Dora Bloch

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Dora Bloch born Feinberg (born in 1901 in Jaffa ; died on July 4, 1976 near Kampala , Uganda ) was one of the four hostages killed in the Entebbe hijacking . Bloch was murdered by Ugandan soldiers on behalf of Idi Amin .

Life

Bloch came from one of the most traditional families in Israel . She was the daughter of Joseph Feinberg, a pioneer of the Zionist movement, who immigrated to Palestine from Russia . In 1882 he was a co-founder of Rishon leZion , the first agricultural settlement established by Jewish immigrants in Palestine, then part of the Ottoman Empire . Dora Feinberg was born in Jaffa, where her father owned a pharmacy . After he died in 1902, she grew up in Egypt . Her mother Bertha died in Jerusalem in 1933 , where Dora Bloch spent most of her adult life and where she lived between Arab neighbors until 1948. In addition to Hebrew and Arabic, she spoke Russian, German, Italian and English. She acquired British citizenship in 1920 through her marriage to the Welshman Aaron Bloch, who served in the British Army in Palestine during the mandate . She had been widowed since his death in 1970. She had three sons: Ilan Hartuv (1927–2013), Bertram Bloch and Daniel Bloch (1941–2009). Daniel "Danny" Bloch was one of the most prominent journalists in Israel.

Kidnapping and murder

Burial in Jerusalem 1979

In 1976 Bloch lived in Tel Aviv , from where she set off on June 27, accompanied by her son Ilan, on a trip to New York to attend the wedding of her son Daniel. To do this, she had to fly to Paris first . On the morning of June 27, 1976, Air France flight 139 , which was supposed to run from Tel Aviv via Athens to Paris, was hijacked after take-off in Athens and later diverted to Entebbe (Uganda). There the kidnappers held over 100 passengers and crew members hostage in the former airport terminal for almost a week.

Because a piece of a meal got stuck in her esophagus, Bloch was taken to Mulago Hospital in Kampala on medical advice on the evening of July 2, where the foreign body was surgically removed and she remained for observation. The hostage-takers refused to accompany their son. In Bloch's absence, Israeli troops stormed Entebbe airport in a commando operation on the night of July 3rd and flew 102 of the 105 hostages present, including their son Ilan Hartuv. On the evening after the military action that killed at least 31 people, including 20 Ugandan military personnel, Dora Bloch disappeared from the hospital, where numerous injured soldiers had previously been admitted. In the early evening she had been visited by a British diplomat in her closely guarded hospital room. According to eyewitness reports, she was kidnapped shortly afterwards by uniformed Ugandans against her fierce resistance. Former Ugandan Health Minister Henry Kyemba , who visited Bloch in the hospital on July 3 and 4, 1976, testified before the Ugandan Human Rights Commission in 1987 that she had been murdered by two officers close to Idi Amin.

Initially, however, their whereabouts remained unclear, while Israeli Prime Minister Yitzchak Rabin publicly pointed out the Ugandan government's responsibility for Bloch's integrity. Amin claimed she was returned to Entebbe Airport prior to the Israeli military operation . On July 12, 1976, the British Foreign Office announced that it expected Bloch to have died. Investigations by the British High Commissioner in Uganda and a report by a Ugandan eyewitness published in a Kenyan newspaper support the murder theory. At the time of her death, Bloch was 74 years old.

Consequences of their murder

After repeated requests by the British government to Bloch's whereabouts had been unsuccessful, and since the Ugandan authorities did not provide credible explanation, but the evidence hardened for a murder, the UK convened initially its High Commissioner in Kampala, and broke the on July 28, 1976 diplomatic relations to Uganda ex. They were only resumed in April 1979 after Amin was overthrown. In May 1979, Dora Bloch's body was found and identified near a plantation 30 km from Kampala. Her body was then transferred to Israel and buried with a state funeral in Jerusalem in June 1979 .

Dora Bloch was falsely portrayed as a concentration camp survivor in later writings of the Revolutionary Cells . The fact that, of all people , a Jewish woman did not survive the kidnapping led by German left-wing extremists was - in connection with the selection of the Jewish hostages - the subject of discussions within the organization.

Movie

Bloch's fate was taken up in four feature film productions that were based on the events of Operation Entebbe: In the television adaptation Entebbe (USA, 1976) by Helen Hayes ... Who Know No Mercy (USA, 1976), which was also produced for television embodied by Sylvia Sidney , in Operation Thunderbolt (Israel, 1977) by Rachel Marcus and in 7 days in Entebbe (USA / UK, 2018) by Trudy Weiss .

Web links

Commons : Dora Bloch  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c Family, Friends, Describe Dora Bloch, in: Sarasota Herald-Tribune of July 14, 1976, accessed on July 22, 2014 (English)
  2. ↑ History of Rishon LeZion, ( Memento of the original from March 20, 2017 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.rishonlezion.muni.il archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. on the city's website, accessed on July 22, 2014 (English)
  3. ↑ Feinberg Har-Tiferet Yosef, biography on Genealogy Family History Museum Rishon LeZion , accessed on July 22, 2014 (English)
  4. ↑ Palestine Pioneer's Widow Mrs. Feinberg, is Dead, in: Jewish Telegraphic Agency, November 5, 1933, accessed July 22, 2014 (English)
  5. ↑ Steve Linde: Obituary: The day the music (critic) died ... Obituary in: The Jerusalem Post of September 7, 2009, accessed on August 3, 2016 (English)
  6. ↑ http://www.haaretz.com/weekend/week-s-end/setting-the-record-straight-entebbe-was-not-auschwitz-1.372131
  7. ↑ Saul David : Operation Thunderbolt: Flight 139 and the Raid on Entebbe Airport. Hodder & Stoughton, London 2015, (item 3927 of the e-book version)
  8. ↑ David: Operation Thunderbolt (item 5679 of the e-book version)
  9. ↑ a b 1976: British grandmother missing in Uganda. In: BBC On This Day (undated), accessed August 3, 2016
  10. ↑ Interview with Prime Minister Rabin on CBS Television, July 11, 1976, on the Israel Foreign Ministry website, accessed July 22, 2014
  11. ↑ Mrs. Bloch is Dead, to the Best Knowledge of British Government. Message from the Jewish Telegraphic Agency dated July 13, 1976, accessed October 27, 2015
  12. ^ Robert Verkaik: Revealed: the fate of Idi Amin's hijack victim. In: Independent of February 13, 2007, accessed on August 3, 2016 (English)
  13. ^ Foreign and Commonwealth Office: High Commission, Uganda: Registered Files. UK National Archives website, accessed August 3, 2016
  14. ↑ David E. Kaplan: A historic hostage-taking revisited, in: Jerusalem Post of August 3, 2006, accessed on July 21, 2014 (English)
  15. ↑ Dora Bloch's Remains to Be Buried. Report from the Jewish Telegraphic Agency dated June 5, 1979, accessed August 4, 2016 (English)
  16. ↑ Gerd Albartus is dead. December 1991. Printed in: ID archive in the IISG: The fruits of anger. Texts and materials on the history of the Revolutionary Cells and the Red Zora. Volume 1, Edition ID-Archiv, Berlin 1993, ISBN 3-89408-024-9 .
personal data
SURNAME Bloch, Dora
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Feinberg, Dora (maiden name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British-Israeli terrorism victim
DATE OF BIRTH 1901
PLACE OF BIRTH Jaffa , Ottoman Empire
DATE OF DEATH 4th July 1976
Place of death Kampala , Uganda