Jamal Pasha, Ahman

(1872–1922)

   Turkish statesman. Jamal Pasha was one of the triumvirate that ruled the Ottoman empire during World War I. As commander of the fourth army in Syria and Palestine he exercised an authority over the Jewish communities in those countries that was arbitrary and often violent. Many of the Jews in Palestine were citizens of an enemy country (Russia) and Jamal’s suspicions were reinforced if they were also Zionists. Many thousands of Jews were deported. A Jewish spy ring (Nili) acting for the British was discovered. Those leaders who were caught were interrogated under torture and executed and one, Sarah AARONSON, the sister of the ring-leader, committed suicide in prison. The Jewish watchmen’s organization, Hashomer, was outlawed. Partly as a result of the expulsions, and even more because of the famine and disease that ravaged the country towards the end of the war, the yishuv had by 1918 lost twenty thousand of its pre-war strength of 85,000. Jamal met a violent end while engaged in conspiratorial activities in Tiflis in 1922. JANCO, Marcel 1895–1984. Israeli artist. Janco was born in Bucharest, but in 1915 he moved to Switzerland where he studied at the Zurich Polytechnikum. There he became part of the circle of writers, painters, musicians, and dancers who founded the Dada movement. In 1921 Janco joined the Dada surrealist group in Paris, but the next year he returned to Romania. He became one of the leaders of the Romanian avant-garde and the editor of the journal Contimpo- ranul. His activities were curtailed by the Nazis and he moved to Palestine in 1941. There he was part of the New Horizon group; he founded the cooperative artists’ village of Ein-Hod in 1953 and the art department of the Kibbutz Movement’s Teachers’ College, where he himself taught for several years. In 1967 he won the Israel Prize for Art and in 1978 a film was made of his life and work. The Janco-Dada Museum was opened at Ein-Hod by President HERZOG in 1983.