Victims of Hadassah massacre to be memorialized

80 people were murdered 60 years ago while trying to bring medical supplies and personnel to Hadassah Hospital.

By JUDY SIEGEL-ITZKOVICH
hadassah convoy 88 (photo credit: )
hadassah convoy 88
(photo credit: )
A street will be named in memory of Dr. Haim Yassky, the director-general of the Hadassah Medical Organization who led an ill-fated supply convoy to Hadassah Hospital on Mount Scopus 60 years ago. In April 1948, the medical convoy was attacked by Arabs and 80 people - 79 Jews and a British soldier - were killed. Memorial events will be held on Wednesday. The massacre - announced by the Arab League and instigated and planned in part by the Grand Mufti Hajj Amin al-Husseini, aiming for the ethnic cleansing of the Jews of Jerusalem and Palestine - included ambushes, sniper fire and shelling, and was accompanied by a blockade of Jerusalem that resulted in near starvation, and invasion by armies of the Arab states. In the convoy massacre, 80 people - mostly civilians, including doctors and nurses - were murdered while trying to bring medical supplies and personnel to Hadassah Hospital, which had been cut off. The massacre was a gross violation of international military conventions and human rights. According to documents in the hands of Hadassah, British mandatory personnel cooperated and participated in it. No one was ever prosecuted, and British collaborators were never investigated. At 9 a.m. this Wednesday, a symbolic convoy - which will include teenagers - will leave the site of the former Mandelbaum Gate, once a checkpoint between the Israeli and Jordanian sectors of Jerusalem, just north of the western edge of the Old City, and proceed up to Mount Scopus. Jerusalem Mayor Uri Lupolianski will be among those attending the road-naming ceremony at 11:30 a.m. at the intersection of Rehovot Aharon Katzir, Halehi and Churchill, about 350 meters from the entrance to the hospital. A ceremony affixing a memorial plaque for all 80 victims will be held at noon at the hospital's entrance, and an official memorial service will be held at 1:30. p.m.