The State Department is being flooded with telegrams from American relatives of Jews residing in Palestine, the Jewish Daily Bulletin correspondent is informed. A special emergency clerical staff has been arranged in the State Department to deal with the handling and answering of these inquiries, which are being forwarded to the American Consul in Jerusalem promptly upon receipt by the State Department.
Inquiries should be addressed to the United States Department of State, Washington, D. C., and care taken to include the address of the person making the inquiry as well as full particulars regarding the name and last known place of residence of the person in Palestine concerning whom inquiry is made. Scrolls of the Law from the synagogue were rejected.
“Our demand to permit Jews to dig the graves for the fallen because it is a religious rite were likewise refused. The graves for the martyrs were dug by policemen and convicts. Only ten Jews were permitted to accompany the dead to the cemetery.
JEWISH WITNESSES SILENCED
“A Hebron government official told me that an investigation was started. The minutes however were made in Arabic only and the Jews who were called to testify, not understanding the Arabic transcription of their testimony, were compelled to sign. One Jewish witness who began describing the true courst of events was prevented from continuing. I wanted to secure a photograph of the victims, but was refused permission to do so, the police saying, ‘You want it for propaganda.’ A representative of the American Consulate who was especially interested in the American victims was likewise prevented from taking photographs.
“Arab physicians were indifferent to the cries of the wounded. The position improved only when a senior medical officer, Dr. MacQueen, arrived from Jerusalem,” Rabbi Slonim stated.
Several Hebron Jews who witnessed the massacre and are now in Jerusalem went insane from the horrors they witnessed.
Other witnesses, now refugees in Jerusalem, corroborate the narrative of Rabbi Slonim. They relate that on Friday morning the Sephardic rabbis, Kastilli and Franko, came to the Hebron District Officer asking him for protection of the Jewish population. He told them that “there is nothing to be afraid of.” However, at half past three in the afternoon an Arab crowd began to break windows in Jewish houses and Samuel Rosenholz was killed and another Jew wounded. The police then scattered the crowd. Friday night passed quietly.
On Saturday morning local Arabs as well as residents from near and distant villages, Arabs armed with clubs, swords and daggers, began breaking into Jewish homes.
HORRIBLE SCENES, BESTIAL ATTACKS
At first, the eye witnesses relate, the Arab pogromists demanded only women. When the husband cried out, they choked him. Everywhere, the hooligans breaking into the homes, robbed the inhabitants of money and demanded the surrender of any promisory notes held by merchants against Arabs. Among the hooligans were debtors of the merchants attacked. In one house they found a one-legged man. They violated his daughter, killed her by slashing the abdomen. Once the crippled father cri-
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(Continued from Page 3) ed out, they cut out his eyes. Hearing the cries the girl’s aunt came. They cut, off her hands.
RABBI HASSOUN KILLED BY ARAB FRIEND
The Sephardic Rabbi Hassoun was killed by his former Arab friend, Shedai, who made sure to obtain his promisory notes held by the Rabbi in the amount of £700 and £700 in cash. The Rabbi’s house was then set afire.
Rabbi Moses Kastili was burned alive. His assailants made sure to come into possession of £4000 in cash and a number of promisory notes.
In another house in Hebron the hooligans choked a husband to death and violated his wife. When his father rushed at the cry of his son, he was murdered as soon as he entered the house, the hooligans cutting off his head. A Jewish neighbor who rushed to the rescue of the unfortunate family was killed by planting him in the doorway and smashing the door on him repeatedly.
IN THE HOUSE OF THE BANK MANAGER SLONIM 18 SLAIN INCLUDING AMERICAN BOYS
The greatest bestiality was enacted by the hooligans in the house of A. D. Slonim, son of Rabbi Jacob Joseph Slonim, the manager of the local branch of the Anglo-Palestine Bank.
Mr. Slonim was the most popular Jewish resident of Hebron and had many friends and acquaintances among the local Arabs.
About 40 Jews, seeing the danger to their lives, sought shelter in his house. Saturday noon when the hooligans reached the Slonim house they could not break through the door. They broke in through the roof, murdering 18 persons and violating the women there. Zalman Wilensky, the secretary of the Slobodka Yeshiva who was one of those seeking shelter in Slonim’s house together with his wife was killed on the lap of his wife. Mrs. Wilensky was killed later. Wilensky was thirty-five years old, a native of Koszowa, Poland.
The buildidng of the Slobodka Yeshiva where 180 students studied for the rabbinate was looted. The Scrolls of the Law housed there were partly torn and partly stolen.
When the District Officer appeared amidst the mob asking the hooligans to disperse, they refused to obey. A Jewish boy who came to police headquarters asking for help was killed in the presence of the police. An English police officer shot his murderer. The hooligans then overpowered the Englishman who was saved by other members of the force.
ONLY TWO WAYS OF ESCAPE
There were only two ways for a Jew in Hebron on Saturday, August 24, 1929, to escape death, either to implore his Arab friends to hide him somewhere or to cover himself with the blood of the wounded and thus be mistaken by the pogromists for dead. One Arab woman hid thirty Jews in her home.
Cases of multilation and rape were numerous.
AMERICAN BOY’S NARRATIVE
One of the Harbaiter brothers of Brooklyn who escaped with injuries relates that on Saturday morning he barricaded his house in anticipation of the attack. He approached an English police officer for protection. The officer detailed to him an Arab policeman, but as soon as the officer walked away the policeman disappeared. Then the Arabs launched the attack on the house, wounding Harbaiter seriously and mutilating his colleague Chaim Krasner.
HOW CHAIM KRASNER DIED
Chaim Krasner of Chicago whose throat was cut died eight hours later. Harbaiter, whose three fingers were cut off, escaped death only because he was taken by the pogromists for dead. The police came later. Harbaiter asked for medical aid but received it only after five hours.
THE ATROCITIES AT MOTZA
Refuges from Motza relate the following particulars concerning the murder of the Makleff family. The father, mother, a son and two daughters were murdered. The older daughter was raped, the mother was terribly mutilated. The older son escaped because he was on duty in the Jerusalem post office where he is employed as a clerk.
The British Jew, Harold Weiner, a great Oriental scholar, was murdered in his house in Jerusalem by the Arabs on Friday, August 23 at the beginning of the riots. Mr. Weiner was a friend of the Arabs and spent large sums of money on Arab education. His articles on Oriental studies were published in the bibliographical review of the Jewish National Library.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
