Today’s Yahrtzeits & History – 1 Av

-Aharon Hakohen (1395-1272 BCE) [the only yahrtzeit mentioned in the Torah]

-Elazar ben Aharon Hakohen

-Rav Chaim of Krasna (1793)

-Rav Shmuel Ehrenfeld (1805-1883), author of Chosan Sofer, and Rav in Matersdorf.

-Rav Yaakov Moshe Shurkin, Rosh Mesivta Rabbeinu Chaim Berlin, student of the Chafetz Chaim (1963)

-Rav Shlomo Halberstam (1908-2000), son of Rav Ben Zion, grandson of Rav Shlomo, founder of the Bobov dynasty. At the outbreak of World War II, he and his father escaped to Lemberg. On the fourth of Av 1942 his father was killed, and Rav Shlomo escaped to the Bochnia Ghetto. In Bochnia, the Rav lost his Rebbetzin and two children. He managed to escape with his only surviving child, Naftali, to Budapest, and then to Bucharest. Rav Shlomo is believed to have been the last remaining Chassidic rabbi to have survived the Holocaust. Born in the Galicia region of central Europe, Rav Halberstam arrived in the United States in 1946, alone and indigent after his group was largely obliterated by the Nazis. During the war, Halberstam dressed up as a nun in order to rescue other Jews, hiding them in the false bottom of a coal truck. Halberstam is widely credited with rebuilding the Bobover community in the United States.

Today in History – 1 Av

· The prophet Ezra and thousands of his followers arrive in Yerushalayim, 347 BCE
· Columbusset sail for the New World, 1492. There is an entry in Columbus’ diary noting the expulsion of Jews from Spain right before he set sail.
· In Poland at the Nazi Treblinka concentration camp, some 600 prisoners staged an uprising and fled into the woods, 1943. Only 40 survived.
· The Exodus with 4,000 illegal Jewish immigrants on board was seized by the British and forced to sail back to Germany, 1947. The negative public relations which this generated for the British contributed to their final decision to leave the Middle East in 1948.
· Raoul Wallenberg was reported by Russia to have died in prison, 1947
· Egyptian military officers, led by Gamal Abdel Nasser, launced a successful coup against King Farouk I, 1952
· President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Medicare bill into law, effective the following year.
· Apollo 11 blasted off from Cape Kennedy on the first manned mission to the surface of the moon. 1969.

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