DMcG: A very intelligent question. And the answer is that the rabbis in that era felt that some of the predictions came true in the times of the Romans, but that some of them still were to come true in the future. As I had explained before and as others had explained before, there were rabbis 200 years before the Holocaust who were commentators on these books and who explained that these curses were still to come - rabbis such as the Meshech Chachma. In fact, there are more predictions he made that still did not happen with the Holocaust, which means we are due for some more predictions to come true.
hope that answers the question with a resounding "yes the rabbis said it would come" prior to when it happened.