foreign Affairs, Mihai Răzvan Ungureanu, participated in the laying of a wreath at the Holocaust Memorial in Iaşi. The Centre for Hebrew Studies, part of the Alexandru Ioan Cuza University, was also inaugurated on the same day by Ungureanu. During the inaugural National Day of Commemorating the Holocaust, the National Institute for Studying the Holocaust in Romania was also opened.

2005: The Histadrut labor federation renews the strike against the Religious Councils. Funerals will be performed only at night and there will be no registration of marriages or kashrut supervision in restaurants, hotels and catering halls.

2005: Desipite threats from suicide bombers and other terrorists, Israelis work to develop a fruitful society and create an air of normalcy. For example, Haaretz reported that Israel’s 2 – 1 victory over Faroe Islands in a World Cup soccer qualifier in the Ramat Gan stadium means Israel still has a chance of qualifying for the World Cup in Germany 2006. Israel will not know if it will qualify for the automatic birth or if it has to play a European team to get to the match in Germany until later in the week. The Israeli coach had said earlier that if the announcement if made on Thursday which is Yom Kippur, he will have to wait until Thursday night to find out the fate of his team.
2005: Bishop Von Galen, the German bishop known as the "Lion of Muenster" for his courageous anti-Nazi sermons during World War II took a step on the road to sainthood when he was beatified in St. Peter’s Basilica. The Nazis deported 37 priests to concentration camps 10 of whom perished in von Galen's place as punishment for the homilies, according to a brief biography by Reinhard Lettmann. However von Galen was not arrested. The Nazis were worried that if von Galen were arrested and killed, Muenster's residents would be angered and "written off as lost during the duration of the war," Lettmann wrote. Von Galen helped a Protestant pastor to hide a Jewish boy in an institute belonging to the bishop's office and took responsibility for the youth, who after the war was reunited with his mother, according to testimony carried by Vatican Radio.
2005: Comedian Louis Nye passed away.
2005: The New York Times reviewed The Pagoda In the Garden: A Novel in Three Parts by Wendy Lesser.
2006: A ceremony took place for setting the keystone of the National Holocaust Memorial in Bucharest. The ceremony was attended by President Traian Băsescu, Foreign Minister Affairs Minister Mihai Răzvan Ungureanu, Culture Minister Adrian Iorgulescu, as well as representatives of the Romanian and international Jewish community. A commemoration march also took place through Bucharest in order to remember the Roma victims of the Holocaust and to demand greater recognition by the government of Roma Holocaust victims.

2006: Haaretz reported that Holocaust survivor groups here have joined the recommendation of the Polish president, Lech Kaczynski, to award the Nobel Peace Prize to 96-year-old Irena Sandlar. Sandler, who was a member of the Polish underground group Zegota that was dedicated to saving Jews, was recognized by the Yad Vashem Martyrs and Heroes Remembrance Authority in 1965 for smuggling numerous Jewish children out of the Warsaw Ghetto. The children received false papers and were either adopted by Christian families or sent to convents. Sandler, however, recorded the real names of 2,500 children on lists that were placed in glass jars and buried, with the hope that the youngsters would eventually be returned to their families. The Gestapo arrested Sandler in October 1943. Despite being tortured, she refused to reveal the children's identity, and was sentenced to death by a Nazi court. The underground group freed her, and she lived in hiding under an assumed identity until the end of the war.
2007: A special preview screening of The Counterfeiters takes place as part of the UK Jewish Film Festival. “The Counterfeiters is based on the true story of the largest counterfeiting operation in history, set up by the Nazis in 1936.”

2008: Yom Kippur, 5769

2008: At Adas Israel in Washington, D.C. during a late afternoon break between Musaf and Mincha, Washington Post columnist Marc Fisher and Emily Yoffe of Slate lead a learning session that opens with the study of a classic text on the use of speech in public followed by a discussion of the ethical dilemmas of reporting and the spiritual importance of truth-telling