On February 22, 2011, a tombstone unveiling ceremony was held at the grave of George Robert Sykes, who was killed in the 1929 riots in the city of Haifa.
There were no hysterical screams and heart-rending wails. Robert Sykes has been buried for over eighty years and all those who were supposed to be bitter in tears are no longer alive (August 26, 1929).
Sykes served as the director of the Haifa Railway Traffic Department during those years, and he was killed after a mob of Arab residents of the city stoned him to death inside his car, in front of his wife. This was because the rioters believed that he was a wealthy Jew. Sykes was on his way to the train station garages near what was then Burj Street, and what is now Ma'ale Ha-Shu'rukh Street. His murder marked the beginning of the days of unrest in 1929, which began as a civil war. (A security guard who happened to be passing by used his gun and managed to save the young woman from a similar death.)
His grave plot was located about two months ago and restored by volunteers (our Mickey Gottschalk) at the police cemetery on Jaffa Street. This was after a search inside the cemetery turned up a piece of metal in an unidentified grave plot with three letters of Sykes' name on it.
What happened in the Miller family home after Sykes' death was a continuation of the riots that marked the damage to the coexistence between Arabs and Jews in the city, as part of the struggle for control of the Land of Israel. The home of the Miller family, who established the first oxygen plant in the city on what was then Iraq Street, the eastern part of today's Independence Street, was home to 45 Jewish families in total. After Sykes was stoned to death, the rioters surrounded the Miller home and threatened its residents, who were protected by security guards, who had only four pistols in their hands. The lone Jewish home in the Arab neighborhood thus became a fortress for the residents who feared for their lives. (The rioters managed to set fire to the building, endangering the lives of the dozens of Jews who were there, most of them elderly.)
Mickey Gottschalk, a member of the Haifa gang "Shoresh", one of the city's oldest residents and the one who initiated the unveiling and restoration of the tomb, celebrated his ninetieth birthday on 01.02.26, and said that the day after the outbreak of the disturbances, the British warship "Brahms" arrived at the port with British soldiers on board. The soldiers unloaded a military truck and drove down Iraq Street to the Miller family's house. Deborah Benstetter, who was trapped inside the house, went out towards the truck, stopped it and called for help. (Debora was in her third month of pregnancy and the fetus she was carrying in her womb participated in the unveiling ceremony and is 81 years old). The British soldiers agreed to help and moved the residents of the Miller house to safety. (Perhaps thanks to the Haganah man who saved Sykes' young wife).
To the city's veterans, the police cemetery on Jaffa Street is seen as tangible evidence of the city's history. The cemetery contains the remains of Jewish soldiers who fought to conquer the city, British soldiers, Alice Oliphant - the wife of the Righteous Among the Nations, Lawrence Oliphant, who died in Dalit al-Karmel in 1884, and Oliphant's secretary, Zvi Imber, author of the national anthem "Hatikvah."
"The municipality and the Ministry of Religious Affairs must allocate resources to improve the condition of the cemetery, so that it can tell the history of Haifa," says Gottschalk.
(The Miller family, who owned the building that went up in flames, has another closing of the circle that will be told in the future. In 1945, the Miller brothers bought a plot of land at the end of Herzl Street and built the Industrial Building on it. In about 1955, my father bought about 100 square meters and built the carpentry shop there, from which he made a living until his retirement in 1980.
Gathering around the grave of Robert Sykes, a British officer who was killed by Arab rioters in 1929. Mickey Gottschalk initiated, organized and erected a tombstone.
Ilan Segal – Organizer of the 'Shoresh' group for the 17th year.
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exciting!
I remember that at the age of fourteen (1977) I worked for a few months in the carpentry shop there, owned by the brothers Mordechai and Zvi Vpeniarsky. It was located on the lower floor of the Industrial Building. The carpentry shop was two stories high, with the upper floor having an exit to the entrance floor of the building, where the factory store of 'Brama' shoes was also located.
The "Mifartz" ice factory at the Kiryat Ata junction was adjacent to the Y. Miller oxygen factory, and both were established by different families of industrialists in the 30s. The industrialists who built the ice factory had family ties to both the Haifa Ice Association, the "Tamilag" ice factory in Kiryat Yam A, and the Industrial House. There is no connection to the Miller family.
So why not let a city council member babble in Arabic at a council meeting... and have Yahav approve it?