Found guilty of assault and breach of the peace, Frederick Heath, a 27-year-old machinist, was sentenced in City Court here yesterday to six months in jail and $100 fine for attacking a 65-year-old rabbi on a train.
The assaulted rabbi, Samuel Steinberg, who came to the United States from Hungary six years ago, said that he was reluctant to appear against the defendant. “I have no vengeance in my heart,” he said. “But to turn the other cheek might encourage other attacks on my people at a time when millions of men and women are fighting racial discrimination and persecution. I owe an obligation to Jewish mankind. Both the witnesses and I know very well that the young man was not intoxicated.”
The attack took place last Sunday in a New York, New Haven & Hartford train on route from New York to Stamford. The rabbi lost most of his beard. He was also beaten around the head and punched in the face. A soldier sitting behind the rabbi floored the assailant, who coupled his assaults with a stream of profane, anti-Semitic remarks, and other passengers sat on him until the train reached Stamford where the railroad police detained Heath and handed him over to local detectives.
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.
