c 1477 BCE- A year after the Exodus from Egypt, G-d instructed the people of Israel to bring the Passover offering on the afternoon of 14 Nisan and to eat it that evening, roasted over the fire, together with matzah and bitter herbs, as they had done on the previous year just before they left Egypt.
"There were, however, certain persons who had become ritually impure through contact with a dead body, and could not, therefore, prepare the Pesach offering on that day. They approached Moshe and Aaron ... and they said: '...Why should we be deprived, and not be able to present G-d's offering in its time, amongst the children of Israel?'" (Numbers 9).
In response to their plea, G-d established the 14th of Iyar as a "second Passover" (Pesach Sheini) for anyone who was unable to bring the offering on its appointed time in the previous month.
May 2, 1605- The Jews of Bisenz, Austria were massacred.
May 9, 1664- Anti-Jewish riots by students and peasants resulted in damages and death in Lemberg and Cracow. In Lemberg, the shul was attacked on Shabbat and the Chazzan was murdered.
May 19, 1933- Following the rise of the Nazi Party in Germany, the Nazis publicly burned thousands of books written by Jews and other authors.
May 19, 1943- Berlin was declared "Judenrein" ["clean" of the Jews].
May 23, 1948- Ramat Rachel was repossessed by Israel. The battle for Jewish control of the Jordan Valley was successfully concluded on the same day.
May 23, 1948- The only advance of the Arab Legion beyond the Old City walls into western Jerusalem was halted in front of Notre Dame. The British commander of the Arab Legion, Sir John Bagot Glubb (Glubb Pasha), considered that battle to be the worst defeat suffered by the legion throughout the war.
May 11, 1960- Agents of Israel's "Mossad" (Secret Service) captured Nazi leader Adolf Eichmann, chief architect of Hitler’s iniquitous "Final Solution," in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Eichmann was in charge of all transportation required for the shipment of Jews to the extermination camps and implementing the "final solution" i.e. the extermination of the Jews. The height of his career was reached in Hungary, 1944, when he managed to transport 400,000 Jews to the gas chambers in less than five weeks.
After the war, Eichmann fled to Argentina and lived under the assumed name of Ricardo Klement for ten years until Israeli Mossad agents abducted him on May 11, 1960 and smuggled him out of the country to stand trial in Jerusalem for his crimes against the Jewish people, crimes against humanity and war crimes. Eichmann was captured through the efforts of Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal and the Israeli Mossad .
He was put on trial in Israel, which was broadcast worldwide and featured the wrenching testimony of over one hundred witnesses, many of them Holocaust survivors. During the four months of the trial, Eichmann took the stand and used the defense that he was just obeying orders. "Why me," he asked. "Why not the local policemen, thousands of them? They would have been shot if they had refused to round up the Jews for the death camps. Everybody killed the Jews."
Eichmann was found guilty on all counts, convicted and sentenced to death by hanging. He was hanged at Ramleh Prison, on 27 Iyar 5722 - May 31, 1962, the only capital punishment ever carried out in Israel. His body was cremated and ashes scattered at sea, so that no nation would serve as Eichmann's final resting place.