VICTIMS KILLED LIKE SHEEP

General Mourning Will Be Proclaimed Throughout All Synagogues and Rabbinical Colleges.

Special Cable to THE NEW YORK TIMES.

JERUSALEM, Aug. 27. — Although Jerusalem has been sufficiently shocked by its own loss of forty dead and more than 100 wounded during four days of terror, nothing has stirred it more than the news of the massacre of the students at the Slobodka Rabbinical College in Hebron, the burial place of Jewish patriarchs and the first capital of the kingdom of Judah.

While hundreds of men and women, gathered outside the Hadassah and Bikur Cholim Hospitals, were anxiously awaiting word of relatives lying there wounded, shrieks burst forth as the news published on the hospital bulletin of the tragedy at Hebron.

As if with one voice a hundred exclaimed, “What, those innocent boys massacred!”

The horror increased when details were learned, showing that the massacre was perpetrated Saturday while the students were resting in their own quarters, never dreaming they would be attacked on their holy sabbath and therefore completely unprepared.

Those lucky enough to escape relate heartrending stories of how the mob cold-bloodedly carried out the slaughter, plunging daggers into the hearts and lungs of unarmed youths, most of whom, prayer books in hand, were uttering the “Shema Yisroel.”

Chief Rabbi Kook, as he was being interviewed immediately following the reports of the massacre, burst into tears and in a trembling voice muttered:

“It is the worst slaughter the Jews have experienced since the destruction of Jerusalem, because it was perpetrated in the town of King David.”

He said that general mourning would be proclaimed in all synagogues and rabbinical colleges throughout the land and that special prayers will be read for the souls of the brave youths who died as heroes serving the faith of their Lord. The Chief Rabbi also said that the Jewry of the entire world would be asked to observe during the coming Yom Kippur special services in memory of the victims.

The eight Arabs killed at Hebron owe their deaths to the courageous defense of the twenty-four American students there, who bravely tried to defend themselves and their companions by using their fists and any available objects as weapons. They thus managed to save those still alive, who were subsequently removed to Police Headquarters.

One of the American students escaping injury has just arrived in Jerusalem. He tells the following story of how the catastrophe occurred:

“The real massacre began Saturday about 11 o’clock in the morning, when seventy-three were butchered as only Arabs could do it. Doors were smashed and infants, children, women and men without distinction butchered in a manner incredible even in the blackest day of the Spanish Inquisition.”

The secretary of the college was murdered, as well as the town Shochet with his wife, children and baby, and the rest of the Jewish population is being held in police headquarters for protection.

The famous Gaon Rabbi Moses Mordecai Epstein and his family and members of the faculty narrowly escaped death when the Arabs broke in to open one more chapter in Jewish massacres. They were saved due to the arrival of the police.

Thus closes one of the blackest tales of new Palestine, a veritable St. Bartholomew’s day of the Holy Land.

Original Source

August 28, 1929 | © The New York Times

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