http://www.hebron.com/english/article.php?id=801Today Beit Hadassah is home to Jewish families in Hebron. A small synagogue is located on the ground floor. The basement floor is rather unique. There is the Hebron Heritage Museum, detailing the magnificent history of Israel's first Jewish city, some 3,800 years old. Many of the groups touring Hebron visit this site. It provides, as I am wont to tell visitors, a taste of Hebron's Jewish history, over the centuries.
Perhaps the most difficult and emotional room in the museum is a memorial to victims of the 1929 riots and slaughter. At least 67 Jews were murdered in Hebron, with over 70 injured. A total of over 130 Jews were killed throughout pre-state Israel, in Jerusalem, Tzfat, Motza and other places.
The accounts are documented and the events well-known. On Thursday, August 22, that being the 16th day of the Hebrew month of Av, a group of Jews from the Haganah, led by Mordechai Shneerson, came to Hebron and met with its Jewish leadership. 'Mufti Amin el-Husseini is inciting. There's going to be trouble. Take weapons to protect yourselves.' Hebron's Jewish leaders refused. 'The Arabs are our friends. The protected us in the past, and will do so again now. We've already met with them. Weapons will only act as a provocation.'
The Haganah representatives left with the weapons they'd brought for Hebron's Jews, who remained defenseless. They paid dearly for their error in judgment. The next day rioting commenced. One Hebron Jew, a yeshiva student, Shmuel Rosenhalz, was murdered just prior to the beginning of Shabbat. British police officer, Major Raymond Cafferata, told the Jews to stay home and lock their doors. The next morning Arabs went house to house, torturing, raping, pillaging and killing. Virtually nothing was done to help the Jews. True, there were Arabs who saved Jews. But not enough. At least 67 were killed. Three days later, the survivors were expelled.
At the very same time Jews in Jerusalem were faced with the same type of threat from their Arab neighbors. But in this case 2 Jews did not rely on the "good will" of their Arab neighbors.
They took logical steps to defend their neighbors:
Here's a quote from
http://www.vilnagaon.org/mount/letter2.html#6The Thing which Saved the Jews of Jerusalem from the same type of Destruction that came to the Jews of Hebron in 5689 [secular year 1929]
In the book, Ish Al Hachoma [ The man on the Defensive Wall ] , the history of Master Authority, the Genius, Rabbi, Y.C. Sonnenfeld by S.Z. Sonnenfeld, volume 3 pages 315,316 the following incident is brought:
On Friday in the afternoon hours thousands of Arabs left the Omer Mosque incited after they had been heated up by a hateful and inciteful speech of the Mufti. They marched by the thousands armed with their knives and clubs towards the Jewish neighborhoods. Some of them turned towards the direction of Jaffe Road and another part turned towards Talpiot and Mekor Chaim and the Jewish Quarter of the Old City; however the main force of eight thousand turned in the direction of the neighborhoods of Meah Shearim and Beit Yisrael. At the head of the incited mob that closed in to the direction of Meah Shearim Street was an Arab Sheik brandishing a large sword who was instigating the rioters to launch a pogrom against the Jews and not to have compassion neither on men, women, or children for it was a holy war [Jihad]. The residents were seized by a great panic and all that had the ability took hold of an iron rod, a wooden beam, heavy building stones in order to defend themselves from the bloodthirsty rioters. Also a handful of Hagana defenders that assembled in the flour grinding station of Shabti"l in the city (today in the place stands the Breslav Yeshiva) were lost for an idea how to deal with this wild mob. When the rioters reached the Italian Hospital with calls of battle and murder ripping through the air, two youths exited the flour grounding station and marched towards the rioters. One of the youths, that under his cap bobbed his set of curled Peot, whipped out a gun and aimed it straight at the mouth of the head of the rioters who fell on the spot. When the rioters saw that their leader was killed, a great panic took hold of them and they began to flee in the direction of the Sh'chem Gate. The two youths sniped away behind them and threw a grenade and killed three additional rioters. Now more were killed by one trampling upon the other than were killed by the Jewish defenders in the panicked flight.
The bearded youth that shot at the head of the rioters and saved the Meah Shearim neighborhood was none other than Rabbi Aharon Fischer (father of the great and important Rabbi, Rabbi Yisrael Yaakov Fischer ZT"L).
Topic: 2 Armed Jews - Made the Difference Between a Massacre and Miraculous Salvation (Read 554 times)