On This Day in Jewish History: September 8, 1952.. The Reparations Agreement between Israel and the Federal Republic of Germany was to be signed in two days. This was an agreement where West Germany was to pay Israel for the costs of "resettling so great a number of uprooted and destitute Jewish refugees" after the war, and to compensate individual Jews, via the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany, for losses in Jewish livelihood and property resulting from Nazi persecution It is a treaty between two states which do not entertain diplomatic relations and do not even intend to ..read more

On This Day in Jewish History: August 16, 1913 Warrior, that is the word we can use to describe one of Israel’s most legendary leaders, Menachem Begin, whose birthday we remember on this day in Jewish history. But we have already told you his story and biography in previous posts, so today we will dive into some deeper waters, into the historic figures and key moments that formed his fierce, lion-like character. Thrown into the fiery furnace of war since he was very young, well acquainted with antisemitism, he not only learned the value of Jewish strength but sought to uplift his fellow Jews ..read more

On This Day in Jewish History: August 17, 1915 Leo Frank was lynched by a mob after the Governor of Georgia commuted his sentence from the death penalty to life imprisonment. This controversial case and the violent aftermath would directly lead to a mass emigration of Jews in the US State of Georgia to other states and the establishment of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), the organization that still unites southern black and northern Jewish communities to have their civil rights recognized. The important elements of this trial is that the neo-Nazi organization fought against the Jewish commu ..read more

On This Day in Jewish History: August 15, 1940 INFORMATION On August 15 1940, Adolf Eichmann proposed the Madagascar Plan: the turning of the island into a huge Jewish Ghetto where Jews would die out. The Madagascar Plan was a proposal by the German government to forcibly relocate the Jewish population of Europe to the island of Madagascar. “With Adolf Hitler's approval, Adolf Eichmann released a memorandum on 15 August 1940 (Reichssicherheitshauptamt: Madagaskar Projekt) calling for the resettlement of a million Jews per year for four years, with the island being governed as a police state u ..read more

On This Day in Jewish History: September 2, 1997 Born March 26, 1905 in Vienna, Austria, Viktor Frankl quickly became a prominent figure in the field of psychology, particularly after surviving the Holocaust. From an early age, Frankl showed an immense amount of interest in psychology, studying the subject in secondary school, and eventually at the University of Vienna Medical School. It was at university where Frankl developed a particular interest in depression and suicide and began to set up youth counseling centers in Vienna. These centers proved successful in their effort to decrease tee ..read more

On This Day in Jewish History: September 25, 1913. On this day in 1913, the trial of Mendel Beilis began in Kiev in the Russian Empire. It would become an international spectacle, displaying on the world stage antisemitic forces in that country but also fierce opponents of the enemies of the Jews. On March 20, 1911, the mutilated body of a Ukrainian boy named Andrei Iushchinskii (often spelled Yushchinky) was found in a cave not far from a brick factory. Beilis was employed at the factory as a superintendent and was implicated in the boy’s murder when a lamplighter told authorities the boy ha ..read more

#OTDJH: January 21-24, 1941 January 21, 1941, marks the beginning of a sadistic three-day pogrom in Romania, which left 125 Jews dead when Romanian Prime Minister, Ion Antonescu’s former allies, the Iron Guard Legion, attempted to overthrow the Prime Minister. The Iron Guard, a deeply antisemitic group, saw Antonescu as a puppet of the Jews in Romania, despite being just as antisemitic as the Iron Guard. That being said, Antonescu and the Iron Guard had different ways in which they hoped to rid Romania of Jews. Whereas Antonescu wanted to employ the legal process to strip Jews of their rights ..read more

OTDJH: September 2nd, 1796 https://www.instagram.com/p/CEpB0KoF1KI/ #onthisday, 1796, Jews of Holland are granted emancipation although no actual changes for their rights occur and it turns out to be mostly symbolic. . By the mid 1700's, the Netherlands were in absolute decline - England and France had caught up on worldwide trade and shipping, ushering in serious economic troubles. . Following the Anglo-Dutch war (1780-1784), the French began their occupation of Netherlands and trade became nonexistent. . The large Jewish population of Netherlands (both Ashkenazi and Sephardic, the latter be ..read more

On This Day in Jewish History: August 27-29, 1941. Kamenets-Podolski is a city in Western Ukraine (previously the Soviet Union) that had a large Jewish community until the 1940s. The first reference to Jews in Kamenets-Podolski was in the 15th century. Two centuries later, in the 17th century, thousands of Jews found refuge in the city during the Chmielnitsky uprising. During the 19th and 20th centuries, Jews not only were politically active, but they also comprised 40% of the city’s total population with around 16,000 Jews. This quickly changed during World War I as Jews were facing pogroms ..read more

On This Day in Jewish History: August 26, 1903 “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion is the most notorious and widely distributed antisemitic publication of modern times.” It has been described as “probably the most influential work of antisemitism ever written.” It was first published as a series of articles in ‘Znamya’, a Russian ‘Black Hundreds’ newspaper, characterized as a reactionary, monarchist and ultra-nationalist movement. The Protocols was serialized in nine issues each with the title, “The Jewish Programme of the Conquest of the World.” Later, in 1906, the Protocols was published a ..read more