top

January 1: Death of Arthur Ruppin.

February 18: 1.228 survivors from Poland who had escaped via the Soviet Union to Teheran (Iran) reach Palestine via the Red Sea and the Suez Canal. Among them are 720 children (most of them orphans) are are nicknamed "The Teheran children" and the question of whose education is the subject of the public controversy in the country. They are finally placed in the institutions of the Youth Aliyah.

April 7: Frederick Kisch is killed in a military operation in Tunisia. From 1922 Kisch is head of the Zionist executive in Jerusalem.

April 29: The British search the Jewish Agency recruitment office in Tel Aviv. Relations between the Yishuv and the British deteriorate.

May 22: The first of the Yishuv parachutist in the British army, Peretz Rosenberg, is dropped into Yugoslavia. On 1 October, the first parachutists will be dropped into Romania.
There will be 32 volunteers (among them three girls) who will be parachuted into several southern European countries under Nazi occupation during 1943/44. The mission, which is organized by the Jewish Agency and British intelligence, involves spying, sabotage and assistance to the partisans. It also includes the Zionist mission, encouragement, aid and rescue operations for the Jewish communities. 12 of those parachuted into occupied Europe are taken prisoner by the enemy, seven of whom were executed: Hannah Szenes, Enzo Sereni, Rafael Weiss, Zvi Ben Yaakov, Peretz Goldstein, Haviva Reik and Abba Berdichev,

The Jewish Agency reopens the recruitment office in Tel Aviv.

June 15: The Yishuv announces a general strike to protest Allied inaction in the rescue of European Jews.

In 1943 the Jewish Agency sets up the Joint Rescue Committee to find ways to help the Jews of Europe during WWII. In 1943 and 1944 the Committee will operate in Istanbul.

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: Eliezer Kaplan.

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

January 21: The first Palmach sea course begins near Caesarea.

March: Cooperation between Palmach and the British army ends after the British remove weapons from Kibbutz Mishmar Haemek.

April 23: High Commissioner Sir Harold MacMichael announces a comprehensive postwar economic plan which is based on the foundations of the White Paper.

April 19: Itamar Ben Avi, first Hebrew child and son of Eliezer Ben Yehuda, dies in the U. S.

May 12: A stronghold is set up on the borders of the Western Negev, the first of three "observation points" which are installed there in order to investigate the chances of the development and settlement in three areas of the Northern Negev. The second observation post is Revivim, the third Bet Eshel.

July: A new radio weekly program "Hagalgal" begins.

A new daily newspaper, "Mishmar" appears, sponsored by Hashomer Hatzair. It will be later renamed "Al Hamishmar".

August 12: The trial against two members of the Haganah, Avraham Reichlin and Leib Sirkin, begins. On 27 September they are sentenced to terms of imprisonment of 10 and 7 years for having transported a large quantity of rifles and ammunition from Egypt to Haifa.

October 2: The British stiffen their attitude towards the Haganah and the Yishuv. Kibbutz Hulda is searched for weapons.

October 13: Death of Hebrew poet Saul Tchernichovsky.

November 1: Twenty Lehi prisoners escape the Latrun detention camp through a tunnel they dug.

November 16: Kibbutz Ramat Hakovesh is searched for arms. The kibbutz members resist and a violent confrontations ensues. One member is killed, dozens are wounded and many are arrested.

November 18: All Jewish daily newspapers print the identical headline which is not submitted to the censor in advance: "Brutal Act in a Jewish Settlement - Police Assault on Kibbutz Ramat Hakovesh."

November 19: In response to the breach of the censorship regulations, the British order the suspension of "Davar" and "Haboker" for two weeks. All the other papers cease publication in solidarity for 11 days.

December 1: Menachem Begin is appointed new commander of Etzel.

Nazi Germany and World War II in 1943.

January: Mordechai Anielewicz (1919-1943), leads the first armed resistance in the Warsaw Ghetto.

The Nazis round up more than 4,000 Jews in Marseille for deportation under Action Tiger.

The Italians refuse to cooperate with the Nazis in rounding up the Jews living in the Nazi-controlled zone of France.

With the advancing of the Russians on the eastern front, the Nazis decide to destroy the evidence of mass murder. SS Colonel Paul Blobel commands the personnel which is known as the Blobel Commando or Special Commando 1005.

February: Eight Jews from Finland are deported to Auschwitz. Thereafter, Finland refuses to agree to the Nazi request for the deportation of any of its more than 2.000 Jews.

Bulgaria allows the Nazis to deport 11.000 Jews from the former Yugoslav region of Macedonia and the former Greek region of Thrace.

The Hungarian government refuses to comply with the Nazi request for 10.000 Hungarian Jews to be forced laborers in the copper mines at Bor, Yugoslavia.

March: Bulgaria releases all of its Jews taken into custody for deportation.

Trude Neumann, daughter of Theodor Herzl, dies of starvation in the Theresienstadt ghetto.

The Nazis begin the deportation of more than 48.000 Jews from Salonika, Greece, for extermination in Poland.

The first of four gas chambers and crematoria begins operation in Auschwitz II. 1, 500.000 Jews are murdered there.

The Joint Emergency Committee on European Jewish Affairs is organized.

The third and last part of the "Oneg Shabbat" archive of the Warsaw ghetto is buried in a bunker on Swietojerska Street. The next day, the Nazis begin the destruction of the ghetto using SS troops led by General Jürgen Stroop.1.200 Jewish fighters, led by Mordechai Anielewicz, resist and in the Warsaw ghetto uprising hold off the Nazis for five weeks.

May: Mordechai Anielewicz is killed in the command bunker in 18 Mila Street.

General Jürgen Stroop reports that "there is no more Jewish quarter in Warsaw." ("Es gibt keinen jüdischen Wohnbezirk in Warschau mehr.")

SS doctor Joseph Mengele arrives in Auschwitz.

Heinrich Himmler orders the liquidation of the ghettoes in Nazi-occupied Poland.

July: The Nazis establish the concentration camp Bergen-Belsen near Hannover in Germany.

The Jewish public in the Vilna ghetto demand that the underground surrender their leader Yitzhak Wittenberg to the Nazis, fearing liquidation of the entire ghetto.

August: Seven hundred Jewish prisoners at Treblinka stage a revolt.

The Nazis begin the final action to destroy the Bialystok ghetto.

Jews from Bialystok are the last of 840.000 Jews to be killed at Treblinka.

September: Nahum Goldmann of the World Jewish Congress asks the State Department for help in providing food and medicine to Jews still alive in Poland, Czechoslovakia, and the Balkans. The State Department refuses.

There is armed Jewish resistance to the liquidation of the Tarnow ghetto.

Beginning at the end of September, and over a three-week period, Danish sea captains and fishermen ferry about 7.000 Danish Jews and about 700 Christians married to Jews in neutral Sweden.

October: Jewish prisoners at the Sobibor camp revolt.

October: Aron Menczer, head of the Youth Aliyah School in Vienna is murdered in Auschwitz. Be Strong and Courageous.

1.015 Italian Jews, seized in Rome, are deported to Auschwitz. Pope Pius XII orders assistance given to the remaining 4.715. They are given sanctuary in the Vatican and in monasteries and convents.

November: The Riga ghetto is liquidated.

December: Felix Nussbaum (1904-1944), German artist, paints "Self-Portrait with Jewish Identity Card" while in hiding from Germans in Brussels.

During 1943, the Nazis murdered 500.000 Jews.

J. Robert Oppenheimer (1904-1967), U. S. physicist, becomes director of the laboratories in Los Alamos and is in charge of the construction of the first atomic bomb.

Bruno Bettelheim (1903-1990), Austrian psychoanalyst drawing on his experiences at Dachau and Buchenwald concentration camps in 1938, writes "Individual and Mass Behavior in Extreme Situations". He describes the Nazi efforts to dehumanize victims.

Richard Rodgers (1902-1979) writes the music and Oscar Hammerstein II, the lyrics for "Oklahoma!".

Selman A. Waksman (1888-1973), U. S. microbiologist, discovers the antibiotic streptomycin. It is the first real cure for tuberculosis.

George de Hevesy (1885-1966) is awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry.

Otto Stern (1888-1969), U. S. physicist, is awarded the Nobel Prize in physics for his work on the magnetic momentum of molecular beams.