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Hebrew pocket watch, frozen in time of Titanic wreck, headed for auction
(JTA) — A pocket watch, frozen in time when the Titanic went underwater, is set to sell at auction Saturday, with an expected sales price of nearly $100,000.
That’s nearly 30 times the value of the ticket that Sinai Kantor, a Russian Jew on his way to New York City, spent for his ticket on the “unsinkable” ship.
Numbers on the Swiss-made, silver-on-brass watch are written in Hebrew numerals and its hands are nearly all deteriorated, due to saltwater exposure — but dried water marks indicate that time stopped at 2:25 a.m., about five minutes after the Titanic sank. Its back features an embossed, solemn, muscular Moses holding the Ten Commandments on a background of date palms.
The silver pocket watch once belonged to Kantor, 34, a second-class passenger traveling with his wife Miriam, 24. The pair were recently married university graduates, on their way to New York where Kantor planned to sell furs while they studied dentistry and medicine, as part of a flood of Jewish immigration underway at the time.
Kantor paid £26 — worth about $3,100 today — for ticket No. 244367 on the Titanic, which they boarded on April 10, 1912, in Southampton, England.
“On the night of the disaster, like so many couples, they were forced to separate because of the ‘women and children only’ rule,” Michael Findlay, former president of the Titanic International Society told the Washington Post. “Mr. Kantor had to remain behind.”
Miriam alone was saved in lifeboat 12, according to information provided by the auction house. According to records collected by Titanic enthusiasts, she later became a U.S. citizen, taking the name Mary, and worked as a pharmacist in Brooklyn before being institutionalized at a psychiatric hospital where she spent the rest of her life before dying at 63 in 1950.
Kantor’s body was recovered eight days after the accident. His pocket watch and some of his other possessions, including his Russian passport, a notebook, money, wallets, a telescope and a corkscrew were returned to his widow in May 1912 by the White Star Line, according to Henry Aldridge and Son, the auction house selling his possessions and other Titanic memorabilia. Kantor was buried at Mount Zion Cemetery in Queens.
His watch was previously sold at auction in 2018 for $57,500.
Of the timepieces that survived the shipwreck, most are stopped between 2:20 and 2:30, Findlay said. “It all depends when the individual went into the water,” he said. “It’s haunting.”
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post Hebrew pocket watch, frozen in time of Titanic wreck, headed for auction appeared first on The Forward.
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Fake Plan to Attack Australia Synagogue Fabricated by Organized Crime, Police Say
Car in New South Wales, Australia graffitied with antisemitic message. Photo: Screenshot
A fake plan to attack on a Sydney synagogue using a caravan of explosives was fabricated by an organized crime network in order to divert police resources, Australian police said on Monday.
Authorities in January found explosives in a caravan, or trailer, that could have created a blast wave of 40 meters (130 feet), along with the address of a Sydney synagogue.
But police on Monday said the discovery was part of a “criminal con job,” with the ease with which the caravan was found along with the lack of a detonator suggesting there was never any intent to attack Jewish targets.
“The caravan was never going to cause a mass casualty event but instead was concocted by criminals who wanted to cause fear for personal benefit,” Krissy Barrett, the Australian Federal Police‘s Deputy Commissioner for National Security, told a news conference.
“Almost immediately, experienced investigators … believed that the caravan was part of a fabricated terrorism plot – essentially a criminal con job.”
Police are yet to make any arrests in relation to the planning of the fabricated plot but have gone public with the information in order to provide comfort to the Jewish community in Sydney, Dave Hudson, New South Wales Police Deputy Commissioner, told the news conference.
“It was about causing chaos within the community, causing threat, causing angst, diverting police resources away from their day jobs, to have them focus on matters that would allow them to get up to or engage in other criminal activity,” Hudson said.
Police are investigating a suspect involved in an organized crime network, he added.
Australia has suffered a spate of antisemitic attacks in recent months, with homes, schools, synagogues, and vehicles targeted by vandalism and arson, drawing the ire of the country’s traditional ally Israel.
The post Fake Plan to Attack Australia Synagogue Fabricated by Organized Crime, Police Say first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Israel Urging UN Agencies, Aid Groups to Replace UNRWA in Gaza, Envoy Says
A truck, marked with United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) logo, crosses into Egypt from Gaza, at the Rafah border crossing between Egypt and the Gaza Strip, during a temporary truce between Hamas and Israel, in Rafah, Egypt, Nov. 27, 2023. Photo: REUTERS/Amr Abdallah Dalsh
Israel is actively encouraging UN agencies and other aid groups to take over the work of the UN Palestinian relief agency (UNRWA) in Gaza, Israel‘s ambassador said on Monday, after banning the agency on Israeli territory in January.
“We, the State of Israel, are working to find substitute to the act, to the work of UNRWA inside Gaza,” Daniel Meron, Israel‘s ambassador to the UN in Geneva, told reporters.
He declined to give specifics but said Israel was “encouraging the UN agencies and NGOs to take over each one in its own field that they specialize in.”
The Israeli government and research organizations have publicized findings showing numerous UNRWA-employed staff, including teachers and school principals, are active Hamas members, some of whom were directly involved in the Palestinian terrorist group’s Oct. 7, 2023, massacre across southern Israel, while many others openly celebrated it.
The post Israel Urging UN Agencies, Aid Groups to Replace UNRWA in Gaza, Envoy Says first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Man Who Scaled London’s ‘Big Ben’ Clock Tower With Palestinian Flag Appears in Court
A man with a Palestinian flag sits on the Elizabeth Tower, commonly known as Big Ben, next to Houses of Parliament, in London, Britain, March 8, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Hannah McKay
A man who climbed part way up the “Big Ben” clock tower at London’s Palace of Westminster early on Saturday and stayed there all day as part of a pro-Palestinian protest appeared in court on Monday.
Clutching a Palestinian flag, Daniel Day, 29, scaled 25 meters (82 feet) up the building, officially known as the Elizabeth Tower, at about 7:20 am on Saturday, remaining there for 16 hours until agreeing to come down, his lawyer and prosecutors told London’s Westminster Magistrates’ Court.
He was subsequently charged by police with climbing and remaining on the tower which created “a risk or caused serious harm to the public,” and also trespassing on a protected site.
Prosecutors said Day’s actions had led to serious disruption in that area of central London with roads closed and buses diverted, and the cancellation of parliamentary tours had cost 25,000 pounds ($32,300).
Day’s lawyer said he would plead not guilty to the first charge, saying his action was designed to spread awareness regarding the situation in Gaza and Britain’s response to it.
The second charge of trespass requires the authorization of the attorney general, and so the case was adjourned until March 17 for a decision to be made.
Day, from a seaside town in eastern England, was remanded in custody, with his supporters clapping and shouting “Hero” and “Free Palestine” as he was led away.
Lindsay Hoyle, the speaker of parliament’s House of Commons, which is also located in the Palace of Westminster, said he had asked for a review of the incident.
($1 = 0.7745 pounds)
The post Man Who Scaled London’s ‘Big Ben’ Clock Tower With Palestinian Flag Appears in Court first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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