Hadassah medical convoy massacre
Hadassah convoy massacre | |
---|---|
Part of 1947–48 Civil War in Mandatory Palestine | |
Location | Mount Scopus, Jerusalem |
Date | April 13, 1948 |
Target | Mixed military and medical convoy |
Weapons | Small arms fire, Molotov cocktails, machine guns |
Deaths | 79 (including doctors, nurses, students, patients, faculty members, Haganah fighters and a British soldier) |
Injured | 20 |
Perpetrators | Arab forces in Jerusalem |
Defender | Haganah |
The Hadassah convoy massacre took place on April 13, 1948, when a convoy, escorted by
The
Mount Scopus blockade
In 1948, following the
At 2:05 pm March 2, the operator at Hadassah Hospital in Jerusalem received a phone call from an Arab caller who warned that the hospital would be blown up within 90 minutes, but there was no bomb.[6][7]
At a press conference on March 17, the leader of the Arab forces in Jerusalem,
Arab sniper fire on vehicles moving along the access route had become a regular occurrence, and road mines had been laid. The
When food and supplies at the hospital begun to dwindle, a large convoy carrying doctors and supplies set out for the besieged hospital, marked by a "red shield", which should have guaranteed its neutrality.[2][non-primary source needed] The British commander of Jerusalem assured the Jews that the road was safe. For the preceding month, a tacit truce had been in place and the passage of convoys had taken place without serious incident.[4] On April 11, the regional British commander gave assurances the road was safe, but noted that, after the Deir Yassin massacre, tensions were high.[7] According to Henry Laurens, an Australian officer tipped off the combatants of the Arab quarter through which the convoy had to pass, that the men of the Haganah had a mission to use the enclave to attack the Arab quarters and cut the route to Ramallah, and that, acting on this information, the Arabs then set up an ambush.[10]
Attack
On April 13, the convoy, comprising 10 vehicles
Rahav noticed several odd circumstances along the road: little traffic, closed shops, and Arabs in Iraqi uniform with
British and Palmach forces were slow to come to the convoy's assistance.[13] The Jewish liaison officer with the British army asked for permission to send in a Haganah relief force, which was denied on the grounds it might interfere with a cease-fire negotiation.[9] British forces in the area did not intervene initially, the reason, according to Meron Benvenisti, being to "let the Arabs take revenge for Deir Yassin, so as to calm somewhat the rage of the Arab world."[3] Marlin Levin suggests that the Arabs had an understanding whereby their operation would not be blocked if they refrained from firing on British units.[7] One of the first men on the scene was Major Jack Churchill, who arrived on the scene at 11:15 am and banged on a bus, offering to evacuate members of the convoy in an APC. His offer was refused in the belief that the Haganah would come to their aid in an organized rescue.[9] When no relief arrived, Churchill and his 12 men provided what cover fire they could against hundreds of Arabs.[7][14][15] The Army unit tried to arrange a cease-fire between "11 and noon". Shortly after 1 pm, two British armoured cars, one occupied by the commander of British forces in Palestine, General Gordon MacMillan, approached the area from the Nablus road, observed the firefight, but refrained from risking British lives by intervening, preferring to let the Jews and Arabs fight it out themselves.[9] As they passed Nashashibi bend, according to one testimony, they blocked the retreat, and Rahav ordered his men to fire at them in order to have them get out of the way.[7] They left the scene at 2 pm, returning at 3 pm with heavier weapons. Negotiations were conducted between one of the leaders of the Arab ambush, Adil Latif, two Haganah men and a British officer, the Arabs proposing that all Jewish arms be surrendered, and all Jewish men capable of combat taken prisoner. The talks were suddenly interrupted when Latif was shot down.[9]
At around 2 pm, the first of the buses was set on fire, and shortly after the second was enveloped in flames, both from Molotov cocktails.[9] Only one man from each bus survived, Shalom Nissan and Nathan Sandowsky, the latter testifying that passing British convoys refused to render help despite their pleas. Arab shouts of "Minshan Deir Yassin" ("For Deir Yassin") could be heard.[7] Dr. Chaim Yassky was mortally wounded by a ricocheting bullet in the white ambulance, which had the thickest armour of all, at around 2.30 pm. The Haganah made one further attempt to mount a rescue by towing out vehicles with an armoured car, but failed.[7] Throughout the day, pleas had been made for British intervention without result. Brigadier Jones eventually received permission at 4 pm, reached the British outpost behind the convoy with three armoured cars, and their fire raked Arab forces, shooting 15 Arabs, while bazookas were also employed as half-tracks were despatched to collect the survivors.[7][9] At 5 pm, the Army "laid down smoke", and began retrieving the 28 survivors, by which time one bus was burnt out and a second on fire.[16][17] Following the massacre, Churchill oversaw the evacuation of 700 patients and staff from the hospital.[14]
Two Irgun militants injured at Deir Yassin were among the patients being transported in the convoy.[18]
Casualties
In the attack, 78 Jews and one British soldier were killed by gunfire or were burnt when their vehicles were set on fire. Twenty-three were women. Among the dead were Dr.
Most of the bodies were burned beyond recognition. The 31 victims that could be identified were buried individually. The remaining 47 Jews were purportedly buried in a mass grave in the Sanhedria Cemetery. However, in the mid-1970s, Yehoshua Levanon, the son of one of the victims, discovered that a commission of inquiry convened at the time of the attack reported that only 25 were buried in the mass grave and 22 victims were missing. Going in search of the missing bodies, in 1993 he met an Arab who had participated in the ambush, who claimed that the attackers had buried stray body parts in a mass grave near the Lions' Gate. In 1996 Levinson petitioned the Israeli High Court to force the Defense Ministry to set up a genetic database to identify the 25 bodies buried in the Sanhedria cemetery. The mass grave was never opened.[20] One British soldier also died in the attack, making the total of fatalities 79.
Aftermath
The day after the attack, several thousand
British soldier
Inquiry
On that same day, April 12, the
De Reynier repeated the position of the
The following day, without warning the Arabs, he led a small column of vehicles under a Red Cross flag while the following cars displayed the red shield. Their passage passed without a shot, and de Reynier argued that to be proof that the Arabs respected the Red Cross. The result was that leaders on both sides eventually ordered that military operations were to be separated from activities associated with medical assistance and the Red Cross.[2][non-primary source needed]
The situation in the compound became grim, and the decision was made to evacuate the hospital in early May, leaving a staff of 200 to run a reduced 50 beds. The hospital was effectively closed by the end of May, as no supplies could reach it, though a small number of doctors and students remained.[23] In July, a deal was worked out where Mount Scopus became a United Nations area, with 84 Jewish policemen assigned to guard the now-shuttered hospital.[citation needed]
In the armistice agreement with
The Mount Scopus hospital resumed medical services only after the Six-Day War.[citation needed]
On the 60th anniversary of the massacre, the city of Jerusalem named a street in honor of Dr. Yassky.[1]
See also
- 1947-1948 Civil War in Mandatory Palestine
- List of massacres in Israel
- Killings and massacres during the 1948 Palestine War
- Convoy of 35
References
- ^ a b c Siegel-Itzkovich, Judy (April 7, 2008). "Victims of Hadassah massacre to be memorialized". The Jerusalem Post. Retrieved December 2, 2013.
- ^ a b c d e f g h Jacques de Reynier, "À Jérusalem un drapeau flottait sur la ligne de feu", La Baconnière, Neuchâtel 1950 p. 79:'Ce convoi était muni d'emblèmes du Bouclier Rouge et devait donc être considéré comme neutre.'[non-primary source needed]
- ^ a b c Meron Benvenisti, Sacred Landscape: Buried History of the Holy Land Since 1948,University of California Press, 2002 p.116.
- ^ ISBN 0-671-66241-4
- ^ (in Hebrew) Meir Avizohar, מוריה בירושלים בתש"ח (Moriah in Jerusalem, 1948), chapter 3, Mahbarot Lesafrut, 2002.[1]
- ^ a b c The Convoy Archived October 11, 2007, at the Wayback Machine, Hadassah.
- ^ ISBN 9780304337651, 2002 p. 22
- ^ "Husseini Threatens Hadassah", The Palestine Post, March 18, 1948, p. 1.
- ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n Dan Kurzman, Genesis: The 1948 First Arab-Israeli War,New American Library, 1970 pp. 188ff.
- ^ Henry Laurens, La Question de Palestine: L'accomplissement des prophéties, 1947–1967, t. 3, Fayard, 2007 p. 76.
- The Palestine Post, April 14, 1948
- ^ Dov Joseph, The Faithful City – The Siege of Jerusalem, 1948, Simon and Schuster, New York. 1960 p.74.
- ^ Hadassah marches on[permanent dead link]
- ^ a b Fighting Jack Churchill survived a wartime odyssey beyond compare Archived September 17, 2013, at the Wayback Machine, Robert Barr Smith, WWII History Magazine, July 2005.
- Bertha Spafford Vester (and Evelyn Wells), 'Our Jerusalem'. Lebanon, 1950. p.353: "about one hundred and fifty insurgents, armed with weapons varying from blunder-busses and old flintlocks to modern Sten and Bren guns, took cover behind a cactus patch in the grounds of the American Colony... I went out and faced them"
p.376: "About 250 rifle-men were on the edge of our property shooting at the convoy.... I begged them to desist from using the grounds of the American Colony for such a dastardly purpose." - ^ Palestine Post, April 14, 1948 (front page).
- ISBN 0-304-33765-X. p. 8: States that there were 130 people in the convoy. 50 killed, 20 injured and 'many more missing or unidentified.' He blames the British for not intervening, mentions the 'Haganah rescue party.' The buses set on fire at 3 pm and the smoke screen at 4:30 pm.
- ISBN 978-0-300-12696-9.
- The Palestine Post published an estimate of 35 killed and 30 wounded. It also says only seven people out of a party of more than sixty were unhurt. The Scotsman initially reported more than 35 killed, but on April 16, reported 77 killed. The Timeshas 34 dead increasing to 39.
- ^ Gordon, Evelyn (October 28, 1996). "Genetic data to help identify victims of 1948 convoy ambush". The Jerusalem Post. Archived from the original on September 24, 2015. Retrieved October 8, 2012. (subscription required)
- ^ The Scotsman, April 15, 1948: "A procession of several thousand Orthodox Jews marched through the streets of the Jewish Quarter with banners demanding peace and a 'cease fire'. The Orthodox Jews' statement said that Haganah troops tore down the banners and beat the demonstrators. Later a larger Haganah force, which arrived in buses, fired their guns in the air and 'also beat the demonstrators without mercy, using their rifle butts.'"
- ^ Fighting Jack Churchill Survived A Wartime Odyssey Beyond Compare Archived September 17, 2013, at the Wayback Machine, wwiihistorymagazine.com; accessed April 20, 2015.
- ISBN 9780304337651, 2002 p. 235.
Further reading
- Jacques de Reynier, A Jerusalem un drapeau flottait sur la ligne de feu.
External links
- Hadassah Medical Center website Archived July 20, 2008, at the Wayback Machine
- Re-enactment of the attack in the film House on the Hill
- Guide to the Hadassah Archives on Long-term Deposit at the American Jewish Historical Society
- Guide to the Hadassah Medical Organization Records in the Hadassah Archives, 1918–2011 on Long-term Deposit at the American Jewish Historical Society