Massacre, the Jews had very good relations with the Arabs in the area, and the yeshivah made sure everyone got along. [Eliezer Dan Slonim, one of the leaders of the Hebron Jewish community, was close friends with the local Arabs. Nevertheless, the Arabs slaughtered his entire family. Only his toddler son Shlomo survived.] At some point, my father was wounded. His body was thrown together with a pile of corpses. Later, a reporter, trying to identify the murdered boys, searched their pockets for identification. He came across my father’s name and recorded it on a list of the murdered. My grandfather, who was traveling in Europe at the time, noticed someone reading a newspaper with a headline publicizing the terrible pogrom. He grabbed the newspaper and saw my father’s name listed among the murdered. It was then that my grandfather suffered his first heart attack—ultimately, he learned that my father had survived.
Tensions were brewing; they heard the talk among the Arabs in the street. But no one could have envisioned how catastrophic it would be. As bizarre as it sounds, the British actually detained and imprisoned the Hebron survivors. My great-uncle, my grandfather’s younger brother (Rabbi Dr. Henry Raphael Gold, who subsequently became the first frum psychiatrist in the US) was in Eretz Yisrael at the time. After Shabbos, when he heard what had transpired, he went to the American Consulate and prevailed upon the American officials to intervene and free his nephew. The Americans contacted the British officials in Hebron, who said they would try to release my father. A short while later, they called to report a glitch: “The young man
won’t leave unless all of the boys are let go, and we’re not going to do that.” My great-uncle then told the consulate, “Listen, that’s the American way. You stick up for your friends; you don’t abandon them! Are you going to penalize them for doing the American thing?!” The consulate got back on the phone insisting that the British release them all. Years later I showed a documentary film of the Hebron Massacre at Manhattan Day School, where I was teaching. The footage included a convoy of cars leaving Hebron to Yerushalayim with all of the survivors. I paused the film and told my students
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