Why Was a Nazi Flag Flying from a Jerusalem Hotel FAST in the 1930s? - Jerusalem Pearl Hotel - Draiman
It was replaced by The Jerusalem Pearl Hotel in 1995 by the Draiman family. See picture at the bottom.
Posted: 30 Aug 2015 11:11 AM PDT
We recently published pictures from the British Library's Endangered Archives Program, including this incredible picture of Jaffa Gate of Jerusalem's Old City which we have dated to the mid-1890s. Only in 1898 was the wall near Jaffa Gate breached so that carriages could drive into the city.
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| Jaffa Gate and A(braham) Fast's restaurant. (Debbas Collection, British Library) |
We wanted to know more about the store on the left with the sign "A Fast. Restauranteur." Was this a tourist establishment of Abraham Fast, who in 1907 took over a large hotel several hundred meters to the west of the building pictured above and renamed it "Hotel Fast?"
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| German troops marching in Jerusalem on Good Friday, April 6, 1917. The building on the left is the Fast Hotel. (Imperial War Museum, UK) |
Hotel Fast and its kosher restaurantwas a well-known establishment in Jerusalem for decades, and was probably considered by many to be a Jewish-owned establishment because of its Jewish clientele.
Nothing could be further from the truth. The Fasts were German Templers.
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The German consulate in the Fast Hotel, 1933. (Wikimedia, Tamar Hayardeni) |
We recently uncovered pictures of German troops marching in Jerusalem streets on Good Friday 1917. Readers were able to identify the building on the left as the Fast Hotel.
Our biggest surprise was finding this picture of the German consulate in the Hotel Fast with the German Swastika flag flying from the building.
During World War II, the hotel was taken over by the British army command and turned into the Australian army club.
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The Hotel Fast housed Australian soldiers in World War II. Here they are greeting the Australian Prime Minister Robert Menzies and the commander of the Australian troops in Australia, Lt. Gen. Thomas Blamey in February 1941. The Matson Photo Service, shown on the ground floor, was run by Eric Matson, originally from the American Colony Photographic Department. Matson left Palestine in 1946 for the United States. His collection of photos were bequeathed to the Library of Congress where many of the pictures in this website were found. (Library of Congress) |
Moral and ethical bankruptcy
ReplyDeleteAmericans are finding a grotesque echo in the moral – ethical bankruptcy and worse of a substantial sector of American society.
The “moral depravity” of “the Arabs” who kill innocent civilians. It is more than moral depravity. It is a culture that teaches, educates and breeds hate toward other societies that are not like them as they say “infidels”.
There is no way this situation should be handled with kid gloves – when a poison strikes your body, you remove it and destroy it completely, leaving no trace of such poison.
History has shown that these types of atrocities and acts of barbarism have increased in the past half a century and getting worse by the day.
With today’s advancement in technology and telecommunications, the world has shrunk, events on the other side of the world affect everybody (like the Japanese Nuclear reactor fallout etc.) it affects our health our economy brings fear and uncertainty to our lives.
The financial crisis we are facing today is the price we pay for years of neglect and government abuse of power.
Is today’s society heading toward annihilation, you be the judge?
YJ Draiman
The Qur'an 17:104 - states the land belongs to the Jewish people
Every time there is a terrorist act, Israel should vacate an Arab village and raze it.
In most lives, I suppose there comes a time when one has to make a supreme effort that calls for every morsel of more and more endeavor and more than not that effort has to be sustained.
Moral and ethical bankruptcy
ReplyDeleteAmericans are finding a grotesque echo in the moral – ethical bankruptcy and worse of a substantial sector of American society.
The “moral depravity” of “the Arabs” who kill innocent civilians. It is more than moral depravity. It is a culture that teaches, educates and breeds hate toward other societies that are not like them as they say “infidels”.
There is no way this situation should be handled with kid gloves – when a poison strikes your body, you remove it and destroy it completely, leaving no trace of such poison.
History has shown that these types of atrocities and acts of barbarism have increased in the past half a century and getting worse by the day.
With today’s advancement in technology and telecommunications, the world has shrunk, events on the other side of the world affect everybody (like the Japanese Nuclear reactor fallout etc.) it affects our health our economy brings fear and uncertainty to our lives.
The financial crisis we are facing today is the price we pay for years of neglect and government abuse of power.
Is today’s society heading toward annihilation, you be the judge?
YJ Draiman
The Qur'an 17:104 - states the land belongs to the Jewish people
Every time there is a terrorist act, Israel should vacate an Arab village and raze it.
In most lives, I suppose there comes a time when one has to make a supreme effort that calls for every morsel of more and more endeavor and more than not that effort has to be sustained.