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January 12: The vessel "Poseidon" brings 65 illegal immigrants who disembark on the shore of Avihayil. It is the first of the ships which reach Palestine in 1938/39, first under the command of the Halutz and later under that of the "Immigration Office" of the Haganah.

March 1: High Commissioner Sir Arthur Wauchope asks the Jewish Agency to write out for him, as a farewell present, the words to the Hatikvah.

April 15: The Executive of the Jewish Agency is informed that the British authorize a labor immigration schedule of 1.000 immigration certificates until 30 September 1938.

June: The Jewish Agency participates in the costs of the Special Night Squads. It pays some of the soldiers salaries, funds a training course, gives a supplement to the company commanders, helps with provisions, vehicles and horses, and covers the costs of constructing barracks and stables.

June: The Jewish Agency issues a "Memorandum on the Development of the Jewish National Home, 1937."

July 7: Death of Ephraim Fischel Rotenstreich. Born in 1882, he is a member of the Polish Senate from 1922 to 1929 and of the "Simi" (1929-1935). From 1935 until his death he is a member of the Executive of the Jewish Agency and lives in Palestine.

July 24: A voluntary tax, "Kofer Hayishuv" is introduced. The state of continuing warfare involves the Haganah in large financial outlay and investments for the arming of settlements, the leveling of approach roads, etc. Even when the Jewish Agency increases its budget for this purpose two or threefold from year to year, the costs cannot be met. The voluntary tax is a fund to finance defense costs and is administered by a joint executive made up of various groups in the Yishuv.

July/August:The Jewish Agency condemns the bombings. Many refuse first to believe that the terrorists are Jews.

Moshe Shertok, head of the political department of the Jewish Agency pays a visit to the Arab village of Ein Sinia near Ramallah where he lived as a child.

The Jewish Agency appeals to the British government to allow an additional 21,000 German Jewish children to enter Palestine. The British refuse.

The Jewish Agency from the British point of view.

In 1938, some 15,000 immigrants arrive in Palestine with permit.

In late 1938 the Mossad Aliyah Bet is established as an arm of the Haganah under the leadership of Shaul Avigur (Meirov) with Jewish Agency support. The Mossad will be responsible for smuggling Jews out of countries where they are endangered and bringing them to Palestine in defiance of the British restrictions on Jewish immigration. After the creation of the state the Mossad will continue to operate as part of the Jewish Agency.

About 8,000 immigrants reach Palestine in the years 1922 - 1938 "illegally" - via the "haapala", or illegal immigration, set up to fight against the quotas.

17 settlements are established.

Chairman of the Jewish Agency Executive: David Ben Gurion.

Treasurer of the Jewish Agency: Eliezer Kaplan.

Chairman Youth Aliyah Department: Henrietta Szold.

Chairman Settlement Department: Dr. Maurice Hexter.

Chairman of the Immigration Department: Eliahu Dobkin and Moshe Shapira.

January 4: The British appoint a new commission of inquiry: the Woodhead Commission.

January 13: The Rockefeller Museum opens in Jerusalem.

February 28: Repulsion of an Arab attack of kibbutz Tirat Zvi.

March 1: High Commissioner Sir Arthur Wauchope ends his term of office and leaves Palestine.

March 3: The new high commissioner, Sir Harold MacMichael arrives in Palestine.

March 21: Creation of kibbutz Hanita, the best-known Homa U'Migdal kibbutz and a symbol of Zionism.

April 11: Palestine statement of the British government.

April 21: The British arrest three Etzel members from Rosh Pina who fired on an Arab bus.

May 29: Along the Syrian and Lebanese border begins the construction of the Taggart Wall.

June: Charles Orde Wingate establishes the Special Night Squads consisting of Haganah fighters and British soldiers trained to combat Arab terror. Following the establishment of the mobile patrols in the Jerusalem area, the creation of the Special Night Squads mark an important stage in the mastering of night fighting techniques by Jewish soldiers. The next stage will be the Field Companies.

June 3: The British sentence Shlomo Ben Yosef and Avraham Shein, Etzel members from Rosh Pina, to death for firing on an Arab bus and for possession of weapons. On 24 June, Shein's sentence will be commuted to life imprisonment.

June 23: Session of the Permanent Mandates Commission.

June 29: The British execute Shlomo Ben Yosef, the first Jew executed by the authorities and thus becoming the mythic hero and martyr of Etzel. (Ben Gurion on the execution: "I am not shocked that a Jew was hanged in Palestine. I am ashamed of the deed that led to the hanging.") Etzel reacts by carrying out operations against the Arab population during which tens of people are killed.

Violent incidents increase from the first week of July and will go on through the next months.

July 6: An Etzel operative dressed as an Arab places tow large milk cans filled with TNT and shrapnel in the Arab market in downtown Haifa. The subsequent explosions kill 21 and wound 52.

July 10: Alexander Zaid, one of the first Jewish settlers, is murdered.

July 15: Another bomb kills 10 Arabs and wounds more than 30 in David Street in Jerusalem's Old City.

July 25: A second bomb in the Haifa market kills 39 Arabs and injures 70.

August 26: A bomb in Jaffa's vegetable market kills 24 Arabs and wounds 39.

October 2: Tiberias Night. An Arab band penetrates into the Kiryat Shmuel neighborhood and kills 19 Jews, among them 11 children.

November 9: The report of the Woodhead Commission is published.

December: The Arab Revolt deteriorates to blood feuds and civil war among Arab clans. The Nashashibi family organizes the Peace Bands, who initiated campaigns of counterterror against the Mufti and the Arab Higher Committee. During the Arab Revolt more Arabs are killed than Jews or Englishmen.

Mandatory report for 1938.

Nazi Germany in 1938.

March: The Nazis impound Sigmund Freud's passport and take his money in order to prevent him and his family from leaving Austria.

April: German Jews are required to inform authorities of their property worth over 5.000 marks.

The Nazi Party newspaper "Völkischer Beobachter", begins a new antisemitic campaign. "Jews, abandon all hope. Our net is so fine that there is not one hole through which you can slip."

Within one month of the Nazi occupation, more than 500 Austrian Jews commit suicide. Among them Egon Friedell.

May: Hungary adopts the first Jewish law.

June: The Nazis require the registration and marking of German Jewish-owned businesses.

July: A conference on the German refugee problem convenes at Evian.

München's main synagogue is demolished on Adolf Hitler's express orders.

Licenses of German Jewish physicians are withdrawn.

August: Nürnberg's main synagogue and communal center are demolished by the Nazis.

Finland refuses to permit 53 Austrian Jewish refugees arriving by sea to disembark and orders their return to Germany because the official in the Finnish embassy in Vienna gave entry visas without obtaining governmental permission.

German Jews are ordered to use only Jewish first names. Those with Aryan first names have to substitute "Israel" or "Sarah" for their first names.

SS Officer Adolf Eichmann establishes a Center for Jewish Emigration (Zentralstelle für jüdische Auswanderung) in Vienna to supervise Jewish emigration.

September: The Italian government passes "racial" legislation against the Jews.

Licenses of German Jewish lawyers are withdrawn.

October: The Nazis require the stamping of the letter "J" on all passports of German Jews.

At the end of October, 15.000 Jews living in Germany and with Polish citizenship and returned to the Polish border. Poland does not allow them to enter and they are held in the no-man's-land. After international public opinion is aroused, some are permitted to enter Poland, some are sent back to Germany, some are taken to concentration camps.

November: Herschel Grynszpan assassinates Ernst vom Rath, counselor at the German embassy in Paris. He declares that he avenged the injustice to his parents who were expelled to Poland.

November 9-10: Under the pretext of retaliation of the Vom Rath assassination, the "Kristallnacht" (Night of the Broken Glass") pogroms occur in Germany and Austria.

December: The British cabinet decides to allow 10.000 German Jewish children to enter England on the condition that refugee organizations agree to maintain them.

The Nazis require the Aryanization and (or) liquidation of German Jewish-owned retail businesses.

Jewish children are prohibited from attending German public schools.

The remaining 6.000 Jews of Danzig develop a plan with the Nazi government to leave the city by May 1939.

Irving Berlin's song "God Bless America" is sung for the first time and will soon be considered America's second national anthem.

Eugene Ormandy (1899-1985) becomes the music director and principal conductor of the Philadelphia Orchestra.

Jery Siegel and Joe Shuster introduce "Superman".

Mordechai Gebirtig (1877-1942) Yiddish folk singer and composer, writes "Undser Shtetl Brent", after the pogrom in Przytyk (1936).

Harry Torczyner (1866-1975), Israeli philologist and Bible scholar, writes "The Lachish Letters", in which he deciphers a collection of Hebrew texts from the biblical period.

Lise Meitner (1878-1968), Austrian physicist, and her nephew, Otto Robert Frisch, discuss the former research of Otto Hahn and Fritz Strassmann. They realize that Hahn and Strassmann achieved nuclear fission by splitting the uranium atom resulting in a tremendous release of energy.