This week in Jewish history: Jerusalem seized, Nazi death camps begin

Dec. 6, 1987: 

On the eve of a summit between Russian presidents Mikhail Gorbachev and US president Ronald Reagan, more than 250,000 people marched on Washington in support of the right of Soviet Jews to emigrate.

Dec. 7, 1941: 

Transports set out for Chelmno, Poland, the first extermination camp, which began its program of mass murder using poison gas the following day. Of the six million Jewish men, women, and children murdered by the Nazis and their collaborators during the Holocaust, more than three million were killed in the extermination camps, most infamous among them Auschwitz-Birkenau, over the next three and a half years.

7 Kislev, 3758 (4 BCE): 

Yahrzeit of King Herod the Great, king of Judea, under the protection of Rome from 37 BCE until his death. Despite the fact that he built extensively (such as the fortress of Masada, the port of Caesarea, and expanding the Second Temple) and developed trade with other countries, his cruel reign led to the anniversary of this date being proclaimed a holiday in the 1st-century list called Megillat Ta’anit (The Scroll of Fasting). 

Dec. 9, 1868: 

Birthday of Fritz Haber, German physical chemist who won the Nobel Prize in 1918 for his discovery of a method to produce ammonia inexpensively, which is vital for agricultural fertilizers, explosives, and many other industrial uses. Millions of people are alive today because Haber’s discovery helped dramatically boost agricultural production.

Dec. 10, 1999: 

An international panel of historians declared that “neutral” Switzerland was guilty of acting as an accomplice to the Holocaust by refusing to accept thousands of fleeing Jews, instead sending them back to certain death by the Nazis.

Dec. 11, 1917: 

General Edmund Allenby, head of the Egyptian Expeditionary Force of the British Army, triumphantly entered Jerusalem, ending 400 years of Turkish rule.

Dec. 12, 1920: 

The Histadrut HaOvdim (General Labor Federation) was founded in pre-state Israel by Berl Katznelson, who combined various labor groups to form a federation. Today, it has over 800,000 members. 

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