A 26-year-old Rabbi, whose skull was fractured in a beating by a gang of youths on the Lower East Side Thursday night, was reported to be in satisfactory condition today at Beth Israel Hospital. Rabbi Julius Oppenheimer told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that he expects to go home tomorrow. The beating occurred after a riotous meeting of a Lower East Side school board at P.S. 134.
Rabbi Oppenheimer, who told the JTA that he was an ordained but not practicing Rabbi, said that he was not involved in that meeting. He said that he had been taking examinations all day at Long Island University in Brooklyn and had just emerged from the subway at East Broadway on his way home a few blocks away when he noticed a gang of youths running along the street with clubs in their hands.
“I remember running across East Broadway and suddenly being cornered by several youths,” he said. “I remember one of them saying, ‘There’s a Jew. Beat him.'” Rabbi Oppenheimer said he was left lying unconscious on the sidewalk and regained consciousness some time later at Gouverneur Hospital a few blocks away. He was later transferred to Beth Israel Hospital further uptown. Rabbi Oppenheimer was one of many passersby injured by gangs of youths who began roaming the streets of the Lower East Side area, hitting at bystanders with clubs, following the meeting at P.S. 134, as police cars raced through the area breaking up crowds.
The meeting was the first attended by a new board for District One which had a majority opposed to Luis Fuentes, the district superintendent who has been accused by Jewish organizations of public expressions of anti-Semitism and other types of bigotry. Fuentes was stripped of many of his powers by the new board.
Fights broke out repeatedly in the audience during the meeting, which was attended also by 60 members of the Jewish Defense League who marched into the school shouting slogans in favor of the new board. Police and community workers kept the JDL members and Fuentes’ supporters apart.
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.
