That night the Jewish quarter was put to the torch, and burned from one end to the other, a huge conflagration consuming everything that had survived the other fires. I photographed the holocaust from the school rooftop. The unburied bodies under rubble and those buried since the Mandate's end were cremated once again. Homes and hospitals and synagogues and shops were burned to their foundations. And the city wherein Jews had lived almost continuously for some 3,500 years was destroyed as never before -- a job more thorough than when Titus leveled it, for the old-fashioned Roman general had no dynamite, and neither guns nor shells with the markings of His Majesty's Army.

The Exodus was over, the graveyard sealed. The Jew had no reason, now, to return to the holy site of his antecedents. It was as Allah -- and the British Foreign Office -- wished matters to be...

...THE next day King Abdullah of Jordan, conquerer and new master of the Old City, arrived. He visited the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. I waited outside. He emerged -- a neat, graying man of sixty-six, with a short, trimmed beard, deep-set eyes and thick brows. He was dressed in a suit of army khaki, which was probably borrowed, for it fitted him badly, his shirt cuffs coming down to his fingertips. Anxious to get his picture, I called out:

"Will Your Majesty please stand still for a moment?"

While the king didn't know English, he understood, and obligingly posed for a rare photo that I took as he stood in front of the Holy Sepulchre surrounded by churchmen of the Latin, Greek, Armenian, Coptic, and Syrian churches.

At that precise moment, I heard a rumble, then another, louder. I had a hunch where it was coming from. I rushed to the roof of the Armenian school. The sun shone radiantly everywhere except on the Jewish quarter. Over it hung motionless a pall of ghastly purplish-gray haze, with fires still raging here and there, and black smoke spiraling through. Only one wall remained standing of the huge sextagonal Hurvath Synagogue Beth Jacob, a landmark of the Old City, whose foundation dated from about the twelfth century. I saw the wall dimly through the dust put that enveloped the area. And now the seventh dynamite charge went off, and the last wall of the ancient structure joined the others in the huge burial mound that was now the Jewish quarter. The great Nissim Back Synagogue had been destroyed earlier. The underground synagogue of Yohannan ben Zakkai (reputedly standing for two thousand years), and twenty-six other synagogues, were buried under the rubble...

...Accompanied by an English-speaking Legionnaire, I began my tramp through the desolation. A horde of looters, including numerous children, shuttled in and out of the Miscab Ladach Hospital carting booty on their heads, or loading it on donkey and homemade wagons...The ultra-orthodox Moslem women gathered the loot with their black veils religiously drawn over their features. Legion soldiers were everywhere -- not to prevent looting but to preserve law and order among the wild beggars and thieves of the Holy CIty.

Climbing over the mountains of stones, I looked upon the pitiful sight that was once the glory of the Hurvath Synagogue. A particularly thorough job of demolition had been done here. On one wall, left partially standing, was a plaque with the Ten Commandments. Only this remained to warn a reckless world and an impotent UN of the words of the Law: "Thou shalt not kill; Thou shalt not steal; Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain; for the Lord will not hold him guiltless that taketh His name in vain..." Sheets of the holy scrolls were strewn all over the rubble. I rescued a small roll of parchment, burnt and discolored from heat, and tucked it inside my shirt.

"I will take it to America as a souvenir of the great Arab victory," I said to my soldier companion.

I found a scorched circular that somehow had escaped the fire. I read in English:

The Grand Synagogue "Beth Jacob" in Hurvath Rabbi Yehuda Hachassid at Jerusalem Jewry, of great historical significance, where all official, religious and national festivals and ceremonies are celebrated..."

It is an ancient and generally accepted tradition for the Jewish tourist, visiting Jerusalem, to attend, at least once, the Services conducted in this Synagogue either on a Sabbath or on a holiday...

For the sake of Jewish Jerusalem, we respectfully request all Jewish tourists coming to our City to pay honour to this House of God, to visit it and worship therein on Sabbaths and Holidays and to please offer their mnaterial contributions for its maintenance and to thus enable its further existence.

May all donors be blessed with Zion's blessings.