Överlevarna

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?”

1945 “I grew up in the Romayma neighborhood. My father traveled a lot on business, among other places to Jaffa and Jordan. Jews, Christians, and Muslims lived side by side in al-Quds. My uncle did business with a man named Moshe. He owned a dairy in Machneyuda. Some Jews who came from Aleppo in Syria lived with my uncle. They were businessmen, just like us. 1948 “We used to go to my uncle’s house, and from there we could see how the shooting went on from both sides, day and night. The British helped the Jews against the Muslims, against the Arabs. We heard about Dayr Yasin, that they had killed 90 people and thrown them into the village wells. Life became very difficult; conditions worsened over time. My school was closed, people were murdered. The Jews continued to shoot from Hadassah and the Hebrew University, day and night. We feared for our lives. We fled north, toward Ramallah. We left at night in buses that the British army had left behind. My younger siblings and I took shelter on the floor of the bus. Not everyone was as fortunate. It was summer and the grass in the fields was tall. My sister-in-law, who had been so ill that she had been admitted to Saint Joseph’s Hospital in East al-Quds, was forced to crawl on all fours across a field so as not to be discovered and shot. When we arrived in Ramallah, there were already many others there; they had fled from Lydda, al-Ramla, and Jaffa. People lay sleeping under the trees. Quite soon we received help from UNRWA with food and a tent. My father, my brothers, and I were eventually able to return to our house in Romayma. My mother and my sisters stayed in Ramallah. Life was hard; we had no money.” 1967 “We were forced to flee again, this time on foot, to Ariha (Jericho). Many families walked for a whole day and a whole night across the mountains, along difficult paths. We stopped and rested, each family under its own orange tree. When we arrived in Ariha, Israeli soldiers shot at us. We stayed in Ariha for a week, and after the Six-Day War we were able to return to al-Quds. Our family has lost 150 dunams of land, with olive trees, vegetables, and fruit.” Reflection “The Israelis believe in doing everything by force. But they stand only with the support of the USA and Europe. We are free and have the right to live in peace. Since the founding of the state in 1948, Israel has demolished houses, arrested people, killed people. We will never accept being slaves under Israel. I want the world to know that Arabs are human beings. We do not intend to live our lives as slaves.”

1948 ”Vi hade ett mycket bra liv i Talbiya, i al-Quds. Min far var affärsman i tryckeribranschen. Familjens verksamhet gick tillbaka till 1920-talet. Vi hade ett vackert hus och en vacker trädgård med dahlior som växte högre än jag. I trädgården fanns det en damm med guldfiskar. Vi hade fester i trädgården, med en massa maträtter. Det var ett bra liv. Mina föräldrar och bröder hade åkt till Yafa på en kusins bröllop. Men eftersom jag hade mässlingen fick jag stanna hemma med mina morföräldrar. Jag var ensam och rädd och gick och la mig i mina för- äldrars säng. Då exploderade en bomb, rummets fönster krossades av tryckvågen och jag fick glassplittret över mig. Jag hamnade i chock. Som tur var kom min farbror, som bodde i närheten i Katamon, och tog hand om mig. Vi hade en judisk student som hyresgäst och Haganah hade snappat upp att han jobbade för deras konkurrent Irgun. Vårt hem låg nära den brittiska arméns högkvarter och för att väcka deras intresse hade Haganah sprängt en bomb i vår trädgård. När britterna kom upptäckte de att studenten hade sprängmedel under sin säng. Mina föräldrar återvände hem med en gång och de bestämde att vi skulle lämna al-Quds. Jag hade börjat skolan ett år tidigare. Vi åkte till vårt vinterhus i Ariha. Jag kommer inte ihåg om vi åkte bil eller buss. Vi skulle bara stanna ett par veckor. Lola, min älsklingsdocka i porslin som min far köpt i London, blev kvar hemma. Jag kunde inte förstå att han, familjens överhuvud, inte kunde åka tillbaka och hämta dockan till mig, trots att jag grät. Jag började i en ny skola i Ariha, som en kvinna hade öppnat i sitt hem. Där lärde jag mig läsa. Jag ville åka tillbaka till mitt hem, till min säng, till mina kläder, till mina leksaker. Jag saknade min kompis Ruti. Hennes föräldrar hyrde ett litet hus i hörnet av vår trädgård. De var palestinska judar och vi växte upp tillsammans, lekte tillsammans och åt tillsammans. Efter ett par månader återvände vi till al-Quds, min far åkte till ‘Amman för att söka jobb. Vi hyrde två rum av franciskanermunkarna på Casanova. Vi väntade och hoppades på att få återvända till vårt hus. Ingen trodde att det skulle bli på det här sättet. Till slut flyttade vi efter min far till ‘Amman, där han fått jobb. Jag och mina syskon började på en internatskola i al-Quds, eftersom skolorna i al-Urdunn var eftersatta, så att säga. På internatskolan var lärarna mycket stränga, de övervakade hur vi gick, hur vi hälsade, hur vi åt. Vi fick inte sitta med armbågarna på matbordet. Det var inte lätt, men mina studier gick bra. När jag var 16 började jag på college i Bayrut. Jag var den yngsta eleven och alla kallade mig för »bebin«. Men jag trivdes mycket bra, jag kände mig nästan vuxen. Efter examen återvände jag till ‘Amman. Jag fick ett stipendium för att åka och studera på ett universitet i USA. Men min mor tillät inte att jag åkte. 2022 ”Min barndomskompis Ruti bor fortfarande kvar i stugan, i hörnet av vår trädgård, som de hyrde av mina föräldrar. Hon har renoverat stället och byggt på en våning.” - Har ni fortfarande kontakt? ”(Suckar). Inte egentligen. Det här är mycket smärtsamt. Hon är i mitt hus, på min egendom. Och jag är på gatan. Varför? Jag skulle vilja veta varför. Vad har jag gjort? Ruti blev professor i antropologi och jobbade på Hebreiska universitet. En gång blev jag intervjuad av en journalist utanför vårt tidigare hem. Och hon kom ut och sa: »Å, det är den där Claudette igen.« Jag svarade henne: »Så länge jag inte fått tillbaka mina rättigheter kommer du att få se mig. Ruti, du och jag vet att stugan som du bor i tillhör min fars egendom.«

1936 “There were about 2,500 people living in my village. In 1936, the same year I was born, a general strike took place. It lasted for half a year. It was the longest strike in the history of Palestine.” 1941 “We were divided into two teams. The other team chose seven stones and stacked them into a pyramid. We tried to hit the pyramid with a ball. If we succeeded, the other team would try to hit us with the ball. At school I sometimes did everything, sometimes nothing. But I was never beaten by the teacher. I respected not only the teacher, but also myself.” 1942 “My father worked as a chauffeur for a British major. After the workday ended, he was allowed to take the car home.” 1947 “The UN divided Palestine into two states. We went to school as usual. We saw Jews celebrating and singing. They drove cars, buses, and even trucks along Jaffa Road, which runs between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. We stopped along the road and watched. Some students, older than me, shouted ‘shut up’ at them and threw stones at the vehicles. A Jew stopped his car and began shooting at us. From that day on, we never returned to school. It was closed. Jews lived in a neighborhood very close to our school. After the school closed, our Jewish neighbors began appearing in our area—threatening and armed. Eventually we left our home and drove to al-Jura, a village near Ayn Karim, in my father’s car. We had relatives there and were allowed to stay in one room. My father stayed behind to guard our house. Sometimes he came to visit us after work, but each time he returned to Lifta, near Jerusalem. Later, Jews blew up a couple of houses near ours.” 1948 “We moved on from al-Jura to Ayn Karim. I went to school there, but only for one month. Then the massacre in Dayr Yasin took place, which was adjacent to Ayn Karim. Refugees poured into our village. But no one dared to stay, and the next day we all made our way to Bethlehem and Bayt Jala. For two days and two nights we walked, mostly at night. The first night we reached Walaja. But we were afraid the Jews would come after us, so we continued on to Bayt Jala. My older brother and I helped carry our younger siblings. Many, many people were fleeing. In Bayt Jala we rented a room. When the British left Palestine, my father became unemployed. He joined us in Bayt Jala. The Egyptian army had a camp nearby, and my father managed to get a job there. After a few months we moved to Bethlehem. One of my maternal uncles had moved there and arranged a room for us. I don’t remember all the details—we moved and moved and moved. I wanted to start school in Bethlehem, but my father was told that the school had no places for refugees. I didn’t take it very hard. I was younger then.” 1955 “My brother, Abdul Karim, was killed by the Jordanian army in Bethlehem. He took part in a demonstration against the Baghdad Pact.” 1967 “For the first time since 1948, I was allowed to return to my home village. I visited Lifta, but I was not allowed to stay. Some people were living in my house; they had rented it from the authorities. They offered me a cup of coffee. The house was as I remembered it, yet different. I found none of the belongings we had left behind.” - Were they kind to you? “It wasn’t important whether they were kind. What mattered to me was seeing my house. But I was not allowed to stay.” - Did you try to reclaim your house through legal channels? “No. I already knew the answer would be ‘no’. It had already been decided.” 2005 “In 2005, the Israelis blew up my house and 30 others in order to build new houses for themselves, with a road and pleasant landscaping.” - Why? “Ask the Israelis. I pass the remains of my village three times a week on my way to medical treatment. Every time, I am reminded. It is not good for my mind. When I see it, it feels bad. But what can I say? What can I do? Screaming doesn’t help. I still feel like a refugee. I cannot forget Lifta.”

1937 The family settled in Bayt Lahm. I started at a new boarding school, this time in Ramallah. It was run by the Quakers, and I felt very much at home there. In Ramallah, all women wore beautifully embroidered dresses. If they carried a bag, it too was embroidered; on their heads they wore an embroidered scarf. The teachers taught us embroidery, so we learned their patterns, which they had brought with them from the United States.” 1948 “The boarding school in Ramallah distributed our graduation certificates a couple of months early. Then we were sent home. Everyone was afraid that war would break out when the British left Filastin. People were waiting for something to happen. The Jordanian girls in my class did not know how they would get home. They were picked up by a Jordanian military vehicle. We found that very exciting. The road to al-Quds was not safe. There was gunfire between the two sides. Four or five of us girls shared a taxi. I got off at Bab al-‘Amud and went to the social welfare office. My father had good connections there. I found a woman who knew us, and she offered to drive me home to Bayt Lahm. Gradually, everything returned to normal. Peasant women began coming back to Bayt Lahm to sell their vegetables. There was a market on Saturdays, and that was when I got to know these women. They wore beautiful traditional clothing and silver jewelry. I used to talk to them and took an interest in their garments. They were beautifully embroidered in cross-stitch. When the dresses wore out, they sold parts of the garments: vegetables on the left, pieces of fabric on the right. The embroidery in Bayt Lahm is completely different from that in Ramallah—different stitches and different thread. The tradition is more closely linked to church embroidery, since there are so many monasteries in Bayt Lahm. When the war broke out a steady stream of refugees arrived from al-Quds and the surrounding villages. Everything was turned upside down. We had upper-class refugees from al-Quds who rented houses, and we had those who had nothing, who lived in camps. Poor refugees sometimes worked for the wealthy refugees. On market days, the refugee women had no vegetables to sell. Yet despite their poverty, they had intact clothing and looked healthy.” 1952 “The pieces of fabric grew into a collection of traditional Palestinian dresses. As soon as I heard that a Palestinian village had been destroyed by the Israelis—another piece of our Palestinian cultural heritage—I reacted by wanting to buy more dresses. I wanted to show how beautiful the textiles are. And not only that—the work required system and discipline. The women who embroidered strove for perfection. How could they remember the patterns? They had no templates to copy from. Perhaps they looked at their mother’s dress. I found this ability astonishing. The embroidered textiles are an important part of our cultural heritage. The women stopped embroidering these magnificent dresses when they ended up in refugee camps. Instead, they made simple refugee dresses with simple embroidery.” 1967 “After the occupation of al-Diffa al-Gharbia, the refugees’ situation worsened even further. Bayt Lahm was surrounded by Jewish settlements.” 2022 “In the Al Makhrur Valley, between Bayt Lahm and Bayt Jala, lies the Saint George Monastery. They make very good wine. Now Jewish settlers have seized half of the valley, and there are rumors that they will also take over the monastery.” Afterthought “I have been collecting these garments for over 70 years now. The collection amounts to 2,000 dresses, objects, and silver jewelry. My children want me to stop, but I continue to buy dresses in secret. As recently as today, I bought two dresses—one very simple and one more elaborate.”

1949 “A voice over a loudspeaker announced that we were forced to leave al-Tayyibah, but that we would be allowed to return after a couple of days. I lost my clothes, books, and toys. Some people who had money fled by taxi. My family—we were twelve people—made our way to al-Jabliya in Jaffa. There we stayed with an uncle for three or four days. We were then picked up by buses. On the way to the bus, I passed a bank next to a police station. It had been blown to pieces, and banknotes were scattered all over the street. I did not dare stop and pick up any of the bills.”

1945 “My father died when I was three. I remember two things about him; I remember riding behind him on the donkey. And I remember him lying dead on a mattress.” 1948 “We passed a field of cucumbers and my father picked one. When the farmer realized that we were Palestinians, he threw stones at us.”

1930 “We owned 20 hectares of land and lived a good life. My father had six employees working in the fields. We grew cucumbers, tomatoes, wheat, corn, and other crops. We transported the produce to the port of Sidna Ali for onward shipment to Port Said in Egypt. In the 1930s the British closed the port. When my father came to collect our goods from the harbor, the British had already thrown them away. Despite this, they forced him to pay the port fee. My father’s cousin became so upset that he suffered a heart attack and died. For my father this was a severe blow—he still had to pay the workers’ wages. The British tried to break us by forcibly relocating our leaders, sometimes to Akka, sometimes to Safad. Sometimes they arrested people, sometimes they killed some. They wanted to force us to our knees. Many farmers became poor and were forced to sell their land and begin working for Jews. My father, too, was forced to sell a piece of land for a pittance to a woman in Miska. She had become wealthy after selling her land to the Zionists. The woman promised to take care of our land. When my father could afford it, he bought the land back.” 1937 “I was almost 14 years old when the settlers came to the village. The Jews tried to act like the British; they spoke English, but they were known in the village. One of them was called Elimelech. A Palestinian man asked why they were speaking English. He received no answer. They lined up seven men with their faces against the wall. Then they shot six of them in the back; the seventh lost his leg. I remember the names of some of them: Hassan Zreika, Muhammad Zreika, Ahmed Zreika, and Ali Harbiye. They also shot a man who had come from the south, from the village of al-Jura, and a worker from Syria. The Jews did it to spread fear.” 1948 “The rumor of the massacre in Dayr Yasin spread and people were afraid. Jaysh al-Inqad al-‘Arabi—we called them ‘the Syrians’—came to our village, and we believed they would defend us. But one of their generals explained that we were surrounded by Jewish settlements and that they could not protect us. One day, while six other women and I were working in the wheat fields, we were summoned and forced to leave the village along with everyone else. We fled on foot eastward, from Miska to al-Tira, a distance of three kilometers. It was the darkest day of my life.”

”My parents lived in Hiribya. Two of my paternal uncles took part in the resistance when the Israelis attacked in 1948. One of my uncles was surrounded by Israeli soldiers when he returned to the house to collect some belongings. They shot him. Hiribya was occupied and my parents were expelled to Gaza and the Beach Camp. My maternal grandfather was also active. In 1972 he was arrested and subjected to severe torture for a month. He never confessed to anything, so in the end they were forced to release him. I remember the day he was released. He could not walk. I was nine years old, and I felt hatred toward the occupying power for several reasons. First and foremost: in 1948 they took our land and expelled our people. Second: they attacked Gaza and the West Bank in 1967. Third: four of my maternal uncles were imprisoned; one of them spent 26 years in prison. His son was killed in a rocket attack in Gaza. Fourth: they murdered another of my maternal uncles and two of his sons, also in a rocket attack in Gaza. Fifth: all Palestinians are subjected to this oppression. When I was 20, I joined a women’s organization. We organized lectures on Palestinian history. The Israelis did not like that. I was summoned many times to the security service, Shabak, for interrogation. Later I became a leader of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) in Gaza. This was during the first Intifada, in 1987. The first time I was arrested was on December 14, 1987, one week after the Intifada began. I was detained for two weeks. I was given only a piece of bread a day and weak tea. I was forced to share a cell with a group of criminals. They were dangerous and frightened me. They took drugs and became agitated. I kept to myself and hardly slept for 14 days. During that time the guards threatened me with long prison sentences, with deportation, and with punishing my family. After two weeks I was released on bail pending trial. But there was never any trial. After five months I was arrested again. This time I was held for six months in Neve Tirtza women’s prison in Ramle, without trial. We were 36 Palestinian women divided into six rooms. After two months our situation became extremely bad. We were not allowed to read books or gather with the other women. When family members came to visit, they were forced to strip naked for searches. Mothers were not allowed to hug their children; they were separated by a glass wall. In my ward there were also criminal Jewish women. Every time we were taken out for exercise, they beat us and poured hot water on us. If we became ill, we were never given medical care. The only thing they gave us was Alvedon (paracetamol), regardless of the problem. One woman had difficulty urinating. After two days her stomach was swollen and she screamed in pain constantly. They refused to call a doctor. Only after we protested loudly did they finally send her to hospital. Another woman was psychologically unwell. She discovered that she was pregnant. When the guards learned this, they demanded that she have an abortion. When she refused, they gave her pills that caused a miscarriage. After six months I was released, in exchange for payment, but without any trial. I resumed the struggle against the occupation. In 2005 Hamas won the election in Gaza. Since then there have been four wars: 2005, 2008, 2014, and 2022. And unfortunately, I believe there will be a fifth war. I came to Sweden in 2005. My body is here, but my thoughts are in Gaza. If I were allowed to return to Palestine, I would first visit my family in Gaza, then al-Aqsa Mosque, and third Hiribya, my parents’ birthplace. I have very warm feelings for Hiribya, even though the Israelis destroyed the entire village—nothing remains. But when I was a girl in Gaza, my father rented a car every Friday and took us to Hiribya.

“We lived in a house in al-Hilwa in Jaffa, next to the Jabaliya Mosque. Jaffa was largely Arab, but we also had some neighbors who were Palestinian Jews. My parents have told me that people celebrated together and even married each other. My father was a fisherman and had his own boat. We also had a citrus grove in al-Nabi Rubin, a village located eleven or twelve kilometers south of Jaffa. Our land was about 4,000 square meters and included a farmhouse. The orchards lay next to the river, so irrigation was never a problem. Once a year, during the harvest season, pilgrims came to al-Nabi Rubin, to the tomb of the Prophet Rubin. Over time this developed into large popular festivals with up to 50,000 visitors. The Rubin Carnival lasted for three months, during which people celebrated honeymoons, got married, or circumcised boys. People came here to vacation. At the same time, commerce developed and people began trading livestock, carpets, clothes, furniture, and handicrafts. After the Second World War, European Jews arrived in Jaffa. They wanted to take over. My father Muhammad and my uncle Faris helped organize the armed resistance, which guarded our neighborhoods at night. My younger brother Sobhi and I often brought food to my father and uncle at their defense posts. They were stationed at the front. Their post blocked the entire street with light-brown sandbags. Once, when my brother and I had gone to the market, a man came running. In his hand he was holding a human head by the hair. I grabbed my brother’s hand and ran back home to our mother. When we decided to leave Jaffa, my father and uncle dug a very large hole outside the house in the courtyard. They placed all our valuables there—gold, money, jewelry, and furniture. They expected that we would soon return. We went down to the beach. There were boats there, and we boarded one of them. There were so many of us that the water almost reached over the gunwale. I was afraid the boat would sink. My father and uncle were not with us; they stayed behind at the front. We sailed south to Hiribya, where we had relatives. We stayed there for a few weeks. But the war followed us, and we were driven away from there as well. We fled south on foot to Jabalia, a desert area in the northern Gaza Strip. We had relatives there too. They gave us tents so that we could live on their land. My brother and I played outside all day long. Men were constantly arriving. When Jaffa fell, many resistance fighters were killed. My father survived and came to us, but he was never the same person again. He was a broken man. We lived in extreme poverty. For four years we lived in tents until UNRWA provided us with a house in al-Shati, north of Gaza City. That was in 1952. In 1956, during the Suez Crisis, the Israelis took control of the Gaza Strip from Egypt. They imposed a total curfew on the camp for about a week. We heard gunfire. At one point some Egyptian soldiers fleeing passed by. They wanted our civilian clothes. My father took their uniforms and weapons and buried them behind our house. When the curfew was lifted and I opened the door, a dead man was lying outside. I was shocked and screamed that there was a dead person outside our door. Some people helped remove the body. Right next to our house there was a forest, which we passed through on our way to school. One day I discovered a blanket lying under a tree. A friend and I ran over and lifted it. Underneath lay two dead Egyptian soldiers. My father was taken in for interrogation by the Israeli military. They wanted to question him about his activities in Jaffa ten years earlier. He was gone for fourteen days and returned even more shattered. We heard that the Israelis had carried out a massacre in Khan Yunis, in the south. One of my aunts lived there, and we were worried about her and her family. My brother and I took a taxi there. Our aunt’s family had survived, but she told us that 200 people had been killed by the Israelis.”

1936 “At the beginning of the Arab uprising against the British, my father was shot in the back. A couple of years later, the British killed my uncle.” 1938 “My mother was called Husn, and she was a good person: wealthy, beautiful, and religious. Her first husband, Mohamed, was killed in 1938 by British soldiers during the Arab uprising. My mother decided that she would remarry. She asked her father to approach Khalil, her brother-in-law. When Khalil was asked, he began to cry. The memory of his murdered brother still haunted him. Finally, he replied: ‘Ask my first wife, Zahr.’ Zahr answered: ‘I have no objection to a marriage. If Husn comes to live with us, this will be her home. I will give her the protection of my wings.’” 1948 “I was born in 1948. I grew up with what felt like two mothers. I called my father’s first wife Mother Zahr, and my own mother I called Mama. Husn and Zahr had a good life together. They lived like sisters. After the massacre in Dayr Yasin, everything changed. In July 1948, I was two months old. The entire family was forced to flee, leaving everything behind and taking only a donkey with them. I know they expected to return soon. My father had difficulty walking because of a gunshot wound in his back. He and my two brothers rode the donkey. My grandmother was disabled, and my mother wrapped her in a blanket and carried her on her back. She carried me on her chest. It must have been terrible. The road from Filastin to Lubnan was rocky and hilly, making it very difficult to walk. At one point, my mother dropped me on the ground without noticing. After some time, she realized what had happened and went back to look for me. In the end, she found me among some rocks. We reached Kana, on the Lubnan side of the border, my grandmother’s birthplace. We stayed there with relatives who took care of us. We remained in Kana for a year and a half. When I was a year and a half old, I suddenly became paralyzed. It happened one day while my father was playing with me. He noticed that I had lost strength in one hand. He lifted me from the ground, and suddenly I could no longer stand on my legs. The doctor told my parents to give me nutritious food. Eventually, it became difficult to stay with our relatives. My parents heard about refugee camps in the Beirut area. We went to the Burj al-Barajna refugee camp. That is where I grew up. We lived in tents—nine people together. In the summer it was hot, and in the winter it was cold. When it rained, water sometimes ran into the tent. Most of the time, we cooked food outdoors. My happiest moments were when I sat outside the tent and talked to people who came and went.” 1982 “The attack on Sabra and Shatila in Beirut began with Israeli aircraft bombing parts of the city. When I came home, all the neighbors had gathered at Mama’s place. Some even slept overnight in our apartment. Most people stayed indoors, both men and women. Some went to hospitals to help. I volunteered at Haifa Hospital in the Burj al-Barajna refugee camp. The management had moved all the equipment to safety in the basement. I worked in the emergency ward. People arrived with severe injuries. One girl had serious burns to her face and body. I helped wash her. She had been my student, but she was no longer recognizable. She died, as did her entire family except for one brother. Another time, a man arrived covered in dust from collapsed buildings. I could not recognize him either, even though he was my cousin. Much of one of his forearms and one foot had been destroyed. One morning there was a knock at our door. When my mother opened it, a man asked for me. ‘There is a massacre going on in Sabra and Shatila. You must come.’”

1934 “I was born in Irbid, in al-Urdunn, but my family comes from al-Nasira. We have lived there for 300 years. I was a wild child. When my father had guests, I would go outside and take one of the guests’ horses. I always chose a calm horse. I was wild, but I was also smart. That way I was never thrown off. I would ride away for an hour or two. That is how I learned to ride. To gallop on a horse is like swimming in the air. You lose yourself.” 1939 “I studied at a boarding school in al-Quds. The Second World War had begun and the food was not very good. But the teachers got better food than we did. At night, a few friends and I used to sneak into the teachers’ kitchen and steal maqluba, their favorite dish. I smoked, which was forbidden, but fun. My favorite cigarettes were British, Craven ‘A’. They were very hard to get. The headmaster appointed me as one of the school prefects. Our task was to maintain law and order at the school, something I did not take very seriously. I suppose I got the position because I was a good athlete. My friends and I used to go to the cinema two or three times a month. During the Second World War, al-Quds was the entertainment center of the Arab world, not al-Qahira, not Bayrut.” 1941 “Near the Arab College in al-Quds, where I lived, was the Jewish settlement of Talpiot. A golf course lay between us. When we arrived by bus from al-Nasira, we always crossed the golf course on our way home. In the forest in Talpiot we saw Jewish boys and girls, women and men, being trained militarily. It was like an army. At the same time, the Jordanian army had been sent to al-Quds. Tensions began to build.” 1947 “Anyone could see what was about to happen. Many realized that the conflict would lead to waves of refugees. The Zionists were clear about their goals. They had been ever since the days of Herzl. There was no place in Filastin for both Arabs and Jews. Arabs would have to be expelled from Filastin to make room for the European Jews. It was in the air.” 1948 “I was studying at the University of Edinburgh while my family was fighting against the Israelis. Even though my father was old, he joined the struggle. My older brother was an officer in Jaysh al-Inqad al-‘Arabi, a conglomerate of soldiers from several Arab countries. My cousin was mayor of al-Nasira when the city fell into the hands of the Israeli army. The Jewish commander summoned several of the city’s leaders, including my father, to sign the peace agreement. My cousin insisted that the Arabs of al-Nasira be granted the same rights and privileges as Israeli citizens. For some reason, the Jewish commander agreed.” 1967 “I was only allowed to visit my home in al-Nasira for one day at a time, from early morning until late in the evening. The military governor in Nablus never gave me permission to stay overnight. But at my own risk, I always chose to stay a couple of extra nights, without permission.” Afterthought “Today I live in Amman, but as a Palestinian I cannot travel to al-Nasira to visit my family’s house. I am a Jordanian citizen, with a Jordanian passport and a Jordanian personal identity number, but the Israelis do not recognize me as a Jordanian citizen. If they had recognized me as Jordanian, I would have been granted a visa, since there is a peace treaty between al-Urdunn and Israil. But because I also have a Palestinian ID card, I am not allowed to travel to al-Nasira. It feels terrible. It feels deeply sad.”

1948 “After the massacre in Dayr Yasin, which was a suburb of al-Quds, we were forced to flee. Most people were afraid of suffering the same fate. But my grandfather and his brother refused; they said they would stay and guard our house. The others arranged a couple of trucks for the family and drove us to al-Khalil. There were about 70 of us, and we arrived at two houses located in large groves. Some slept indoors, others outdoors. Al-Khalil was considered the safest place in Palestine, a place the Jews would never reach. They had once been slaughtered there and therefore would not dare return. That was what the rumors said. When the situation calmed down, the family returned to al-Quds, but not to our house in Abu Tor, which was still considered too dangerous. Instead, we rented an apartment with my cousins in the Haret al-Sadieh area, near the al-Aqsa Mosque. We could hear the call to prayer. That year I got a little brother. We called him ‘the refugee.’ After living for some time in another apartment in the Old City, we eventually moved back to our house in Abu Tor. My grandfather and his brother had survived. We heard that some people had tried to break into our house to steal things, but they had been beaten back. After the war, al-Quds was divided into a western part annexed by Israel and an eastern part annexed by al-Urdunn. The border ran through the Abu Tor neighborhood. Our house was on the Jordanian side, 300 meters from the demarcation line. My father lost his job because his workplace was on the other side of the border. Along the border there was a no-man’s-land, with many abandoned houses. We made ugly faces at the occupiers, at the Jewish boys, and they made faces back at us. We could see and hear them clearly. A few times, a friend and I crossed the border and stole some newly planted trees. We were shot at, but we survived.” 1967 “The Israelis built a tunnel through Mount Jabel Mukaber, south of al-Quds, on the road toward Bayt Lahm. My friends were there throwing stones at the Israeli soldiers. I was not involved in that particular mischief, but I was still summoned for interrogation by the Jordanian police. It did not help that I insisted I had not been involved. The police did not believe me and only released me after bail.” 1950 “Al-Urdunn introduced a mandatory national guard force for all adult Palestinians in East al-Quds. Its task was to guard the border with Israel at night. There were posts every thousand meters. Guard shifts lasted between six and eight hours, and the task was to stop any Arab planning sabotage against Israel. I often made tea and brought it to my father so he could stay awake. Al-Urdunn had equipped him and his friends with old rifles and the occasional machine gun. When the shift was over, they were not allowed to take the weapons home. They were handed over to a Jordanian superior who locked them away. Al-Urdunn never paid my father for guarding the border every night. The Palestinian home guard was merely a show put on by al-Urdunn, all to appease the Israelis.” 1961 “I became a Jordanian citizen when I was 16. A couple of years later, I received a scholarship to go to Sweden. And that is how I came to Sweden and ended up in a refugee reception center in Malmö.”