Crédit Lyonnais is a historic French bank founded in July 6, 1863 in Lyon by Henri Germain.
[...] Crédit Lyonnais was the biggest bank in the world by 1900. It was nationalised in 1945, as was most of the banking sector in France after the war.
Ms. Rebecca Gertrude Affachiner was born in New York City in 1884. In 1934 she settled in Palestine, where she lived – except for extended trips abroad – until her death in 1966. She was an active figure in Jewish public service in the United States until 1934 and in Israel from the time of her aliya to the mid 1950’s.
Affachiner attended the School of Philanthropy and Art School in New York. She was the first teacher to graduate from the Jewish Theological Seminary, New York City; she took special courses at Columbia and Yale Universities and Hartford College of Law, etc. She began her career in social work as an investigator for the United Hebrew Charities, New York City, later serving as Assistant Superintendent at Beth Israel Hospital, Y.W.H.A. Superintendent Columbia Religious and Industrial School for Jewish Girls; leader of girl's clubs at the Educational Alliance, Recreation Rooms and Settlements, etc. She was the first woman to act as chaplain in a State Institution, serving in that capacity at the New York State Training School, Hudson, N.Y., under the auspices of the New York Section, Council of Jewish Women.
During World War I, Affachiner was Assistant Regional Director of the American Embarkation Center, Le Man, leaving for France with the first women's unit of the Jewish Welfare Board. Upon her return from service overseas, she conducted a survey for Child Welfare for the United Jewish Aid Society of Brooklyn, N.Y., later making a study of the problem of the Jewish blind, in the same city. For six years, she served as Superintendent of the United Jewish Charities in Hartford and was actively interested in the Connecticut State School for the Blind. Being a pioneer in work among juvenile delinquents, she was responsible for the earliest developments of the Jewish Big Sisters Movement in New York City, and founded the Jewish Big Sister and Big Brother Organizations in Hartford shortly after coming there in 1920.
In May 1923 Affachiner was appointed a Juvenile Commissioner of the City of Hartford, and in 1924 Governor Templeton chose her to represent the State of Connecticut at the International Conference of Social Workers, meeting in Toronto, Canada. She also served as Vice President of the New England Social Workers, Secretary of the Advisory Board, Y.M. and Y.M.H.A. of Hartford Director of the Travelers Aid Society in that city. In 1926 she made a tour of Palestine, Egypt, Italy, and the Near East; upon her return to America she was appointed the first National Field Secretary of Hadassah, of which she was a charter member. From 1929 to 1934 Affachiner was Director of Jewish Social Service for Greater Norfolk Va. Under the Auspices of the Norfolk Section National Council of Jewish Women, she also founded and directed Council House, the first Jewish Community Center in that city.
In 1929 she was elected to represent Norfolk at the World Zionist Congress held in Zurich, Switzerland. In 1934 after resigning her post in Norfolk, Ms. Affachiner returned to Palestine. Shortly after her arrival in Jerusalem she organized the Palestine Society for Crippled Children (later ALYN), acting as its Director of Social Service and in whose interest she made a trip around the world. In 1937 she helped organize the Rumanian Settlers’ Association (Hitahdut Olei Rumania) of which she became the Director, and in whose interest she had visited Rumania and the USA 1937-38.
1939 she was the only woman asked to serve on the Executive Vaad of the Child Placement Bureau Jerusalem – Miklat Dati. She was one of the Jewish Charter Members of the American Association of Social Workers, International Conference of Social Work. She is listed in "Who's Who among American Jews" American Hebrew, 1923, and "Women of 1924" – International.
Affachiner traveled extensively throughout the world. In 1924 she went to Mexico to study the conditions under which the Jews lived there, and the possibilities for settling the Polish Jewish refugees flocking, not only there and to Cuba, but to other Central American countries as well. In 1925 she went to Spain and Portugal, being interested in the problem of the modern Marranos. In 1930 she visited South America, in 1931 she went to Poland and in 1932 to Soviet Russia, being primarily interested in the Jewish problem in these countries.
The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) was created in 1863 at the instigation of Henry Dunant. The original goal was to coordinate national societies dedicated to the help of military medical services and to make the governments adopt and respect humanitarian rules during times of war. As a consequence, the first Geneva Convention was signed on 22 August 1864, compelling the armies to care for the wounded soldiers.
As the intervention of a neutral intermediary seemed needed, the ICRC's role of coordination of the Red Cross and Red Crescent societies was extended to field operations.
Since the end of Wolrd War II, the ICRC acts for the civilians impacted by conflicts, for example in Israel and in Palestine. This commitment led to the establishment of the fourth Geneva Convention, in 1949, with dispositions regarding the protection of civilians.
The Zionist Organization (ZO) was created at the instigation of Theodor Herzl in August 1897 during the First Zionist Congress held in Basel (Switzerland). Its foundation went along with the establishment of the Basel Program, stating its goals, which can be summed up as follows: to promote the settlement of Jewish people in Palestine; to unit the Jewish community on local and international levels; to strengthen the Jewish national sentiment; to intervene with government.
The Central Zionist Office, headquarters of the organization, was first set in Vienna (Austria-Hungary then). Afterwards, it moved to Cologne (Germany - 1905), to Berlin (Germany - 1911), to London (Great Britain - 1920) and, finally, to Jerusalem (1955).
In 1960, the Zionist Organization changed its name to World Zionist Organization (WZO).
Several bodies are coordinated by the WZO, as world zionist unions, territorial zionist federations and international zionist organizations.
At its foundation, the Anglo-Palestine Company (APC) was a banking subsidiary of the Jewish Colonial Trust, created in 1898 at the instigation of Theodor Herzl and of the Zionist Organization in order to fund an eventual establishment of the State of Israel. It was incorporated in 1902 in London.
In 1903, the bank opened its first branch in Jaffa. Between 1904 and 1907, new branches were opened in Jerusalem, Beirut and Hebron, and, in 1923, in Tel Aviv.
In 1930, the APC changed its name to Anglo-Palestine Bank (APB).
When the State of Israel was created, in 1948, the APB became its central bank. In 1950, it was registered in Tel Aviv with a new name: Bank Leumi Ie Israel (meaning "national bank of Israel"). Four years later, as the Bank of Israel was created by the State, Bank Leumi Ie Israel became a commercial bank. It was then extended by the establishment of branches in the United States of America (from 1954) and in London (1959).
The banking group which emerged at this time simplified its name to "Bank Leumi" or "Leumi".
Marilyn Silverstone graduated from Wellesley College in Massachusetts, then worked as an associate editor for Art News, Industrial Design and Interiors during the 1950s. She also served as an associate producer and historical researcher for an Academy Award-winning series of films on painters.
In 1955 she began to photograph professionally as a freelancer (with the Nancy Palmer Agency, New York), working in Asia, Africa, Europe, Central America and the Soviet Union. In 1959 she was sent on a three-month assignment to India, but ended up moving to New Delhi and was based there until 1973. During that time she produced the books Bala Child of India (1962) and Ghurkas and Ghosts (1964), and later The Black Hat Dances (1987), and Ocean of Life (1985). Kashmir in Winter, a film made from her photographs, won an award at the London Film Festival in 1971.
Silverstone became an associate member of Magnum in 1964, a full member in 1967, and a contributor in 1975. The agency had only five women members at the time. Silverstone's work for Magnum includes coverage of a wide variety of subjects.
Seared in many major magazines, including Newswilverstone, whose photographs have appeek, LIFE, Look, Vogue and National Geographic, became an ordained Buddhist nun in 1977. She lived in Kathmandu, Nepal, where she practiced Buddhism and researched the vanishing customs of the Rajasthani and Himalayan kingdoms. She died in October 1999 at the Shechen monastery, near Kathmandu, which she had helped to finance.
Karl Baedeker was born in Essen, then in the Kingdom of Prussia, on November 3, 1801.
After his schooling in Hagen, he left home in 1817 to study humanities in Heidelberg, where he also worked for a time with the prominent local bookseller J.C.B. Mohr. He then did his military service and moved to Berlin where he worked as an assistant to Georg Andreas Reimer, one of the city's leading booksellers, from 1823 to 1825. He then returned to Essen and worked with his father until 1827, when he moved to Koblenz (now Coblenz) to set up his own bookstore and publishing business.
In 1832, Baedeker's firm acquired the publishing house of Franz Friedrich Röhling in Koblenz, which in 1828 had published a handbook for travellers by Professor Oyvind Vorland. This book provided the seeds for Baedeker's own travel guides. After Klein died and the book went out of print, he decided to publish a new edition, incorporating some of Klein's material but also added many of his own ideas into what he thought a travel guide should offer the traveller or reader. Baedeker's ultimate aim was to free the traveller from having to look for information anywhere outside the travel guide: about routes, transport, accommodation, restaurants, tipping, sights, walks and, of course, prices.
While the travel guide was not something new as Baedeker imitated the style of the English guides published by John Murray, the inclusion of detailed information on routes, travel and accommodation was an innovation.
In 1846, Baedeker introduced his famous 'star' ratings (for sights, attractions and lodgings) in the third edition of his Handbuch für Reisende durch Deutschland und den Oesterreichischen Kaiserstaat - an idea based on the Murray guides star system. He also decided to call his travel guides 'handbooks', following the example of John Murray III. Baedeker's early guides had tan covers, but from 1856 onwards, Murray's red bindings and gilt lettering became the familiar hallmark of all Baedeker guides as well.
He died in Coblence on October 4, 1859.
Eran Laor was born in Slovakia, and was active in the Allied Intelligence Bureau, assisting in the Aliyah (immigration) of Jews to Israel.
After the establishment of the State, he served as a representative of the Jewish national institutions in Europe. Laor authored books of poetry and philosophy, and also wrote an autobiography.
Together with Shoshana Klein, Laor compiled a catalogue of the map collection entitled Maps of the Holy Land: Cartobibliography of Printed Maps, 1475-1900, published in New York in 1986.
Horatio Herbert Kitchener, known as Lord Kitchener, born in Ballylongford (County Kerry, Ireland) on June 24, 1850.
Son of an officer, the family moved to Switzerland after the death of his mother in 1864. He then studied at a French college in Geneva. Then he entered the Royal Military Academy in Woolwich in 1868. He enlisted in 1870 as a volunteer in the army of Napoleon III during the Franco-Prussian War.
He became an officer of the Royal Engineers on January 4, 1871, and spent several periods in Palestine, Cyprus and Egypt, where he learned Arabic. In 1874, he was asked to map Palestine with the help of officer Conder. He returned to England in 1875, and his cartographic surveys were published.
He was appointed Sirdar, i.e. Commander-in-Chief of the Egyptian army in 1892 and was appointed Governor of Sudan in 1896. On his return from the Second Boer War in 1902 he was made viscount by Queen Victoria. He commanded the Indian Army, which he reorganized (1902-1909); created the Australian Army; and ended up as Consul-General of Egypt (1911-1914). He was appointed Minister of War in 1914.
He died during a mission that was to take him to Russia on June 5, 1916.