« Thematic Highlights

Holocaust

Yoa'ad Shbita
Building Bridges for Peace, Reut-Sedaka Portrait »
Interview Highlights »

“ There's a guest book at the end of the [Holocaust Museum in Washington, DC], and [one of the Palestinian participants] wrote in it, "All Jews should die, I don't care, what I do care about is that lots of the pictures that I see here I see in my life, things that repeat themselves from fifty, sixty years ago." Then this Jewish girl who understood Arabic read it […] Somehow it turned into a discussion and we all sat together. […] then she started telling her own story; that a month ago a soldier shot her uncle, and he died. After that the discussion really changed its direction. People stopped taking things so personally and really started talking about things seriously.”  [Source in Complete Interview]

Professor Sami Adwan
PRIME (Peace Research Institute in the Middle East) Portrait »
Interview Highlights »

“ Although it saddens me to say it, I think that the Israeli political system has yet to reexamine or reconsider the driving concept of the Zionist movement; that of the Promised Land and so on. One of the fundamental reasons for this, that we as Palestinians tend to neglect, is the history of the Jews in Europe. Those experiences continue to cause fear among Israelis today. What happened in Europe - the Holocaust and the oppression of the Jews - still frightens them. This plays a large role in their attention to acquiring military power.”  [Source in Complete Interview]

Ester Golan
Interfaith Encounter Association Portrait »
Interview Highlights »

“ The thing is when my mother wrote that my father died, I had something concrete. I had a letter, I cried. But because of not knowing about my mother, I sort of had visions that she might be with the partisans, that she might be in hiding or something. I gave birth to one child after another, and we were struggling to survive. There was no literature around [about the Holocaust], and nobody to talk to. It's very difficult to explain. There was a lot of sadness and I suffered from depression, but eventually, with the Eichmann trial, you couldn't escape listening because it was in the newspaper, it was on the radio, everyone talked about it, but it was very impersonal. It wasn't my mother, it was other people. So it took longer. I can't tell you what I did think because I don't know. Things which are not recorded, I can't recall. But I know that I cried a lot. That I do know. I had years of deep depressions.”  [Source in Complete Interview]

Kitty O. Cohen
Folklore of the Other: The Institute for the Study of Religion and Communities in Israel Portrait »
Interview Highlights »

“ What I witnessed in Europe left a lasting impression on me. The war years shaped my views and my outlook on life. My work today has its roots in the traumas of my childhood. From family members I learned one can retain one's humanity. In spite of the persecutions and the fear, I was taught not to condemn any group or people. It was their humanity and their behavior to others that enabled our miraculous survival of the Holocaust [....] I knew what it was like to be discriminated against and be dispossessed of all that was mine. I said I understood their predicament and was trying, in my own small and modest way, to do what I can. People who have suffered from discrimination and oppression, people who could have been or have been refugees can identify with others and their suffering. ”  [Source in Complete Interview]

Ester Golan
Interfaith Encounter Association Portrait »
Interview Highlights »

“ [To] me, it is quite clear that if I can be on talking terms with Germans after what they did to my people, and to my parents, on a personal level-- a new generation has grown up, and they are interested to get to know me, and I get to know them-- there is no reason why the same cannot happen with Palestinians. Because whatever we are accused of doing to the Palestinians, or the Palestinians do to us, none of it is to the extent that the Holocaust was, where we were killed not because we did anything, not because we fought anybody, but because we were Jews. So in my opinion, on a people-to-people level, there is no reason why we can't reach the same level of encounter with each other. Irrespective of what politicians do or say.”  [Source in Complete Interview]

Ester Golan
Interfaith Encounter Association Portrait »
Interview Highlights »

“ To the majority of participants it was a first experience [visiting Auschwitz]. So Jews and Christians and Muslims alike were shocked to hear, to experience, to see... because you can't really imagine it. Some people imagine Auschwitz to be something like a local prison, with a fence around it. But the majority of the people who have not been there, who have not taken an active interest, the vastness of it and the finality of it was very unique, and it was an experience which I don't think anybody will forget. And, for instance, as you know there have been cases where Israel and the Palestinian issue has been compared to the Holocaust. But there is no comparison. If you really get to know Auschwitz you see that there is no comparison; this was something which was very unique, and this is something quite different, which is not to be compared. It has to be resolved, but not to be compared.”  [Source in Complete Interview]

Ester Golan
Interfaith Encounter Association Portrait »
Interview Highlights »

“ According to what [Father Emile] Shoufani says, if you want to know the other person, you have to know all of the other person, and if you want to know the Jew, my identity has several components, as everybody's identity has several components, and my components are: Zionism, Judaism, Israel and the Shoah [Holocaust]. So if you want to know me, you have to know also me and the Shoah, not just me and Israel, not just me and Judaism, not just me and Zionism, but me and Shoah, Israel, Judaism and Zionism [...] So [Shoufani] considered it something that had by-passed the Palestinians, that they had not experienced. But living with so many people who were directly impacted by it, and because it has become part of Judaism at large, he had to know it. That is what made him decide that Auschwitz stands for something which is not Jewish, it's inter-religious, it's inter-national, it's inter-disciplinary; it represents something which humanity did, humanity in its darkest and most dreadful situation. [If] he wanted to just get to know Judaism, he could have come to synagogues, but that wasn't the point because that he has [access to] here. [The point was] to encounter that extra element that encompasses my identity and every other Jew as well. And I think that is exactly what happened.”  [Source in Complete Interview]

The Late Professor Dan Bar-On
PRIME (Peace Research Institute in the Middle East) Portrait »
Interview Highlights »

“ I don't like the equation of what is happening between Israelis and Palestinians to what happened in the Holocaust. I think these are simplified versions; they are vulgar, and I don't like them. But my experience with working in that conflict did help me understand things I see in our situation. For example, I did a seminar in the '80s where my students interviewed a Holocaust survivor and a child of a Holocaust survivor, and they brought the interviews into the classroom and we discussed them. Now I am working with a group of Israeli Jews and Israeli Arabs, and they are interviewing someone from their parents' generation and someone from their grandparents' generation, then they bring the interviews into the classroom, and we discuss the interviews. So, I learned how to translate things from that issue into the current one.”  [Source in Complete Interview]

Nasser Laham
Maan News, Bethlehem Television Portrait »
Interview Highlights »

“ Once I thought about translating something connected to what the Germans, the Nazis, did to the Jews. I thought about this two years ago, and I said to my friends here, “What's the harm in this? Let the Palestinians know that Jews suffered too and that Hitler committed many crimes against them." My friends said to me, “Do you know what you’re saying?! That this won't happen?" It won’t happen here, God willing. I thought about my people, I am proud of who they are, I am proud to be an Arab Muslim, proud to be Palestinian. I am proud of being a refugee, of living in a refugee camp in Deheishe, but I support peace.”  [Source in Complete Interview]

Wafa Srour
The School for Peace Portrait »
Interview Highlights »

“ My father lived through 1948; I need to know what happened in order to be able to understand him and deal with him. I need to know what happened in order to know myself. Why do they keep that information from us? I need to know the truth in order to build my own identity. When we talk to Israeli Jews about this they say, “Why do you always focus on the past? Let’s start from now and look forward.” But if they don’t think the past is important, then why do they keep teaching their children about the Holocaust? Why can they teach the history of the Holocaust, when Arabs cannot teach their children about 1948? I studied about the Holocaust in school, but I was not taught about the things that my own father went through.”  [Source in Complete Interview]

Yoa'ad Shbita
Building Bridges for Peace, Reut-Sedaka Portrait »
Interview Highlights »

“ I know that nothing can be compared to anything; you can't say anything is exactly alike. But for me [what's happening in the Territories] is a horrible thing, even worse than the Holocaust, because in the Holocaust I don't think the Germans had a history they should have learned from. But here, you have a people who experienced things and was supposed to learn from it and didn't, so from my perspective it's even worse than what happened then.”  [Source in Complete Interview]

Meir Margalit
Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions Portrait »
Interview Highlights »

“ When I'm asked [why I keep doing this work] instinctively I say it's because my father is a Holocaust survivor. The fact that my father lost his family because of racial discrimination drives me to fight such phenomena here with all that I have in me. Some would say, "Why are you comparing? There isn't anything to compare here." True, there is no comparison. But there are too many things taking place here that remind me of the Germany of 1933. Having been infused with all the grief and pain of people who have suffered excessively, and because I can't remain impassive to such inequities, I am fighting for what I see as basic social justice on the humanitarian level, not even on the level of politics. This is why I cannot remain impassive, nor can I give up.”  [Source in Complete Interview]

Itamar Shapira
Combatants for Peace Portrait »
Interview Highlights »

“ I had never heard about Qibya or about other villages where Israel killed many people; I had never known about the Nakba. I never knew that there used to be Arabs here but that now most of them are gone, but I never considered that they once lived where Tel Aviv University now stands or where my community is or where another person’s town is. It wasn’t real. Even if I did know all this, then I thought the Arab villages had been there but had been “abandonded”--or something like that. I wasn’t aware of the intensity of the pain the other side bears. You can say, “But they use terrorism” but if you don’t understand the pain you obviously won’t understand things that evolved from it; it’s like on our side. If you don’t understand there was a holocaust and that people always suffered from pogroms and persecution, you won’t understand why Israel is here or why we insist on being here.”  [Source in Complete Interview]

Aziz Abu Sarah
Bereaved Families Forum, All For Peace Radio Portrait »
Interview Highlights »

“ I also like going to the Yad Vashem, the Holocaust Museum, but it’s really hard to do that as a Palestinian because if you admit that the Jews have gone through some really hard times, then that means I accept their being here, and that the occupation is OK, and that is something that’s not true. To accept the fact that they’ve been through a lot is one thing, and to say that the occupation is OK is another thing. It’s not about land, but I’m trying to understand how they think, and I’m learning about what they have gone through. This helps me understand where the other person is coming from. I can’t just say, OK, they just came here all of a sudden and they have no history. Being able to understand how they think allows me to understand why they act the way they do. Again, this doesn’t mean I agree with their actions. A lot of people whom I talk to think that my working for peace means that I accept their taking our land, their killing my brother, etc. Until now, I believe that what the soldier has done to my brother is inhumane, I think it’s wrong. Until now, I think that the occupation is wrong and it needs to stop.”  [Source in Complete Interview]