Överlevarna

“My father worked as a governor for the British government, and the rest of the family followed him. He was later transferred to Safad. There we had good relations with our Jewish neighbors. That was normal. Women exchanged baked goods with one another during different holidays and celebrations.

In 1946 it finally became clear to him what the British were doing—that they were

preparing the way for the Jews to take over. His job became impossible, and he

decided to resign. He went to the King David Hotel to submit his letter of resignation.

As he stepped over the threshold of the hotel, he looked at his watch and realized

he was early. He decided to visit a friend in Mamilla in the meantime.

Shortly after he left the hotel, it was blown to pieces. The man my father was going

to visit was not as lucky. He had gone to the hotel and was killed by the bomb. This

was in 1946. Irgun was responsible for the attack, but the various Zionist

organizations constantly blamed one another. This was only the beginning.

Then came the bombing of the Semiramis Hotel and the massacre in Dayr Yasin.

That was when people began to feel real fear.

After my father resigned, he began teaching physics. We remained in al-Quds. I was

a happy teenager. I went to parties, and my aunts and cousins lived there. It was a

wonderful time. We used to go to the YMCA, where we were members. They had

leadership courses, tennis courts, a gym, and a swimming pool. It was a fantastic

place.

In 1948, the family moved to Birzeit, where my father taught and where I attended a boarding school—it felt like my second home.

Suddenly, rumors spread that something was wrong. People began pouring in from

al-Ramla and Lydda. They were fleeing and had been walking for two or three days.

I will never forget that sight. Everything was so sad; people were utterly exhausted.

Someone told us they had lost a son. One man was confused and rambling; he did

not understand what was happening. I especially remember a woman who had lost

all her belongings. Despite that, she was grateful to have survived. She said:

“Furniture can be replaced, but not people.”

My aunt told my cousins and me to cook food for the refugees. We boiled eggs and

potatoes, sliced tomatoes and cucumbers—everything we could get hold of. My

aunt also helped prepare a school building where some of the refugees could find

shelter.

My aunts and cousins had come to Birzeit to escape the unrest in al-Quds. Everyone believed this would be over in a few weeks, and that we would be able to return. But in October, we began to understand that this was no picnic.

After the war in 1967, East al-Quds was annexed by Jordan. It then

became possible again for my mother and me to visit our house. The house had

become a daycare center, so it was easy to enter. My mother began explaining to a

woman sitting in the office that it had once been her bedroom. It was painful to see

our house again. I had hoped, for as long as possible, that we would be allowed to

return. We never went back again.

The Nakba is still ongoing; the displacement is still ongoing. Everything here is so hard to predict under the Israeli occupation. When you get up in the morning and put your right foot down, you do not know whether your left foot will follow.

In 1993, during the first intifada, my son produced a song and made cassette copies

of it. He was arrested by the police and taken for interrogation at Moscobiyeh in al-Quds.

He was accused of spreading music that glorified the intifada. He was imprisoned for six months. First he was held in Ayalon prison in al-Ramla. He went through hell there. We were allowed to visit him, but I was not allowed to touch him. He sat behind a net. Later he was transferred to Prison Six, outside Atlit. The time in prison made my son more enthusiastic and determined than before. He continues to make music.

59. Mohamed Mahmoud Harb by Överlevarna

1946

“I used to help my father out in the fields. We grew tomatoes, cucumbers, and

watermelons. We took the vegetables on our donkeys to the markets in Yafa

and Mulabbis. When I had time off, I played football with my friends. I did not

have a real football, so I made one out of cloth and string. My mother helped

me.”

1948

“We loaded furniture and mattresses onto a donkey and walked the whole way.

My father had to carry my grandfather on his back; he was one hundred years

old. We left the village in the afternoon and walked for two days, without food

or water. Along the way we picked oranges and apples. The first night we rested

for only a couple of hours. We reached al-Tira the following night. We had barely

settled in when the Israeli military attacked from three directions. We fled, but

my father decided to try to return to al-Tira to fetch wheat and food for us.

Meanwhile we reached a village between Taiba and Tulkarm. There were caves

there where we spent the night. My father returned with wheat flour. There was

plenty of water, and my mother baked bread over an open fire. We stayed in the

caves for three weeks before continuing to Qalqilya, in al-Diffa al-Gharbia.

Eventually our relatives found us. They came with donkeys and took us to their

village, Mas-ha. My father began looking for work.”

1967

“I was still serving in the Jordanian army. We had weapons, but I never saw any

Israeli soldiers. They attacked us only from the air, with planes, constantly.

Many soldiers in the Jordanian army were killed. I was lucky to survive. We

retreated to Mount Nebo Mousa, where we were trapped without food or water.

We were terribly thirsty. I set off on my own down the mountain to my family in

the Akbat Jaber refugee camp.

When I arrived at the camp it was almost empty; the houses were abandoned,

the doors left open. After Israel’s occupation, most of the camp’s 30,000

inhabitants had fled to al-Urdunn (Jordan). Only 5,000 people remained in the

camp, including my family. They could not afford to flee. I had brought my radio

equipment with me and heard that the military leadership ordered all Palestinians

to cross east of the Jordan River, to al-Urdunn. But I refused. My family was in

the camp, and I decided to stay in al-Diffa al-Gharbia.”

2002

“During a clash with the Israeli military here in the Balata refugee camp, my son

Khalil was killed. Another of my sons, Jihad, attempted to carry out a suicide

bombing together with a companion. They were supposed to pass the border

crossing in Qalqilya, but the Israeli army knew of their plans and was waiting for

them. Jihad and his companion blew themselves up.

I am still waiting to get his body back. It remains in Israel. I have Jihad’s portrait

here on the wall, together with his two other brothers. I have paid a high price;

in total I have lost three sons. But I am not upset or angry. There are martyrs in

the Qur’an, the Torah, and the Bible. God chose my sons to be martyrs. For that

I am grateful, not angry.”

Interpreter: ‘Abd Yusuf.

Nakba #54 - ‘Abd al-Munim Fayiz Sa‘ad by Överlevarna

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?”