HOLOCAUST DAY: Remembering Kristallnacht

 Nadene Goldfoot                                            

    Destroyed Fasanenstrasse  Synagogue in Berlin, Germany from Kristallnacht

Today is Holocaust Day in Israel and wherever their ambassadors are residing, for they can't forget this day of remembrance.   Jews in Germany were reminded of who they were to the Germans on November 9, 1938, when the government ordered that all Jewish stores, homes, synagogues be destroyed.  The glass panes on their store were all broken, so this day is also remembered as the day of broken glass. It was called Kristallnacht.   

My uncle by marriage's father was forced to clean the streets, even though he was a vet from WWI.  It didn't matter.  He was a Jew.   

Yet people here in the USA were watching the news about the newsworthy killing of a black man, Tyre Nichols in Memphis, Tennessee by 5 black policemen at a traffic stop, something that has happened to more than one black male in the past few years. They had slipped back to their gang days and still were the Scorpion Gang, evidently since that has been mentioned. Gang behavior brings out gang rapes and gang tough guys, forgetting they were the police.  Is that what happens with anti-Semitism?  

 Nothing was mentioned about remembering the 6 million Jews that were slaughtered simply because they were Jews.  

Kristallnacht was  a pogrom against Jews carried out by the Nazi Party's Sturmabteilung (SA) paramilitary and Schutzstaffel (SS) paramilitary forces along with some participation from the Hitler Youth and German civilians throughout Nazi Germany on 9–10 November 1938. The German authorities looked on without intervening. The name Kristallnacht (literally 'Crystal Night') comes from the shards of broken glass that littered the streets after the windows of Jewish-owned stores, buildings and synagogues were smashed. The pretext for the attacks was the assassination of the German diplomat Ernst vom Rath by Herschel Grynszpan, a 17-year-old German-born Polish Jew living in Paris.  

Estimates of fatalities caused by the attacks have varied. Early reports estimated that 91 Jews had been murdered.

Jewish homes, hospitals and schools were ransacked as attackers demolished buildings with sledgehammers. Rioters destroyed 267 synagogues throughout Germany, Austria and the Sudetenland. Over 7,000 Jewish businesses were damaged or destroyed, and 30,000 Jewish men were arrested and incarcerated in concentration camps. British historian Martin Gilbert wrote that no event in the history of German Jews between 1933 and 1945 was so widely reported as it was happening, and the accounts from foreign journalists working in Germany drew worldwide attention. The Times of London observed on 11 November 1938: "No foreign propagandist bent upon blackening Germany before the world could outdo the tale of burnings and beatings, of blackguardly assaults on defenceless and innocent people, which disgraced that country yesterday."

And what did our president Franklin D. Roosevelt say about this?  Nothing.  

The United States continued to keep on having good relations with Germany

from 1933 to 1941 when they entered the war.  The USA was in a Depression

and evidently that's all that worried him.  

Immigration of Jews never reached the full potential of allowed 

German  immigration. It remained way below the allowed number of

entries.  Roosevelt did nothing to help the Jews.  

American Visa checkers in Germany found reason to not allow 

most Jews a visa.  

Evidently the US Virgin Islands opened their door to Jews after Kristallnacht

Jewish doctors were known to take advantage of this though most were 

scared off with reports of jungles, wild animals, etc. and they benefitted the

native population with medical care, education, etc.  

The ship, St. Louis with 938 Jewish passengers had been turned back when

it arrived in Cuba, and was returned to Germany where the Jews died.  

The USA continued to turn away Jews, saying they only had tourist visas for

most places, and wouldn't accept them.  Jews were turned down entrance to 

the USA because they had to have a home, and they were homeless.  So

they were returned to Germany.  It was a deliberate Catch 22.  

The Germans used a Nazi's murder as their excuse.  Vom Rath was born in Frankfurt am Main to an aristocratic family, the son of a high-ranking public official, Gustav vom Rath. He attended a school in Breslau, and then studied law at Bonn, Munich and Königsberg, until 1932, when he joined the Nazi Party and became a career diplomat. In April 1933 he became a member of the SA, the party's paramilitary unit. In 1935, after a posting in Bucharest, he was posted to the German embassy in Paris. Regarding the "Jewish Question", Rath expressed regret that the German Jews had to suffer but argued that the anti-Semitic laws were "necessary" to allow the Volksgemeinschaft to flourish.

             Herschel Grynszpan after arrest November 7th

On the morning of 7 November 1938, Polish-German Jew Herschel Grynszpan, 17, went to the German embassy in Paris and asked to speak with an embassy official. After he had learned of the deportation of his parents from Germany to the Polish frontier, Grynszpan shot Ernst vom Rath, the third secretary of the German embassy in Paris. He shot the 29-year-old Vom Rath five times, mortally wounding him with bullets to the spleen, stomach and  pancreas.  He had a postcard on him written to his parents that read, "With God's help. My dear parents, I could not do otherwise, may God forgive me, the heart bleeds when I hear of your tragedy and that of the 12,000 Jews. I must protest so that the whole world hears my protest, and that I will do. Forgive me."  Remember, anti-Semitic acts had been happened since 1933

 in Germany. In the first half of 1938, numerous laws were passed restricting Jewish economic activity and occupational opportunities. In July 1938, a law was passed (effective January 1, 1939) requiring all Jews to carry identification cards. On October 28, 17,000 Jews of Polish citizenship, many of whom had been living in Germany for decades, were arrested and relocated across the Polish border. The Polish government refused to admit them so they were interned in “relocation camps” on the Polish frontier.

Germans pass broken window of Jewish-owned shop (USHMM Photo)

Among the deportees was Zindel Grynszpan, who had been born in western Poland and had moved to Hanover, where he established a small store, in 1911. On the night of October 27, Grynszpan and his family were forced out of their home by German police. His store and the family’s possessions were confiscated and they were forced to move over the Polish border.

Grynszpan’s seventeen-year-old son, Herschel, was living with an uncle in Paris. Herschel received a postcard from his sister Berta describing how the family had been arrested and sent by cattle car at night without food or water to the Polish border. Once they reached the frontier, the SS guards forced the Jews to run, whipping those who were not obedient or quick enough to escape the lash. Inside Poland, the Jews were housed in horse stables still filthy with dung.

The letter infuriated Herschel. He decided to seek revenge for the treatment of his family.  Little did this 17 year old teen realize that this would cause even more Jews to love everything they had including many of their lives.     His revenge harmed all Jews everywhere, though it was bound to happen anyway.  Anti-Semitism was at its height.  As a kid, he had no way of knowing how his act would affect the Jewish people.  

Ironically, Vom Rath was under investigation by the Gestapo because he was suspected of lacking the proper zealotry, particularly toward the Jews. Grynszpan knew nothing about the man except he represented the government that had deported and abused his family. When Vom Rath asked to see the document he was carrying, 

Herschel shouted, “You are a sale boche [filthy kraut] and here, in the name of 12,000 persecuted Jews, is your document!” He then fired five shots at close range, the first two penetrated the diplomat’s stomach, the rest missed. Vom Rath was wounded but still conscious. Herschel seemed surprised he wasn’t dead and stood calmly in the office as the scene grew chaotic.

Herschel was not your typical Ashkenazi German Jew. 

The Grynszpan family was known as Ostjuden ("Eastern Jews") by the Germans and many West European Jews. The "Ostjuden" usually spoke Yiddish and tended to be more religiously observant "Orthodox", impoverished, less educated, and less assimilated than German Jews. Given the Ostjuden situation in Germany, Grynszpan (unlike German Jews, who tended to see themselves as Germans first and Jews second) grew up with an intense sense of Jewishness. He dropped out of school at age 14. Grynszpan was considered by his teachers to be intelligent, if rather lazy, a student who never seemed to try to excel at his studies. He later complained that his teachers disliked him because he was an Ostjude, and he was treated as an outcast both by his German teachers and fellow students. As a child and a teenager, Grynszpan was known for his violent temper and his tendency to respond to antisemitic insults with his fists and was frequently suspended from school for fighting.  Of course, this report comes after the fact of his attack on

 the anti-Semite.

Herschel felt he didn't fit in, a feeling many Blacks might have felt in the USA.  The expression 'Eastern European Jewry' has two meanings. Its first meaning refers to the current political spheres of the Eastern European countries and its second meaning refers to the Jewish communities in Russia and Poland. The phrase 'Eastern European Jews' or 'Jews of the East' (from German: Ostjuden) was established during the 19th century in the German Empire and in the western provinces of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, aiming to distinguish the integrating Jews in Central Europe from those Jews who lived in the East. This feature deals with the second meaning of the concept of Eastern European Jewry- the Jewish groups that lived in Poland, Ukraine, Belarus, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Russia, Romania, Hungary and modern-day Moldova in collective settlement (from Hebrew: Kibbutz- קיבוץ). Many of whom spoke Yiddish. 

Resource:

JBS TV, FDR's Response to Kristallnacht

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kristallnacht#:~:text=Kristallnacht%20(German%20pronunciation%3A%20%5Bk%CA%81%C9%AAs%CB%88talna%CF%87t,)%20paramilitary%20and%20Schutzstaffel%20(SS)

https://perspectives.ushmm.org/item/photograph-of-jews-cleaning-streets-in-vienna

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eastern_European_Jewry

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herschel_Grynszpan

https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/background-and-overview-of-kristallnacht

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernst_vom_Rath#Assassination_and_motives

FARHUD POGROM in Iraq During Holidays-Hanukkah -Jews Without Weapons

Nadene Goldfoot                                                                          

Jews remember that horrid night in Germany where rioting went on from November 9th to the 10th in 1938 which was later called "the Night of Broken Glass", Krystallnacht.
                                                                       

Almost all the synagogues in Germany were attacked and destroyed.  Jews where arrested in wholesale numbers, and then the government took the imposition on the Jewish community of a confiscatory levy, which ended pretty much the hope of maintaining an organized Jewish life there.  Even emigration was limited by the outbreak of WWII in September 1939.                                                                                  

 By September 1941, Jews had to wear the "Jewish Badge" which was highly enforced.
                                                                                 

Haj Amin al-Husseini with top Nazis in Germany 1941

Two days on Shavuot on June 1 and June 2 1941, the Jewish festival marking the giving of the Torah at Mount Sinai which occurs seven weeks after Passover, Nazi sympathizers in Iraq had their own form of a Krystallnacht upon their Jewish population, for the Arabs had become brothers to the Nazis in philosophy.  It was called the Farhud, which means a breakdown of law and order so that life and property are in peril..  
                                                                        

Farhud rioters with knives 

                                                                            

Ibraham Youssef Shaleh, Jewish leader,
 injured during Farhud

Jews had lived in Iraq (Babylonia) and mainly in the city of Baghdad for over 2,400 years since the time of the first Temple of Solomon's destruction  in 597 and 586 BCE when Nebuchadnezzar attacked and took prisoners.   By the time Islam was created, the Muslims had treated the Jews with more tolerance than the Christians had treated Jews who migrated to Europe.  From time to time there had been occurrences, but nothing like what happened to the Baghdadi Jews who bore the brunt of the Farhud. in 1941.  Active in Muslim groups responsible for the Farhud was Mufti Haj Amin Al-Husseini, who was the instigator for riots on Jews in Jerusalem.  

"During the Farhud, the Arabs came with a lot of weapons and destroyed a synagogue.
                            
                                          Jews did not have any weapons. 

 The Arabs came and killed everyone, making mass graves.  The graveside was the size of a house.  The Arabs cut open the stomachs of pregnant women and raped en masse.  If a woman left her house without an abaya (Islamic face covering) they would not be shy and would rape her.  They killed an entire family, a woman, her fiance and his brother.  The information came from a witness who was the neighbor   to all this.  Then the Arabs  cut off the leg of a child and played with the amputated leg."1

Slaughter was not the only commandment they broke during the Farhud.  They stole food such as cheese and jams.  They took clothing from women's closets.  Every bit of belongings they found they took.  Then they burned down the houses and filled up homes with water from the sewers so that they couldn't even live in the burned remains.  The witness had a neighbor who prevented her house from being burned.  Arabs broke the sewers and caused flooding in her home, anyway.  Finally the British came who closed off the sewers and helped to clear out water.  

Is Islam really the religion of peace?  The behavior of these Iraqi Arabs topped the evil from the Nazis during Kristalnacht!  Maybe to Muslims, they think they are peaceful, but riled up in a riot, and they lose all humane control!!  Why did they suddenly become unglued and attack Jews?  Only because their new friends, the Nazis had done this.  
                                                                             

                                                        Hanukkah in Iraq
  Hanukkah was celebrated in a big way in Iraq, it being a prominent holiday, more so than in Israel or the USA.  People knew how to party.  After the Farhud, Jews still, but with great trepidation, celebrated their favorite holiday.  It was still a time when parents gave children presents, though.                                                                    

They started by lighting their big silver community menorah, 

                                                                           

and then their own, for everyone had a menorah.  Then great food came out.  They served zimgula, something like baklava, lefet which is something like beets but white, not red, which was cooked in wine; potato cooba, a fried dish with potatoes on the outside and meat on the inside; sambusak which is made with potatoes inside that is similar to the Indian dish, Samosa.
                                                                         

Everything served was something sweet and arranged on a large table.

For the 1st night, 50 people came to Salima Shachouda's home.  They did the blessings together and sang songs.  People liked to marry during Hanukkah and of course there were special parties just for the brides where sweets, oranges and other delicacies were served.  The celebrating big-time ended when this Mizrachi community made aliyah to Israel, unfortunately.  I hope they bring it back.  It sounded wonderful.  In the meantime, they should go to the Temple Mount where they light a huge Menorah and have lots of Chanukah treats there.

Resource: http://www.jerusalemonline.com/culture-and-lifestyle/lost-civilization-celebrating-hanukkah-in-the-arab-world-17703%20
 http://www.eretzyisroel.org/~jkatz/farhud.html 1
http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Op-Ed-Contributors/The-Farhud-the-riots-against-the-Jews-of-Iraq-313251

Wailing Wall's 1929 Rioting Pogrom in Jerusalem in a Gun-Free Zone Leading to an All Palestine Massacre

Nadene Goldfoot                                                                  

Our concept of a riot in the USA is simply a demonstration, a march, posters, and perhaps people speaking with a mike in their hands.
                                                                               

                                       

Fighting had been going on between the Muslim Arabs and the Jews in Jerusalem over the Wailing Wall-aka Western Wall built by King Herod according to the Jews, and according to the Arab leaders, was part of the Al-Aqsa Mosque, 3rd holiest site in Islam where Muhammad tied his horse, Buraq, before his night journey to heaven.
                                                                       

Painting of Jew Praying at Wailing Wall in 1860

By September 1928,  the Jews angered the Arabs by putting chairs and a mechitza, made of a few wooden frames covered with cloth that was used to separate praying men and women,  at the wall.  To the Arabs, that was a claim of ownership.  Jews had been forbidden to make any construction at the Wall, and seeing this caused them to fear their claim on the site.
                                                                   

Unknown date of photo-like a synagogue at Wall.  

Then, by October 1928, the Grand Mufti, Sherif of Jerusalem by the name of Haj Amin al-Husseini, the big fish in a little pond, had organized a new construction next to and above the Wall.
                                                                     

He had mules go through the praying area who were dropping excrement as they walked, and waste water was thrown on the Jews praying there.  He had appointed the muezzin to call out to pray right next to the Wall, creating noise exactly when the Jews were praying, and Jews pray 3 times a day, so they knew when to do this.  Of course the Jews protested and tensions increased.
                                                                           

The Wailing Wall 1920

By August 14, 1929, things had been so bad that the Haganah and Joseph Trumpeldor held a meeting in Tel Aviv where 6,000 attended who had objected to the 1928 British Commission's conclusion that the Wall was Muslim property. They were appeasing the Arabs because they were more volatile in their demonstrations, I gather.
                                                                           

Painting of Praying Jews at the Wailing Wall (Kotel in Hebrew)

The next day on the 15th  was the fast of Tisha B'Av for Jews.  Captain Jeremiah Halpern led a march to the Wall shouting, "The Wall is ours!"  They raised the Jewish national flag and sang Hatikvah, the Jewish anthem.  They were acting peaceful and had notified the authorities in advance so they did have a police escort to prevent accidents.                                          

 Captain Jeremiah Halpern (also known as Yirmiyahu Halpern and Yirmiyahu Halperin) (b. Smolensk, Russia, 1901; d. Tel Aviv, Israel, 1962) was a Revisionist Zionist leader in Palestine who first came to prominence when he served as aide de camp to Ze'ev Jabotinsky in the 1920s when the latter was head of the Haganah in Jerusalem.

Halpern, a certified ship's captain, was known as Rav Hahovel (captain of the ship) for his role in the development of Jewish seamanship.

 The Arabs then spread rumors, and that's all it took with people in a hot climate.  The rumors were that the Jewish teens had attacked local Arabs and had cursed the name of the Prophet, Muhammad.  We now have hungry Jews marching and feeling desperate to regain the right to pray at the Wall and we have desperate Arabs feeling their Wall is being taken over by 2nd class Jews, for in Arab countries, that's what Jews were, dhimmis, 2nd class citizens with less rights.  How can they now take over the rights and property of the exhalted Arabs?  This was a conundrum for them.
                                                                     

Friday night symbols of Shabbat:
Challah(special bread), candles and wine
along with sumptuous Shabbat dinner 

Friday came-the sabbath for Muslims and the eve of the Sabbath for Jews.  The Arabs heard an inflammatory sermon from the Grand Mufti  really stirring up hatred for Jews, and a demonstration was quickly organized by the Supreme Muslim Council who also marched to the Wall.  Our antagonizer, the Grand Mufti, was told by the  government that this was out of character, that this has never happened before, and that such a demonstration would be a shock to the Jews who regard the Wall as a place of sanctity to them.
                                                                     

The warning went unheeded, and the Arabs burnt prayer books, liturgical fixtures and notes from Jews stuck in between the cracks in the wall which is the custom.  The beadle was injured.  Then the rioting spread to the commercial area of Jerusalem, which was a Jewish section.  The Arab radio and flyers were inflammatory.   Flyers were signed by the "Committee of the Holy Warriors in Palestine" and said that Jews had violated the honor of Islam and declared, "Hearts are in tumult because of these barbaric deeds."  Was it BARBARIC to call out actual historic facts that they had the right to pray there?  The Arabs in the crowd shouted out, "WAR!  JIHAD!  REBELLION!"  The Mufti most likely is the speaker who called out, "Oh Arab nation, the eyes of your brothers in Palestine are upon you, and they awaken your religious feelings and national zealotry to rise up against the enemy who violated the honor of Islam and .....raped the women and murdered widows and babies."  The accusations against Jews were unbelieveable!

Jews did their best to combat terror with terror in their newspaper, Doar HaYom who published a leaflet describing the Muslim march from the 1st hand accounts from Wolfgqang Von Weisl, and they were criticized by the Shaw report, a British report later who accused the paper for their poison of propaganda and put the blame of the riot on them first.                                                                        

Then the worst of the worst started the very next day.  Abraham Mizrachi was stabbed to death by an Arab at the Maccabi grounds near Mea Shearim, in the Bukharan Quarter which happened after a quarrel that began when he tried to retrieve his football from an Arab field.  A Jewish crowd reacted to this by attacking the policeman, so the report said, and then they also attacked nearby Arab homes and wounded those inside.  Mizrachi had died on the 20th of August and his funeral became an anti-Arab demonstration, something we see today that happens at Muslim funerals.
                                                                   

Ariel view of Temple Mount.  The Jewish 2nd Temple of Solomon's site
is under the Muslim mosque today.  All Jews were obliged to come 3 times
a year here to atone, worship-the central shrine of the state of Judah.
Destroyed in 586 BCE, rebuilt by 515 BCE, with a great deal done by
Judah the Maccabee of Chanukah history.  Destroyed again by
Romans in 70 CE.  

The next 4 days, the Jerusalem police reported 12 attacks by Jews on Arabs and 7 attacks by Arabs on Jews.  By August 21st, the population was very excited and there were a lot of false alarms causing local panics in many quarters in Jerusalem but no further incidents occurred.  Arabs were excited and afraid of the Jews.  The authorities tried to keep people calm and stopped demonstrations with their militant attitude.
                                                                               

The outbreak in Jerusalem on Friday, August 23rd was from the beginning  started with the attack by the Arabs on the Jews.  What started it was thousands of Arab villagers who came into Jerusalem from the surrounding countryside to pray at the Temple Mount.  They came with sticks and knives, though.  By 9:30am, Jews were closing up their shops and by 11:00, gunshots were fired on the Temple Mount by Arabs working up the crowd.  The Grand Mufti was called on to calm the mob that had gathered under his window near the Damascus Gate, but his presence caused more instigation and rioting.  By noon, word was out, possibly just a rumor, that Mea She'arim's Jews had killed 2 or 3 Arabs in defense of their lives.  The American consulate documented the event.  Both Americans and Brits noticed that by 12:50, the Arab crowds were up to no good, and possibly murder.  Now Jews living in Mea She'arim were very very religious, and are the opposite types of people who could protect themselves.  It's like a quarter of all rabbis.                                              

By 13:15, Arabs began the massacre of Jews.  The rumor had been that 2 Arabs had been murdered by Jews, and the Arabs started the attack in the Old City of Jerusalem.  Violence spread to all parts of Palestine.  The Brits had fewer than 100 soldiers, 6 armoured cars, and 5 or 6 airplanes in all of Palestine.  They did have 1,500 police, though, but most were Arabs with only a few being Jews, and they also had 175 British officers.  They even had to use their English theology students visiting from the University of Oxford who were deputized.  Meanwhile, many Jews were being killed at the Jaffa Gate and the Brits did nothing about it.  They never fired their guns because, they said later, if they had shot into the Arab crowd, the mob would have turned on them.

Jews did return fire in the Jewish neighborhood of Yemin Moshe, but most of Jerusalem's Jews could not defend themselves or refused to do so.  To make it worse, the Brits refused to hand out weapons to the Jews, so they had had no way to defend themselves.  For Jews, this had been a gun-free zone!
                                                                               

                                                HEBRON MASSACRE
By August 24, 17 Jews were killed in Jerusalem alone.  The worst slaughter happened in the ancient city of Hebron and in Safed.  Jews were also killed in Motza, Kfar Uria, Jerusalem and even in Tel Aviv.  Many isolated attacks happened in smaller Jewish villages where 6 whole villages were completely destroyed.  Along with the killings, the Arabs looted and burned down homes.  In Haifa and Jaffa, the situation grew worse and one police officer warded off an attack on the quarter between Jaffa and Tel Aviv by firing on an Arab crowd.  He was one brave policeman!                                            

The hospitals were attacked.  The Arabs were attacking several.                                                                                                                                                                                                    

Hadassah Medical Center, Jerusalem

    The massacre happened in Hebron on the 24th.  On the 20th, Haganah "Jewish" leaders tried to provide defense for their 600 Jews of Hebron, but the leaders there declined their offers saying that they put their trust in the Arab notables to protect them.  Arab mobs then attacked on the 24th and killed and raped men, women and children besides looting the Jewish property.  They killed 65-68 Jews and wounded 58.  Some of the victims had been tortured or mutilated.  Sir John Chancellor wrote later to his son saying, "The horror of it is beyond words.  In one house I visited, not less than 25 Jewish men and women were murdered in cold blood.  Unspeakable atrocities had occurred in Hebron.  It had been a savage attack, of which no condemnation could be too severe (from Shaw Report), was accompanied by wanton destruction and looting.  Synagogues were desecrated and sacred books were torn and furniture was broken by the Arab rioters.  The Jewish hospital which provided treatment for Arabs, was attacked and ransacked.  The Hadassah Medical Organization operated an infirmary there.  This Beit Hadassah Clinic had 3 floors and the pharmacy and  synagogue were on the top floor.  The rioters destroyed the pharmacy and torched the synagogue and destroyed the Torah scrolls inside.  Was this not a war against the Jewish religion or not?  They had one British officer in town, Mr.Raymond Cafferata, who prevented the outbreak from turning into a general massacre of all the Jews of Hebron.  He killed as many of the murderers as he could, even using his fists when he was bodily attacked.  Reinforcements he called for didn't come till 5 more hours.

There were Arabs of Hebron who were good neighbors to the Jews, however, and they offered their Jewish neighbors sanctuary from the mob by hiding them in their own houses.  Other Jews survived by hiding out in the British police station at Beit Ramon on the outskirts of the city.  When the massacre ended, the surviving Jews were evacuated by the British.
                                                                     

Today's Arab rock throwers at Temple Mount in Jerusalem

A student at the Hebron Yeshiva lost his hand during the attack.  His school had been targeted and attacked.  On the 23rd, Arabs were throwing stones through the windows where only 2 people were inside, another student and the sexton.  The Arab crowd had grabbed this student and stabbed him to death.  The sexton had managed to hide in the nearby well.  The next day, the crowd appeared armed with wooden sticks and axes and attacked and killed 2 more Jewish boys.  One was stoned to death and the other was stabbed.  More than 70 Jews including some Yeshiva students hid in the house of Eliezer Dan Slonim, the son of the Rabbi of Hebron, but they were all massacred by the Arab crowd.  Moses Harbater, 18 year old, was stabbed and 2 of his fingers were cut off.  He saw his friend being mutilated and killed.  Altogether, 42 teachers and students were murdered at the yeshiva.
                                                                             

Today's Uzi sub-machine gun
Only soldiers have guns in Israel, who carry them at all times,
even sleeping with them.  

Jews had no guns, and were not allowed such, but retaliated somehow and did manage to destroy some Arab property where they had been first attacked.  The Imam of a mosque and 6 others were killed by the Jews during this rioting.On the 26th the Nebi Akasha Mosque in Jerusalem was attacked by a group of Jews in retaliation to these events. The mosque was badly damaged and the tombs of the prophets which it contained were desecrated.  (I do not know what prophets these would be, but must have been from the Muslim faith.)  

Later on August 23rd, the Brits armed 41 Jewish special constables, 18 Jewish ex-soldiers and 60 more Jews were issued staves (wooden sticks) for as  a type of defensive arms in Jerusalem.  The Grand Mufti announced now that a great Arab crowd was in the Haram area who were also demanding arms, and felt that by arming some Jews was a breach of faith by the government.  The government denied these rumors but by the 27th of August felt they had to disband and disarm the special Jewish constables.
                                                                           

                                             SAFED (TZFAT) MASSACRE

On the 29th of August at 5:15pm, Arab mobs attacked the Jews of Safed where 45 were killed or wounded, several homes and shops were set on fire, and there was complete destruction of property.
Arabs of Safed and the local surrounding villages were armed with weapons and kerosene tins.  Victims were mutilated and then burned the bodies according to an eyewitness who described the pogrom.  One woman's body was tied to a window and then burned.  Several people were brutally killed.  A schoolteacher, his wife and mother and a lawyer were cut to pieces with knives.  Attackers then entered an orphanage and smashed the children's heads and cut off their hands.  Another victim was stabbed repeatedly and trampled to death.

During the week of riots from August 23rd to August 29th, 7 days, 133 Jews and 116 Arabs were killed and 198 Jews and 232 Arabs were injured.  More than 60 Jews had been killed in Hebron.  The British police had to finally open fire to prevent outrages in Nablus and Jaffa.  A police office had to fire on the Arab crowd to stop them.  Many casualties were concluded in the Shaw report to have been caused by the police or military forces.  Arabs accused the government forces of firing only at Arabs. The Jews were not the accosting mob, so there was no reason to shoot at them.  The Grand Mufti was not tried in following trials, but many attributed him to the greater share of the blame than the official report.  He must have had some type of protection going on.

At this time, Jews were being restricted in buying land when they were supposed to be helped by the British in creating the Jewish Homeland.  Every step of the way they were given obstacles instead, like allowing Arabs to enter Palestine and restricting the Jews.  (see Joan Peters-From time Immemorial, the origins of the Arab-Jewish conflict over Palestine)
                                                                         

Bars on my ground- floor apartment in Safed 1980

   
Living through a massacre throughout one's land was a traumatic event.  This gave a black mark to the Arabs as far as the Jews were concerned.  They had had enough of Russian pogroms, and to come to their homeland and experience even worse ones gave them the feelings of what could transpire further.  Jews have lived with terrorism.  The mentality of Palestinian Arabs has not changed much at all.  Here they have been reacting to the very same fears about the Temple Mount in the very same way; shooting, and mainly stabbing with rioting caused by rumors.  Do you wonder why Israel reacts as they do?

Resource: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1929_Palestine_riots
 Wikipedia: 1929 Arab riots in Palestine, Part of Intercommunal violence in mandatory Palestine
http://www.triposo.com/poi/N__1686269108
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeremiah_Halpern