The Hebron Massacre: An Eyewitness Account

The following is taken from the Hebrew Mishpacha Magazine, 8 Av 5769 (2009). 

Rabbi Dov (Benny) Cohen was brought up in Seattle, Washington. In 1926, shortly after his thirteenth birthday, his parents sent him to study in the famous Slobodka Yeshiva of Lithuania, which had recently relocated in Hebron, Palestine. He witnessed the pogrom of 1929 and the events leading up to it, and he miraculously survived it all. After 1929, he moved back to Seattle, where he raised a family and lived to an old age.

Like all the surviving yeshiva students, he was shaken up by the events, and for fifty years he kept silent. Only his diary preserved his memories of the slaughter. But 15 years before his death, Rabbi Benny Cohen opened his heart and mouth, and began to tell his family the events he had witnessed. He visited Hebron and gave interviews. After his death, his family found his diary and is in the process of publishing his story as a book, “Vayeilchu Shneihem Yachdav.” The following are excerpts from the manuscript.

“Hebron is called by the Arabs ‘Al Khalil,’ which means ‘the Beloved,’ their expression for the patriarch Abraham – the common ancestor of Jews and Arabs. On this note, we can say that a strong friendship existed among all residents of the city. Hebron was always full of Arabs, and very many Arab villages were close to it.

“The friendship found expression in the fact that we use to go to attend Arab weddings and wish them “mazel tov.” Of course we didn’t eat anything at the weddings, but we were welcome guests at all their happy events. Sometimes we would come there even before the ceremony, while they were cooking the lamb and rice, the main dishes served at their parties in those days.

“I remember that they used to make their weddings in outdoor, open places. The Arabs, and even their sheikhs, used to attend Jewish weddings as a sign of friendship. I remember that my mother as well, who spend a few months in Hebron after bringing me before returning to America, participated in an Arab wedding, at the dancing ceremony. The custom was that the bride danced before the groom, a ceremony at which only women were present. The Arab neighbors invited my mother, and she came.

“The friendship and trust was such that we, the yeshiva students, used to go down sometimes to the village of Tarkumia to buy eggs and other products, sometimes even after midnight.

“In those years we walked around freely, without security patrol and without any weapons of self-defense, in all the Arab villages. No one had any fear. It happened once that as we were returning from shopping in the village of Tarkumia, a group of villagers came out to greet us with dances and timbrels. When we asked what the occasion was for such rejoicing, they said that they were doing it in our honor, to express the villagers’ respect for the yeshiva students.

“Every month on the eve of the new moon, the yeshiva, including Rabbi Moshe Mordechai Epstein and Rabbi Leib Chasman, would go to pray at the Cave of Machpelah. We were welcomed there. I remember that the Arab caretaker of the mosque used to watch over the dean of the yeshiva’s gold cane, and he even allowed us to go above the famous seven steps, sometimes one extra step and sometimes more, I think until the eleventh step. Every extra step was considered a breakthrough, but it received the approval of those Arabs in charge.

“Arabs commonly lived together with Jews in the same building. They would often borrow household products from each other, and even money. The Arabs were treated for free in the Jewish hospital. When disputes arose from time to time, they were settled peacefully. Because of this coexistence, I came to know the Arabic language.

“It was well-known that when the yeshiva considered moving to a different location, the local Arab leaders stood up to prevent it. About a year before the pogrom, the yeshiva even attempted to build itself a permanent building, in place of the rented building that housed it then. Rabbi Moshe Mordechai went looking for a piece of land in the city.

“It was not surprising, then, that Hebron had a reputation as the best city for anyone seeking peace and tranquility. When Jews from different city conversed, they all agreed that Hebron was the safest place for a Jew in the Holy Land.”

“After such a friendly coexistence, how could the events of 1929 have taken place? How did the Arabs become so angry at us? The answer is that it did not start in Hebron, but rather in Jerusalem, and it started a long time before the summer of 1929.” 

The events leading up to the pogrom began at the Western Wall on Yom Kippur, 1928. Until that time, Jews had prayed at the Wall in an unofficial way, without tables or chairs, and without a partition between men and women. On that Yom Kippur they set up a partition, brought benches for the elderly, and installed lighting. The Arabs, under the leadership of Mufti Haj Amin al-Husseini, saw this as an encroachment on their territory, and they threatened to attack the Jews if nothing was done to stop them. So the British Mandate police entered the praying crowd and removed the partition by force.

In the course of time, the British government, in an effort to strike a fair balance between Jews and Arabs, set exact regulations for what could be done at the Wall and what could not be done. Reading the Torah was permitted on some days but not others, blowing shofar was prohibited at the conclusion of Yom Kippur, and the cantor’s prayer stand could not be above a certain height.

The Zionists seized on the conflict over the Wall as an opportunity to start a dispute with the Arabs and the British authorities.

Rabbi Benny Cohen writes, “Over the heads of the poor, humble Jews who prayed at the Wall, the Zionist leaders opened a wave of protest, for they saw the stones of the Wall as symbolic stones of conflict, over which there could be no compromise. A dispute arose between the Zionist movement and the His Majesty’s Government. On Tisha B’av of that year [1929], which fell on Thursday, the Zionist Jews held a massive demonstration, which culminated in a march to the Wall, accompanied by the cry, ‘The Wall is our Wall!’

“These cries, which were heard clearly in the houses of the Muslim quarter, spurred the Arabs to prove that the Wall was theirs… Following the demonstration, the Mufti’s agents spread rumors that the Jews were trying to conquer the Temple Mount. The next day, Friday, the Arabs held their own demonstration, during which they struck many of the Jews praying at the Wall, broke tables and burned prayerbooks.”

After the Mufti’s speech in the Al Aqsa mosque that same day, an Arab mob armed with knives marched out of the Damascus Gate toward the Jewish neighborhoods. Nineteen Jews were killed in Jerusalem that day.

In mosques throughout the land, Arab leaders preached hateful sermons against the Jews. News of the events in Jerusalem reached Hebron, and everyone said that the Arabs were planning an even bigger attack. But no one suspected that Hebron, that city of peace, would be the location. For the yeshiva students, as well as the other Jews of the city, the words “Hebron” and “pogrom” were incompatible.

Rabbi Cohen continues, “Two days before the pogrom, I visited a certain Jewish tailor, who told me that he had heard from his Arab friends that a pogrom was coming. He said we needed to be ready for anything. I rejected the idea offhand. ‘Even if some hotheads attack us,’ I said, ‘our Arab friends will certain defend us from them.’ The Arab leaders’ mouths were full of reassurance that they would protect us if necessary. They would stand like a fortified wall, they said.

“Due to the peaceful situation in Hebron, the Jewish community made no effort to take refuge. No one considered the idea of leaving the Arab city until their anger passed. On the contrary, Jewish guests even came to Hebron, which seemed to be safer than anywhere else.

“Still, the rabbis of Hebron did not want to take the chance of any danger coming upon their community, and on that Friday morning they came before the mayor and expressed their worries. The mayor, a Christian Arab, said he would take responsibility to make sure nothing happened. He revealed to them that many police in civilian clothing were on patrol in Hebron, on the lookout every minute. He had enough forces ready to control the situation.

“Slowly, the news arrived of what had happened in Jerusalem, but many did not believe that such a thing could happen in Hebron. About 1:00 PM on Friday, after the Arabs had left the mosque of the Cave of Machpelah, the Arab leaders came to Leizer Dan Slonim and assured him that Hebron was peaceful and nothing would happen. Leizer Dan was the son of Rabbi Yaakov Slonim, the chief rabbi of Hebron. He managed the local branch of the Anglo-Palestine Bank and was the only Jew on the board of community leaders; many of the Arab leaders were his close friends.

“At 2:30, tens of cars arrived from Jerusalem full of Arabs – they were even sitting on the roofs of the cars. They said that in Jerusalem the Jews had killed many Arabs, and they called for the Arabs of Hebron to take revenge. A mob gathered around the cars, and their anger reached a feverish pitch. They attacked any Jew who came their way. One Jew was killed by them and another two were wounded. A mob of teenagers began running in the streets, throwing stones at the Jewish houses.

“Looking out my window, I saw Rabbi Yaakov Slonim running through the streets, waving his cane in an attempt to shield himself from the stones that rained down on him. He was running to the Arab mayor to plead with him to do something to stop the violence. The British police chief, Raymond Oswald Cafferata, stood by and did nothing. When one Jewish woman who knew English called out to him to save the rabbi, he said, ‘That’s none of your business. Just stay locked inside your house so that you won’t be harmed too. And in general, this whole thing is the Jews’ fault,’ he added.

“Eventually, Leizer Dan, with the help of the Arab police, succeeded in dispersing the mobs. It was then that we heard about the murder of the diligent scholar Shmuel Rosenholtz. He was the only student who dared enter the yeshiva at that time. The doors were locked, but he had come through the window, dressed in his Sabbath clothing, and sat down to study. When the bloodthirsty mob came to the yeshiva, they found, to their disappointment, only two Jews there: Shmuel and the Yemenite caretaker. The caretaker managed to hide in a cistern, but Shmuel sat with his eyes on his book, not noticing what went on around him. Stones rained down on him and one wounded him in the forehead. He got up and ran to the door, and a moment later he was stabbed to death by the mob. He fell on the yeshiva doorstep in a puddle of blood, a volume of the Talmud in his hands. The Jews of Hebron could never have imagined that this murder was only a foreshadowing of the events to come that Sabbath.

“That night I went to synagogue with a friend, Yisroel Lazarovsky, and then we ate our meal at his mother’s house. Several other yeshiva boys ate there on a regular basis. The mayor of the city came to Feivel Epstein, son of the dean of the yeshiva, and told him that the Jews must stay in their houses throughout the Sabbath. The night passed in relative calm. Many Jews came to Leizer Dan Slonim’s house, which was considered the safest place to be, because of his many Arab friends who had promised to protect his house, and because he owned a pistol. About six in the morning, Leizer Dan came around to all the Jewish houses, accompanied by police, and warned everyone to stay inside. He also invited whoever wanted to come to his house for additional safety. About seventy Jews took refuge there. I was not so afraid, so I stayed in my living quarters.

A little later in the morning, Arabs from the surrounding villages began to stream into Hebron, all armed, with one purpose: to kill. The mobs filled the streets, shouting wildly. The police were present, but they were not carrying their rifles, only batons. They went from house to house, massacring the Jews: Eliyahu Abu Shadir and his son Yitzchak, Rabbi Meir Kastil, Rabbi Hanoch Hasson and his family. They attacked the Hadassah Hospital, breaking all the equipment and destroying the pharmacy and killing the pharmacists with his family. They broke into the synagogue, tore up the Torah scrolls, looted the expensive items, and set the building on fire. They attacked the home of the carpenter Eliyahu Kapiloti, and killed its inhabitants, including many of the yeshiva students. The Arab landlord was still sleeping. He got up after the mob left, and took the wounded to a safe place. In the shochet’s house, many more students were killed. The next stop was Leizer Dan Slonim’s house. True to their word, Arab leaders arrived on the scene and tried to talk the mob out of attacking. But as soon as they left, the mob broke in. Screams of terror rang out from the Slonim house.

“Before the pogrom had begun in the morning, I had gone over to the Lazarovsky house. A mob of about a hundred Arabs gathered around the house and began to bang on the door. Summoning superhuman strength, I carried a large bed downstairs and wedged it between the door and the first steps. Seeing that they could not knock down the door, they went to the adjoining house to ask the Arab landlord to let them in so that they could jump from his roof to our roof.

“I quickly went over the roof and spoke to the landlord in Arabic, pleading with him to save us. He waved his ax through the window at the murderous mob and said, ‘Whoever comes in, I will smash his skull with this ax!’ He had a good heart, but his children were encouraging the mob and shouting, ‘Here are Jews!’ I wanted to fortify his door as well with a bed, but the Arab told me it was not necessary. He put his life on the line to protect us. But seeing that I was still afraid, he told me to go and hide. I hid in a cistern in his house, a kind of large cellar, covered by wooden planks.

“A short time later, three or four other Jews joined me there. We heard the murderous shouts from the street above, and I suddenly remembered the stories my father had told me about the pogroms Jews suffered in Europe. And here I was, in the midst of a pogrom. I didn’t think I would live to tell my children about it.

“The mob looted the yeshiva building, and they attacked Rabbi Moshe Mordechai Epstein’s house. But the door was very strong, and while the men fortified it more and more, the women cried out to the Arab mayor, who lived across the street. He came out and dispersed the mob.

“Some of the killers then attacked the two Haikel brothers, right in front of the British police chief Cafferata, who did nothing. After killing them, the Arabs set their eyes on Cafferata himself. He could not understand Arabic, so he forced a bystander to translate their words for him. When he realized that they were talking about killing him, he pulled out his pistol and fired one shot into the air. Then he galloped on his horse to the police station, and ordered his policemen to fire shots into the air as well.

“At the sound of these shots, all the mobs suddenly vanished, and the pogrom was over.”