How Ol’ Blue Eyes managed to trick the FBI, make a special delivery down at the docks and help the Jewish state-in-the-making…
How France Nearly Snatched Half of Jerusalem From Britain Over Lunch
If not for a crucial lunchtime intervention by General Edmund Allenby, who apparently had his mouth full, half of Jerusalem could have come under French control. In fact, had Allenby remained silent, there might never have been a British Mandate in Palestine, not to mention a State of Israel…
Heinrich Himmler’s Books at the National Library of Israel
Even a mass murderer can have a personal library. Some of the books from Heinrich Himmler’s private collection, containing his signature, can be found today at the National Library of Israel. How did they get here?
Jews in Keffiyehs? – The Headdress That Became a Symbol
Nowadays, people identify the keffiyeh as the unequivocal symbol of the Palestinian national movement. However, going back a few decades, we find documentation of senior members of the Zionist movement wearing the traditional headdress as well as members of the Palmach and even soldiers in the IDF. What changed along the way?
A Farewell Letter From the Besieged Jewish Quarter
“Remember me in happiness”: The last testament of Esther Cailingold, a soldier and teacher who fell in the battle for the Jewish Quarter in Jerusalem’s Old City during Israel’s War of Independence
Israel, 1948: Vidal Sassoon in Combat
Not long before becoming the world’s most famous hairstylist and building a business empire, Sassoon fought for Israeli independence. He lost friends, gained confidence, went weeks without a shower, and literally never learned the Hebrew word for ‘retreat’…
An Egyptian Soldier’s Diary From the Yom Kippur War
Naji Ali, an Egyptian sergeant, documented a total of five days during the fateful Middle East conflict of 1973, leaving a chilling record of the war’s brutality and the treatment of captured Israeli soldiers. The historic document recently surfaced in the collections of the National Library of Israel
The Yemenite Jews Who Arrived in the Holy Land in 1881
Shortly before what is known as “The First Aliyah”, a group of Jews from Yemen arrived in the Land of Israel. Several dozen Yemenite families had embarked on a long and arduous journey to settle in Jerusalem. Once there, they encountered hostility, arrogance, and deprivation on the part of their fellow Jews. Where did they turn and who came to their aid?
A Haredi Holocaust Hero in the Congo
“I am happy and proud that our mission is spreading the idea of loving one another, loving humanity, without paying attention to skin color.”
When Nazi Swastikas Were Paraded in Downtown Tel Aviv
Tel Aviv’s Purim parades between 1933 and 1935 evolved from joyous celebrations into full-on protests against Nazi Germany
