Exactly 60 years ago, on 13 April 1948 a Hadassah Hospital convoy in Jerusalem, consisting of 10 vehicles taking physicians, nurses, patients, Hebrew University staff, and supplies to Mount Scopus, came under deadly, devastating attack.

The convoy included two trucks loaded with building material to be used for water cisterns at the Hospital: two ambulances carrying two stretcher cases and two buses carrying Hospital and University staff, and escort vehicles.

For seven hours the Hospital convoy was subjected to Arab fire whilst passing through the Sheikh Jarrah Quarter of Jerusalem.

Seventy-nine Jews were killed by gunfire during the fighting, or were burnt when several vehicles were set alight. Twenty of them were women. Twenty were wounded. Many of the bodies were so badly burned they could not be identified. They were buried in a mass grave in the cemetery in Sanhedria, Jerusalem.

All the dead, including, Dr. Haim Yassky, the then Director of the Hadassah Medical Organisation, were in the convoy, some of whose vehicles were clearly marked with the insignia of the Magen David Adom, or Red Shield Society.

For the emerging Jewish State in 1948, this was a day of great tragedy, and even today, in 2008, it remains etched in the collective memory of all those associated with the Hadassah Hospital in Jerusalem.

In the weeks that followed this incident, the battle for Jerusalem raged and the Hadassah Hospital on Mount Scopus was lost to the forces of the Jordanian Legion.

While the physical facility of the hospital was lost, the spirit and drive that reflected the vision of Henrietta Szold, the founder of the Hadassah Women’s Zionist Organisation, saw a new major hospital built in Ein Kerem in west Jerusalem. A wholly new campus built on the Mt Scopus site after it was recovered in 1967.