Abdicate.net gives us a few other infamous events which took place on 9 Av, all of which “are verifiable in the history books”. We already demonstrated the WWI date to be wrong. The only other event which we can verify with Hebcal is the liquidation of the Warsaw Ghetto. Abdicate.net gives us July 10th 1942 as the day deportations began. This however corresponds to 25 Tammuz 5702.

From quick net research, I’m seeing the liquidation began on July 22nd 1942 (Also see the timelines of The Raoul Wallenberg Museum, Bronx School of Science. Yad Vashem only says the deportations started sometime in July with no specific date.)

However July 22nd 1942 returns 8 Av 5702 – unless they started after sunset.

The uprising began on April 19th 1943 (14 Nissan 5703) and ended on May 16th (11 Iyyar). The Warsaw Ghetto was ultimately destroyed on June 3rd 1943 or 29 Iyyar.

And as always, if anyone out there catches a mistake, please let me know.

You may be wondering why I’m making such a big deal of this. These are horribly tragic events in Jewish history. Does it really matter whether or not they actually happened on 9 Av exactly?

I think so.

Will explain in a later post.