1939

“My father was a farmer and we had cows. He sold the milk. My mother was from the city, from Jaffa, so she never milked the cows—neither did I. My father died when I was three years old. At that time my mother had just given birth to my little brother, Khalil.

When I was a girl, Mahmud, my older brother, did not allow me to go very far from our house. He was a difficult person. The only time I was allowed to leave the house was when I accompanied my mother to visit her brother.

In the village there was a school for boys. Teaching took place in a tent. One of my brothers suggested that I should also attend school, but I refused to go to a boys’ school. Besides, I had become the tallest in the class, and I did not want that. Most of the time I stayed at home, helped my mother, cooked, and washed dishes.”

1948

“We heard gunfire between Jews and Palestinians in Sarona, a nearby village. I later heard that the Jews took some young men and shot them out in the fields.

Our mukhtar explained that we had to leave Salama, but that we would be able to return after a week or so. Mother decided that we should leave. It was me, my sister—who was pregnant—and my two brothers. We walked on foot through several villages: Sakija, Kafr Ana, Cheirija, Bayt Dajan, Kibja, and Shabtin.

We were hungry. We had only a small piece of bread to eat each day. We took water from wells. The water was full of red insects, which my mother strained out between her fingers.

We walked for maybe a month—I don’t know. In the end we reached Ramallah. From there we were transported by trucks to Nablus, where we stayed for two months. We slept under the open sky; we had no tent, nothing. Sometimes it rained.

Then we were taken to a guesthouse in Askar. They arranged a tent for us in the Askar refugee camp. Later they built a room for us. It was so cramped that my mother slept leaning against the front door.

My sister and her husband took over the tent. There she gave birth to a son. He died shortly afterward.”

1954

“When I was 18, I married a man who was 43. He asked my mother and my brother for permission to marry me. We had never met before we got married. It wasn’t like today (laughs).”

1977

“During Ramadan, my son Jihad had the task of walking around the Askar refugee camp to wake people up well before dawn. The Israeli army had been searching for someone in the camp but had not found him. Instead, they spotted Jihad. First they shot him in the leg. Then they killed him. According to the hospital report, he was shot 82 times. When I heard the first shots, I began to scream. He was 23 years old.

I visited his grave every day for two months. One night I was sitting on the edge of my bed when Jihad suddenly appeared. I saw him coming toward me together with another man. We embraced and kissed.

I said, ‘My son, my love, my son, my love.’ He said nothing. Then he disappeared again.

He appeared once more. That time he was riding a white horse in the fields of paradise. After I told others about his second appearance, he stopped appearing to me.”

Reflection

– Who bears responsibility for your situation?

“I don’t know.”

- Mamma fick inte gifta sig med någon som inte var jude. Det var en omöjlighet. Men hon blev aldrig kär i någon av de judiska killarna. När hon var 40 år träffade hon Valter Jansson. De gifte sig och jag föddes något år senare. Men de var inte gifta så länge, säger Yvonne Leff.

Inspelning med Rikard Folkmans förälddrar, Arek och Eva Folkman. Arek berättar som sina upplevelser under andra världskriget. Han bevittnade de tyska truppernas intåg i Lwów (Lemberg), levde under sovjetiskt styre och senare arbetade som tvångsarbetare för den tyska Organisation Todt i Norge.

Från Norge lyckades Folkman fly till Sverige 1943. Vid ankomsten ansågs han vara en av de sista judiska flyktingarna som lyckats ta sig ut från det ockuperade Polen.

Intervjun med Arek och Eva gjordes 1975 av Judit Horwat-Lindberg.

I boken “Den siste juden från Polen” (Bonniers, 1944) berättar Folkman sin historia för den svensk-ungerska författaren och journalisten Stefan Szende. Boken var en av de första böckerna i Sverige som gav en detaljerad ögonvittnesskildring av Förintelsen och det systematiska mördandet av miljontals judar i Polen.

Boken har också översatts till tyska och engelska.

- Jag började Hillelskolan för att bli mer judisk, men jag kände mig ensam. Jag åt skinka hemma. Det berättade jag aldrig. Jag kände mig ensam ända fram till högstadiet, då jag bytte skola, säger Rikard Folkman.

1948

“The Egyptian army came to our aid. They were 6,000 men. Our house was located on high ground, and we had a clear view of the Jewish settlement of Gat. The Egyptian commander demanded to take over our house because of its strategic location. We had to move to another house.

One day the Jews attacked our village with three airplanes. The Egyptians did nothing because they believed the planes belonged to the Egyptian army. After the air raid, my brother and I went out to look for our sisters. They were nine and three years old. But of my sisters, only a few small body parts remained. My parents buried the remains (begins to cry).

Fourteen members of our family were killed in the air raid. Everyone was in shock. I remember a dead woman lying in the middle of the village. She had just gotten married and was wearing a beautiful wedding dress, richly adorned with gold jewelry. Her throat had been cut by shrapnel.

The Egyptian army forced my father and all the men of the village to stay behind. Women, children, and the elderly—300 people in total—left the village. We set out on foot. We crossed the mountains and arrived in Beit Jibrin, my mother’s birthplace. We were supposed to spend the night there, but the Israeli airplanes appeared again and we were forced to continue.

I had no shoes, and my mother had nothing to cover her hair with. We walked almost the entire night. We had neither food nor water. Some children died along the way. We kept walking until we reached the outskirts of Idhna late the following evening. In Idhna, which lies in al-Diffa al-Gharbia (the West Bank), my grandmother lived, but we were too exhausted to look for her house.

My mother found a cemetery with an empty grave. My brother and I lay down and slept in the grave, while my mother sat and watched over us. In the morning, we met a man who showed us the way to my grandmother’s house.

In the meantime, the Israelis had occupied Fallujah. My father fled together with the other villagers. After a few kilometers, a woman discovered that she was carrying a pillow instead of her baby. She began to scream and cry. My father told the woman to keep going while he turned back. He managed to retrieve the baby in Fallujah and brought it back to the mother (begins to cry). Only after a year and a half were we reunited with my father.”

1949

“The Red Cross built a refugee camp outside Idhna. My father did not want to stay with my grandmother, so we moved into the camp. The Israelis claimed that the camp was too close to their border, and after some time they attacked us. The Jordanian authorities cooperated with the Israelis, and in 1952 they moved us to the Fawwar refugee camp, which is farther from the Israeli border. We have lived here ever since.

At first, we were supposed to return to Fallujah after a couple of weeks. Those two weeks turned into 75 years.”

1949

“The Jews tried to force us to leave the village and go away, either toward al-Khalil (Hebron) or the Gaza Strip. But we refused. We said that we would rather be buried in ‘Iraq al-Manshiyya. Then they killed people. The rest of us they expelled.

We were allowed to stay in one house by the main road. At first we had no food, no water, nothing. After some time we received a little food. We stayed in the house for three months. Then they came for us with trucks and drove us to the Arroub refugee camp. We had no food, no water. There was nothing here, except stones.

2022

“Our family has been severely affected by the occupation. Both my husband and my brother-in-law have been imprisoned. In 2001, one of my sons was wanted. He was 16 years old. When the military came to our house in Arroub refugee camp to arrest him, he had gone underground, so they attacked my husband instead and began pulling at his beard.

Eventually my son was arrested, and they held him for two months. After another three or four rounds of arrests and interrogations, he was sentenced to ten years in the Askalan military prison. He was then deported to Jordan. Only now has he been allowed to return here.

Now I have three grandchildren under the age of 18 who are imprisoned. One of the grandchildren was shot in the leg; two are imprisoned in Askalan and one in Gush Etzion. I am too ill to travel and visit them.

When the army enters the camp, there are often clashes. Children are not allowed to have toy weapons outdoors, but the military is allowed to aim their laser sights at our grandchildren at night. It is enough for young people to demonstrate against the occupation for them to be arrested. If they are not arrested immediately, the military comes at night and arrests the children in their underwear.

Almost my entire family has either been arrested or is imprisoned—both children and grandchildren.

Even today, our suffering continues. They fire tear gas at us at night. It is impossible to sleep. The tear gas makes us sick. Sometimes I ask myself: how will I survive?”

- När jag tagit min bat mitzva håller jag ett tal i synagoga, om vad en judisk kvinna ska göra. Efteråt spelade vi in en skiva med talet i konserthuset. När lampan lyste grönt skulle man tala, säger Renée Hirschfeld.

- Som flicka kommer jag ihåg på Jom Kipur, i synagogan på söder. Det var tungt. Uppe på damläktaren satt kvinnor som överlevt Förintelsen och bara grät och grät. Jag tyckte det var obehagligt. säger Renée Hirschfeld.

1941

“On the eastern side, up toward the mountain, we had planted olive trees and almond trees. On the western side, close to the coast, we grew wheat, corn, and other grains. To the north was the Jewish settlement of Gat, where mostly Polish Jews lived. They tried many times to persuade my father to sell the land, but he refused. He did not want to sell to Jews.

But we were poor and needed money. Instead, my father sold to Azzi, an Egyptian. He bought the land from us but then sold it on to the Jews. Azzi was a traitor. He exploited us. The Zionists also bought land from other nearby villages, including Summil, Jusayr, and Zayta. In the end, they managed to expand their small settlement to 600 hectares.”

1948

“We were besieged by the Israeli army for nine months. Our village was defended by 900 Egyptian soldiers, including Abdel Nasser, and 200 volunteers from Sudan. I met Nasser many times. He lived in my aunt’s house. He later became president of Misr (Egypt).

The Israelis attacked the village from all directions, despite suffering heavy losses each time they attacked.

In February 1949, Israel entered into the so-called Rhodes Agreement with Egypt. The Egyptian army withdrew to the Gaza Strip, which meant that ‘Iraq al-Manshiyya came under Israeli control. The Israelis demanded that we leave the village, but we refused. After two months, they returned.

I was with my parents when we were forced out of our house and gathered together with four other families in a house outside the village. They emptied the village and searched every house. After some time, two young Palestinians went back into the village, but they were shot dead by the Israeli military. There were UN observers from France and Sweden present. They summoned the Israeli leadership and complained about the conduct of the military. I heard it myself, because I was serving the coffee.

The Israelis drove us away in their trucks. This happened in three stages over one week in April 1949. My family was taken away in the last trucks. This happened during the daytime, and the military told us that we could take all our belongings with us. But since we had been under siege for almost nine months, we did not have much left to take.

‘You can take the stones too,’ a soldier said.

We were driven east toward al-Diffa al-Gharbia, toward Tarqumia. The Jordanian army was waiting for us at the border and drove us onward to the Arroub refugee camp, which the Red Cross had prepared a few months earlier. We were told by the Red Cross staff that this was only temporary and that we would be able to return after a couple of weeks.”

Reflection

“One day we will return, even if it takes hundreds of years. What was taken by force will be taken back by force.”

“In 1954, UNRWA reached an agreement with Jordan, which at the time governed East al-Quds, to build 28 houses in Sheikh Jarrah. We were one of the families who were to live there, and when the houses were completed in 1956, we moved in. But everything changed when Israel occupied East al-Quds, and in 1972 they evicted twelve of our neighboring families.

In 2009, I extended our house. The authorities considered it an illegal construction that was to be demolished. When I refused, the police took the keys to the new section and stationed four guards in front of the house—two Druze and two Bedouins. That same year, 1,000 Israeli soldiers with dogs evicted another couple of our neighbors, the al-Ghawi and Hanoun families.

My extension remained sealed off and stood empty for nine years. In 2018, the police gave the keys to some fanatical settlers and allowed them to occupy the new section. My original house has only a few small rooms where we sleep. That is why we are having this conversation outdoors.

After a new court decision in 2021, we—the remaining fourteen families—also risk being evicted from our homes in Sheikh Jarrah. But I continue to fight for what is mine; my home is my fortress. I grew up here, received my education here, and got married here.

The settlers continue to harass me. They attack me physically, and I defend myself with my fists. They stole half of the gate to my plot of land. When I called the police, they did not care. I see them stealing our water and various things from the garden, but the police do nothing.

Itamar Ben Gvir, who sits in the Knesset, Israel’s parliament, has been here and led a demonstration against us.

But I continue to fight for my house, with my fists if I must. I am always on guard. In the evenings, I walk around the neighborhood until midnight. I have installed surveillance cameras to keep watch in case the Zionists come to evict me. How is it possible that a thief can claim ownership of my house?”