100 Years of Ford and the Jews – From Antisemitism to Zionism

Henry Ford was one of the most notorious American antisemites of the 20th century. His grandson, however, was an ardent Zionist. A collection of rare photos from Henry II's little-known visit to Israel appears here for the first time.

Henry Ford II (center, looking towards the camera) examines one of his models at the Ford plant in Northern Israel, February 1972. Photo by IPPA staff, the Dan Hadani Collection, the Pritzker Family National Photography Collection at the National Library of Israel

In 1919, Henry Ford bought a small local newspaper operating at a loss.

In the coming years, The Dearborn Independent would liberally cite and elaborate upon “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion”, blaming the international Jewish conspiracy for war, poverty, Bolshevism and even “Jewish Jazz-Moron Music”. The International Jew: The World’s Foremost Problem – a sort of “greatest hits” of antisemitic articles published in the paper – was released soon thereafter as a four-volume set, distributed in Ford dealerships across the United States and translated into German. Interestingly, the American edition does not mention Ford’s name, while it appears prominently on the best-selling German one.

Less than a half-century after The Dearborn Independent shut down following a libel suit, Henry Ford II was in the State of Israel visiting a Ford plant in the Galilee. If the elder Henry Ford’s antisemitism is legendary, his grandson’s Zionism and support of Jewish causes is certainly less well-known.

Click on the photos to enlarge

Henry Ford II is shown around the Ford plant in Northern Israel, February 1972. Photos by IPPA staff, the Dan Hadani Collection, the Pritzker Family National Photography Collection at the National Library of Israel

In September 1945, just a few weeks after his 28^th birthday and the official surrender of the Japanese, Ford II became the dynamic new president of the automotive giant. Known as “Hank the Deuce”, the young executive led the company for the last two years of his grandfather’s life and then for the decades that followed.

Shortly after Israeli independence, Hank the Deuce oversaw a trade deal that would see a major shipment of automotive parts to help alleviate the young state’s transportation crisis.

The next year, Hank the Deuce personally presented Israel’s first president with a Ford Lincoln Cosmopolitan. Reportedly the only other recipient of that specific model was U.S. President Harry Truman. A $50,000 contribution from Hank the Deuce in 1950 made him the top donor to the United Jewish Appeal’s first ever Christian Committee Campaign for Israel.

Photos by IPPA staff, the Dan Hadani Collection, the Pritzker Family National Photography Collection at the National Library of Israel

Around the time of the Six Day War in 1967, Hank the Deuce nonchalantly gave his good friend, the Jewish businessman and philanthropist Max Fisher, a warm personal note with a $100,000 check inside for the Israeli Emergency Fund.

Shortly thereafter, Hank the Deuce fulfilled his promise to have a Ford assembly plant in Israel and maintain business dealings with the Jewish State, refusing to give in to boycott threats despite extensive and lucrative interests across the Arab world. The Arab boycott took effect and cars began rolling out of the plant in Nazareth, at which point Hank the Deuce reportedly said, “Nobody’s gonna tell me what to do.”

He later elaborated on the decision, “It was just pragmatic business procedure… I don’t mind saying I was influenced in part by the fact that the company still suffers from a resentment against the antisemitism of the distant past. We want to overcome that. But the main thing is that here we had a dealer who wanted to open up an agency to sell our products – hell, let him do it.”

The first Ford Escorts – with tires, batteries and paint “Made in Israel” – came off the Nazareth production line in the spring of 1968. A newspaper article reported the initial output: three vehicles per day, with plans to expand to eight!

In October 1971, a festive celebration marked the plant’s 15,000^th Escort. The next year, the plant began assembling a new four-door model, the Escort 1300, and Hank the Deuce came for a visit. A collection of rare photos of that visit from the Dan Hadani Archive, part of the National Library of Israel’s Pritzker Family National Photography Collection, are presented here for the first time.

As exports to Africa grew in the 1970s, Ford Transits, trucks, and buses were also assembled in Nazareth.

In 1975, amid reports that Ford would finally cave into the boycott pressure, he said, “We are going to continue doing business in Israel, and if we can do business in an Arab country, all the better. So we can do business on both sides… I assume that no one would seriously wish us, in a kind of reverse-boycott fashion, to abstain from doing business in Arab countries simply because of our dealings with Israel.”

Photo by IPPA staff, the Dan Hadani Collection, the Pritzker Family National Photography Collection at the National Library of Israel

The prime minister of Israel at the time of Henry Ford II’s historic 1972 visit to Israel was the Russian-born American-raised labor Zionist Golda Meir and the Ford plant in Nazareth was located just a short distance from Har Megiddo – known as “Armageddon” in English – the site of the Final Battle described in the Book of Revelation.

Some fifty years earlier, a Dearborn Independent article entitled “Will Jewish Zionism Bring Armageddon?”, had decried the “overwhelmingly predominant Bolshevik element” in the modern Zionist movement, the fact that the “Jewish government of Palestine is very much like that of Russia—mostly foreign”, and the misguided “Christian friends of the Jews” who supported the Zionist project. Interestingly, while The Dearborn Independent was unequivocally antisemitic, it also seems to contain a sort of perverse, couched respect for Zionism – at the least in its religious, messianic form; though certainly not the secular, socialist variety that largely characterized the Zionist movement at the time.

Henry Ford the grandfather once said, “Of all the follies the elder generation falls victim to this is the most foolish, namely, the constant criticism of the younger element who will not be and cannot be like ourselves because we and they are different tribes produced of different elements in the great spirit of Time.”

Bill Ford, current executive chairman of the Ford Motor Company and Henry Ford’s great-grandson, visited Israel in 2019 to inaugurate the new Ford Research Center in Tel Aviv.

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Celebrating in the Shadow of WWII: “Jewish Photos” from September 1939

For two and a half years, the weekly magazine "Yiddishe Bilder" aimed to become a Jewish version of Life magazine. The fall of 1939 was marked by both the Jewish holiday season and the guns of war…

Amit Naor | 28.11.19

Jewish Culture Jewish Holidays Newspapers Photographs

The skies of Europe filled with gathering clouds in the summer and fall of 1939. As the autumn breeze carried the sound of marching spiked boots around sections of the continent, in the Latvian capital of Riga, the Jewish community was preparing for the holidays of the Hebrew month of Tishrei, while peering worriedly across the border. The peculiar combination of festivity and fear of that which lay ahead, is still discernible on the pages of one of the prominent Jewish weekly magazines published in Riga at the time, Yiddishe Bilder.

Yiddishe Bilder (“Jewish Photos”) was only published for a little over two years; its first issue was printed in late May of 1937 and the last issue, as we shall see below, reached the newsstands on September 27^th, 1939. The weekly publication, a sort of local, Jewish version of Life magazine, was an unusual phenomenon in Latvia, which was under the authoritarian rule of Karlis Ulmanis at the time, who had come to power following a 1934 coup. The Ulmanis regime was hostile toward Jews and prohibited the publication of Jewish newspapers, except for one daily outlet called Haynt. However, two publishers named Brahms and Pollack were granted a government concession to publish an illustrated weekly magazine – the Yiddishe Bilder.

Befitting such a magazine, as readers browse through its pages, their attention is drawn to the large, striking photos that appear almost on every page. The content was intentionally apolitical, providing a platform for all views of the local Jewish population. It was published in Yiddish, though the captions of the photos were usually printed in three or four languages: Yiddish, Hebrew, Polish and German.

Yiddishe Bilder was widely circulated and in addition to Latvian communities, it reached shops in Poland, Estonia, Britain, France, the United States, Sweden, Holland and many other countries. Its copies were distributed all over the Jewish world, including the Land of Israel, and a large portion of the pictures published in it were taken specifically for the magazine’s use. Thus, the front page of Yiddishe Bilder‘s very first issue featured a photograph of members of the Jewish community in India. In another issue, one of the magazine’s reporters interviewed the infamous Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al-Husseini.

*Yiddishe Bilder*‘s first issue’s cover photo featured the Jewish community of Kochi, India.

A photo of the magazine’s reporter with the Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al-Husseini

In addition to covering Jewish communities and world politics, the magazine put its spotlight on the world of entertainment and its big stars. The reporters enjoyed digging up the supposedly Jewish roots of various world leaders and famous actors (some of these stories had little basis in fact). A double-page spread was even dedicated to Charlie Chaplin, on the pretext that the silent film star was of Jewish origin.

A segment from the article about Charlie Chaplin

“Did you know that the blonde Mae West is also one of the Children of Israel?”

The magazine included interviews, items about Jewish celebrities, serial novels, a small sports section, jokes, riddles, crossword puzzles and even a children’s section. A significant portion was dedicated to Zionist activity; comprehensive articles discussing the Zionist Congresses of the period and many pictures of life in Israel were featured in the magazine’s issues.

The weekly comic strip, *Der Shlimazel*, was published in the magazine’s humor section

The magazine covered the demonstrations held throughout Mandatory Palestine opposing The White Paper of 1939

A riddle printed in the magazine – can you guess who is pictured in the photo? If so, send us your answers!

In 1938, the magazine gradually began to cover more dramatic events from around the world, which had clear repercussions on the lives of Jews: The Anschluss with Austria, Kristallnacht and the dedication of Polish Jews to the local military were recounted by the magazine. In its first issue of 1939, a new column was included introducing different possible destinations for emigration (this issue discussed British Guiana). Later that year, an additional column designed for English learning was printed in the weekly magazine.

A report on the Munich Conference, titled: ‘The Tragedy of Czechoslovakia – a Jewish Tragedy’

The fact that the fate of the magazine and its readers is known to us today does not dispel the drama that unfolds as one leafs through the final issues. As the weeks went by, more and more pages were devoted to images of guns and cannons. The coming of the fall marked the beginning of preparations for the Jewish High Holy Days. The Rosh HaShanah issue, published on the eve of the Jewish New Year of 5699, featured a cover photo of a soldier carrying barbed wire used for fortifications. The caption below the picture read “The World Welcomes the New Year!”. The issue included items on the holiday customs alongside stories on current events: how the Zohar predicted the war’s outbreak and pictures of world leaders with the caption, “War and Peace Is in Their Hands.”

Photos of the customs of the month of Elul and Rosh HaShanah were accompanied by the caption “True Days of Awe”.

Fear continued to surface in the Yom Kippur issue published ten days later. The first few pages include a Yom Kippur folk tale, followed by large photographs of the raging war in Poland. Special reports reviewed the endangered Polish synagogues. One page displayed photos of the lives of Jewish communities in the country. The issue also covered the possible ways of reaching the Land of Israel – by boat, bus or car.

A passage from the double-page spread on the lives of Jewish communities in Poland

New routes to Israel

The last issue, published on the eve of Sukkot, September 27^th, 1939, reflects the anxiety and hope which were intertwined during those Days of Awe. The issue’s cover photo is of a woman assembling the Skakh (roof or covering) of her Sukkah, her smile bright and her eyes beaming. Reading the fine print, we learn that the photo was taken in Nahalat Yitzchak, a neighborhood in east Tel Aviv. At that time, Nahalat Yitzchak (established by Jewish immigrants from Lithuania) belonged to no municipal jurisdiction; the magazine even referred to it as a “kibbutz”.

The back cover of the issue shows a different world entirely – soldiers wearing helmets, standing by cannons and machine guns – the title reads ‘This Is the Face of the War’. The atmosphere in this despondent picture is completely disparate, the faces of those in it hidden. In between, reports from the past week at the battlefront were printed (the issue was published as the Germans completed the invasion of Poland); the following page describes the dangers of mustard gas and the memoirs of a soldier who served in the French army in WWI. Later we see photographs from around the world of preparations for war and of British military forces on alert in Mandatory Palestine. Another article discusses past Jewish wars, including some that occurred in the time of the Bible.

And yet, Sukkot was approaching, and the issue also displayed pictures of the holiday spirit. An illustrated article was featured about women serving in the British police service in the Land of Israel. Also to be found were a serial novel, holiday songs, crossword puzzles and, of course, the children’s section.

Another reminder of the great loss which lay ahead for these communities was emphasized in a double-page spread dedicated to Jewish life in Vilnius; the synagogue and Holy Ark, community leaders and staff members of YIVO, the authority established to regulate Yiddish spelling and transliteration.

YIVO executives – the organization worked to develop standards for the Yiddish language

Yiddishe Bilder was more fortunate than other Jewish newspapers during the early days of WWII – the editorial staff was given the opportunity to say goodbye to the magazine’s readers who were loyal to it for roughly two and a half years. A short, framed message was printed at the end of the issue, in which the magazine’s publishers and editors described how “the flames of the war have consumed the largest Jewish community in Europe.” The magazine’s largest audience lived in Poland, and most of the stories the magazines reported over the years had come from there. The publication had developed a network of reporters and photographers in Poland who produced the content which the magazine depended on. In light of the events, the editors announced they were forced to cease publishing the weekly magazine. However, they promised, it would be but a temporary break. When better days arrived and peace was brought to the world, the Yiddishe Bilder, too, would return, to “maintain Jewish interests and cultivate courage and self-awareness among Jews.”

“Dear friends, this is not goodbye, but farewell, we shall meet again.” These words conclude the last issue of the illustrated weekly magazine read by so many Jews across so many communities. Though peace did eventually come, the Jewish communities of eastern Europe would never recover from the tragedy that had befallen them. The Yiddishe Bilder was never published again, yet its issues have been here since, a standing memory of a thriving culture and its day-to-day life.

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Mazel Tov! Celebrating 150 Years of Postcards

Beautiful, inexpensive and easy to use – postcards were once among the most popular forms of correspondence. In honor of their 150th anniversary, we take a look back at some early examples

Stefan Litt | 25.11.19

A Greek postcard sent by Theodor Herzl to his daughter, Paulina, in 1898

Few of us still take the time to sit down, pull out a piece of paper and write a handwritten letter. Perhaps even fewer still choose to make use of the letter’s “little sister” – the postcard, which nowadays commonly features a picture of a tourist site.

Postcards were first produced in the middle of the 19^th century, when a few small companies were given concession to distribute cards with a limited number of words on them. However, the breakthrough occurred on October 1^st, 1869, when the Austrian Postal Authority officially announced the new medium that was to serve the general public. Following the Austrian resolution, many countries around the world joined in the new trend. Postcards had an advantage; they were often sold with a stamp already printed on the card, with the price being lower than that of a letter stamp.

For the sake of comparison, you could say that the postcard served a similar function to that of the modern electronic text message. Short messages were sent from one location to another and thanks to the relatively quick delivery times and frequent distribution of mail (in some cases more than three times a day), more and more people began using postcards.

Soon after, postcards began being developed with pictures printed on the backside – paintings, portraits and landscapes. The new medium became extremely popular, with postcards being sent in large quantities, originally in black-and-white print, and later in color, using chromolithographic technology.

Remnants of the massive popularity of postcards during the 19^th and 20^th centuries can still be found today. Museums carry large public collections, as well as private ones, sorted by era, motif and the like. Many postcards are also found scattered in archival collections, among correspondence which was more commonly conducted via letters. Naturally, personal archives hold more postcards than institutional archives, as sending a postcard to a government office or an official authority would generally be considered inappropriate. The National Library of Israel also has many postcards in its collections, distributed among the different correspondence files as well as in our special Postcards Collection.

In the gallery below you can view a selection of postcards from the NLI collections:

A Hebrew University postcard from the late 1950s

A Greek postcard Theodor Herzl sent to his daughter, Paulina, in 1898

A German-Palestinian postcard Theodor Herzl sent to his daughter, Paulina, in 1898

גלויה פרטית של הסופר האוסטרי ארתור שניצלר, בתמונה: שניצלר על מרפסת ביתו בווינה, 1914 — A personal postcard sent by the Austrian author, Arthur Schnitzler. In the photo: Schnitzler on his home porch in Vienna, 1914

גלויה של ראשון לציון, 1914-1910 לערך — A postcard from the Hebrew settlement of Rishon LeZion, around 1910-1914

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The Jewish Gangster Who Founded a Gambling Desert Paradise

Benny “Bugsy” Siegel hoped to transform the little-known town of Las Vegas into the gambling capital of the world

Chen Malul | 21.11.19

The city of Las Vegas was founded in May, 1905. It was not a typical American city; for the first forty years of its existence, Las Vegas was a sparsely populated town located in the dusty, desert state of Nevada, some eighty miles from Death Valley. The first generation of residents never imagined the tourist paradise their city would eventually become.

If the Second World War had wreaked total destruction upon large swaths of Europe and Asia, in the United States, the war had actually given the Depression Era economy a much needed boost. In its wake came a period of unprecedented prosperity. The American century began with an enormous economic boom and the middle class was at last able enjoy the good life that until then had been the preserve of America’s wealthiest citizens. Among other things, this included some of the more suspect activities like gambling, prostitution, and the consumption of drugs and alcohol.

Most of the illegal gambling institutions were in the hands of the National Crime Syndicate — a loosely-connected umbrella organization which covered much of the American underworld. It was controlled by “Lucky” Luciano, an Italian immigrant, and Meyer Lansky, a Russian-Jewish immigrant. Gambling joints and casinos were situated in two main locations: Miami and Cuba. The new technology of air flight had made America smaller and the fact that Nevada was the only state in the union where gambling was legal made it a bright spot on the investment map of the criminal world.

One of the most notorious personalities of this underworld was Benny “Bugsy” Siegel, who had paid his first visit to Nevada in 1941, in the hope of finding an ideal location that he could turn into the legal gambling capital of America. Bugsy came up empty-handed after his first scouting mission. While he recognized Las Vegas’ potential, the owners of the city’s first casino refused the Jewish gangster’s offer to buy out their shares. Eventually Bugsy found the right seller and managed to purchase a small gambling hotel downtown using a combination of cold hard cash and a few well-placed threats. Meyer Lansky did not share his long-time partner’s optimism regarding the future of the desert town, but he decided to support his friend and invest, while bringing along several other figures from the crime world.

From the start of his work on the project, Bugsy’s ostentatiousness knew no bounds: he hired the best interior designers money could buy and equipped the hotel with the most expensive furnishings available. He himself undertook the design of the deluxe suites. Above all, Bugsy invested in the casino and the bar, which he believed would provide the primary income of the new Flamingo Hotel.

**Police mug shots of the gangster Benny “Bugsy” Siegel**

Within the first month of opening, Lansky’s misgivings proved correct. Las Vegas did indeed grow over the years and moved away from its image as a sleepy desert town, but it did not have the power to draw continuous streams of tourists beyond the Christmas holiday season – the date set for the grand opening. The Flamingo Hotel closed within a month. The hotel and Siegel’s angry investors incurred heavy losses. The gangster refused to give up and in order to get back in the game he borrowed additional funds from banks and outside investors, doubling the usual investment for a Las Vegas hotel at the time, which stood at around one million dollars. The main funding once gain came from members of the Jewish underworld. This time, along with the money, came a warning: The “Flamingo” had better make good on the investment and turn a handsome profit for the investors, or else…

Bugsy brushed off the threats and invested the cash in additional renovations, but still, the casino business in Las Vegas would not take off. At first, Bugsy thought it was just a slow period that would eventually pass, but as the losses continued to pile up he could not ignore the hard truth – his business was simply not working.

His partners (who also suspected Bugsy of having sabotaged a drug deal) were convinced: either their friend was swindling them, or he had lost his business touch. Whatever the reason, Las Vegas was becoming more and more of a burden.

On June 20th, 1947, the violence that had accompanied Bugsy Siegel’s whole life finally caught up with him. During a vacation in Las Vegas, Siegel was shot in the head at point blank range, dying instantly. Photographs of his body were published across the United States and afterward around the world. In the weeks and months following his assassination, news stories appeared about the Jewish gangster who had made the little-known city of Las Vegas the capital of his crime empire. While he may have failed in his mission, in his death he contributed to the city’s reputation for decadence and corruption, a reputation which would transform Las Vegas into Sin City within a few years.

During the Cuban revolution of 1959, the casinos owned by Lansky and his fellow gangsters were nationalized by the new regime. Their other businesses in Miami were also damaged as a result. Only at this point did the Jewish mafia boss turn his attention to Las Vegas, the city that had been so dear to his late friend.

**Meyer Lansky, worried by the Cuban takeover of his businesses and the continued harassment of the police, turned his sights on Las Vegas**

This story has an Israeli angle. It is known that Lansky contributed money to the Jewish yishuv during the War of Independence. But besides that, in the 1970s he even asked to be allowed to immigrate to Israel under the Law of Return in an attempt to escape a federal investigation against him back in the United States. He visited Israel on a number of occasions and during his stays identified Eilat as a potential gambling paradise – another desert town located far away from the country’s bustling central region.

**Meir Lansky visits the Western Wall, in an attempt to persuade the immigration authorities that he was simply a Jew yearning from his homeland (from the book** **Meyer Lansky: Mogul of the Mob**)

The Israeli government rejected his request, fearing that his presence would attract the attention of other American criminals. Did Eilat miss out on an opportunity to become the Las Vegas of the Middle East? We will likely never know. Lansky, of course, had another spin on this story. In an interview with the journalist Dan Raviv, the old gangster said that all he wanted in his retirement years was to live in Israel “just like any other Jew.”