1881 was a fateful year in the history of the Jewish people. On March 13, Czar Alexander II was murdered in Saint Petersburg. Within weeks, a series of pogroms targeting Jews began, mainly in southern Russia. Representatives of the authorities and the church fanned the flames of violence, which took a bloody toll in some

On July 6, 1882, 14 Bilu members arrived in Palestine on the ship Circe. It seems that two of the 16 members that had assembled in Istanbul remained there to continue the efforts to raise funds and acquire land. The others set out for Jaffa. The exact number of members is not clear – the

On April 6, 1903, Easter Sunday, a riled up mob streamed out of churches throughout the Serbian capital of Kishinev and began attacking Jews. “[The anti-Semitic pogroms in Kishinev were] worse than the censor will permit to publish,” the New York Times reporter in Saint Petersburg wrote. “There was a well laid-out plan for the

Without a doubt, one of the most extraordinary figures to arrive in the Land of Israel during the second aliyah was Manya Wilbushewitz Shochat. She was born in 1879 in Lososna (near Grodno in Ukraine) to a wealthy Jewish family. Her grandfather had supplied equipment to Napoleon’s army and enjoyed a privileged life in Grodno.

World War I wrought havoc on Jewish efforts to settle in Palestine. Disease, famine, conscription, and deportation were the order of the day. During the four years of the war, the Jewish population shrunk from 85,000 to 56,000. The Balfour Declaration of November 2, 1917, and the British military campaign to conquer Palestine from the

Mărculeşti is a small village in Bessarabia in Moldavia. It is home to 2,000 people at the most. In 1812, after yet another turf war between Russia and Turkey in southeastern Europe, Bessarabia came under Russian control. In 1837, the Russians established Mărculeşti on the property of a landowner named Simeon Starov. It was meant

“The Tel Aviv municipality published an announcement yesterday regarding the poet Bialik’s arrival in Jaffa,” the Do’ar Hayom newspaper reported on March 26, 1924, regarding Hayyim Nahman Bialik’s arrival in the Land of Israel. “A huge crowd came to the train station to welcome him.” No speeches were given and “the poet Bialik and his

In 1919, while the dust of war still was settling, the people of Vienna elected the world’s first socialist regime to rule them. Intellectuals and artists filled not only cafes and theaters, but also the corridors of municipal power in a bid to forge a new, utopian world order. More than a few of the

Signs of recovery in the Jewish community combined with internal struggles within the Arab sparked an outbreak of anti-Jewish and anti-British violence in 1929. The riot of 1929 claimed the lives of 133 Jews and left 339 wounded. British efforts to appease the Arab population included a drastic reduction in the number of certificates allowing

My grandmother Lotte had an impressive family tree. It was drawn like a real tree, with generations and generations of the offspring of Rabbi Zeligman, who was born in Prague in 1572, hanging as leaves from the branches. It actually was a large oil painting, which used to hang in the home of my great-grandparents,

The idea of smuggling Jews into Palestine was already around already in the early 1930s, mainly attempts by small groups to cross the northern border from Syria and Lebanon. In July 1934, Haganah tried to smuggle Jews into the land by sea. To do so, they bought an old ship into which they could crowd

The search for her famous husband, Enzio Sereni,  ended when evidence emerged that he been murdered in the Dachau concentration camp in November 1944. In the meantime, Sereni fit in well at the Mossad office in Italy. She spoke the language and was acquainted with the local manners and customs.