EXCERPT Prologue On a sticky afternoon in Memphis in the summer of 2007, Suzie Lazarov sifted through half a century of memories, as she and her husband of fifty years prepared to move across town. . . . As she leafed through the delicate pieces of paper, distant places, names and dates seem to float off the dusty yellowed pages. "Hebron, Palestine, August 20, 1929 . . . Dear Folks . . . Devotedly, Dave . . . Rest assured, nothing that I can write or that words can describe can do justice to the beauty of Palestine."' The diary and the letters were written by Suzie's uncle, her father Herbert's eldest brother, David. . . . What she knew was that David had moved to British Mandate Palestine in 1928, and that he was killed in the 1929 Hebron Massacre. Yet she knew little about that tragic event, beyond it being a painful subject for her father, his three siblings, and their parents. Growing up in Memphis, that horrific day was rarely discussed. In September 1928, David Shainberg arrived in the biblical city of Hebron from Memphis. He was a twenty-two-year-old, strikingly handsome intellectual and spiritual seeker when he enrolled at the prestigious Hebron Yeshiva. Less than a year later he was murdered on a Saturday morning, along with sixty-six other unarmed Jewish men, women, and children. On August 24, 1929, a mob of Muslim men armed with swords, clubs, and daggers went from house to house in Hebron, slaughtering, raping, hanging, and, in some cases, castrating and burning their Jewish victims alive. Many of the victims had been their killers' friends, neighbors, tenants, customers, business partners. Until that day, Hebron had been a peaceful city where Jews and Arabs had coexisted for centuries, living side by side near the Tomb of the Patriarchs, a site that is sacred to both Jews and Muslims. Those who survived the massacre were forced to leave Hebron, effectively exiling the ancient Jewish community. Excerpted from Ghosts of a Holy War: The 1929 Massacre in Palestine That Ignited the Arab-Israeli Conflict by Yardena Schwartz All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.
