rylah
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Late recognition: Survivors of the Holocaust of the Libyan Jews seek to bring their story into the collective consciousness
What happened to your family during the Holocaust?
"My parents, a doll of the Zuaretz family and the late Eliahu Dabush, were not in the camps. They fled to the Zwara area, which was underdeveloped with very difficult conditions. They lived in the barns, without electricity or water, slept on the floor and developed a terrible hunger. When my parents fled, they had three children, and my mother was pregnant. In Zuwara she gave birth to Herzl, who survived until the age of one year and died, apparently because of the poor sanitary conditions. "
What stories do you remember from your parents' home?
"My mother told me that the hunger was so great that they had to eat goat dung, that their taste was sweet, and that they would transfer the contaminated water through a diaper to get the worms out of them and then drink them."
The Jadu camp was one of the largest concentration camps established in Libya itself. In January 1942, Erwin Rommel, one of the senior generals of the Nazi army, captured Kornjica, the eastern coastal region of Libya, from the British for the third time. The situation of the Jews worsened, but the worst was the decision of the Italians under the Germans' guidance to use the Nazi German doctrine to dilute the Jewish population of Libya. Thus the Jado concentration camp was established on February 15, 1942. The camp was named after a settlement of this name in the area, and it was very close to an ancient Jewish cemetery 800 years old. It was a former military camp, surrounded by barbed wire, under Italian and Arab command. About 2,600 Jews from Cyrenaica on the Libyan-Egyptian border were evacuated to it. 562 of its inhabitants, who constituted about a quarter of the camp's inmates and 17% of the total population of Cyrenaica at the time, perished from exhaustion and starvation, especially typhus. The dead were buried by the prisoners themselves in a cemetery on a hill outside the camp. The children in Jado were exposed to horrific scenes, witnesses to the cruel death and even death of their parents, brothers and sisters, and many parents experienced the worst of all: the loss of their children. The camp operated until March 1943, when it was liberated by the British army, led by Brigadier General Friedrich Hermann Kisch.
Kish was born in 1888 in India, to a British-Jewish family that served in colonial rule in India.He served in the British army in India for about ten years. He then immigrated to Israel and became a member of the Zionist Executive. With the outbreak of World War II, he enlisted again in the British army as a fighter, came to Libya and was in charge of the engineering corps in North Africa. On 7 April 1942 he was killed in Tunis when he was on a mine. "My grandfather, whom I did not know, managed all the British fighting that arrested the Nazis in North Africa, and in this framework he also had the right to participate in the liberation of the camps of the Libyan Jews," says his grandson, MK Yoav Kish.
Allied bombing in Libya. Photo: Organization of Libyan Jews
Businessman Meshulam Riklis (94) was also one of the Jadu camp liberators. "I was the personal driver of Rabbi Efraim Elimelech Auerbach, the military chaplain of the Eighth Army of the British Army in Egypt, Libya and Tunisia, and later the invasion of Italy," he relates. "Some of the Libyan Jews were expelled by the Italians to camps like Jado, and when the British occupied Libya and the deportees returned to their homes, they encountered severe hostility from their Muslim neighbors, and the Jewish soldiers in the British Army helped rehabilitate many communities, We found Jews who lived in caves in the mountains, in the Jado concentration camp, we found dozens of Jews sick with typhus, and we helped as best we could, and the Jews were encouraged and strengthened by the sight of a military car marked with a Star of David and a Jewish soldier armed with a pistol from Eretz Israel. The hope to realize their dream of reaching Jerusalem. "
Not in anyway to minimize what was going in Europe, we should always talk and remember about what was going on with our brothers in the the middle east at the time as well.
What happened to your family during the Holocaust?
"My parents, a doll of the Zuaretz family and the late Eliahu Dabush, were not in the camps. They fled to the Zwara area, which was underdeveloped with very difficult conditions. They lived in the barns, without electricity or water, slept on the floor and developed a terrible hunger. When my parents fled, they had three children, and my mother was pregnant. In Zuwara she gave birth to Herzl, who survived until the age of one year and died, apparently because of the poor sanitary conditions. "
What stories do you remember from your parents' home?
"My mother told me that the hunger was so great that they had to eat goat dung, that their taste was sweet, and that they would transfer the contaminated water through a diaper to get the worms out of them and then drink them."
The Jadu camp was one of the largest concentration camps established in Libya itself. In January 1942, Erwin Rommel, one of the senior generals of the Nazi army, captured Kornjica, the eastern coastal region of Libya, from the British for the third time. The situation of the Jews worsened, but the worst was the decision of the Italians under the Germans' guidance to use the Nazi German doctrine to dilute the Jewish population of Libya. Thus the Jado concentration camp was established on February 15, 1942. The camp was named after a settlement of this name in the area, and it was very close to an ancient Jewish cemetery 800 years old. It was a former military camp, surrounded by barbed wire, under Italian and Arab command. About 2,600 Jews from Cyrenaica on the Libyan-Egyptian border were evacuated to it. 562 of its inhabitants, who constituted about a quarter of the camp's inmates and 17% of the total population of Cyrenaica at the time, perished from exhaustion and starvation, especially typhus. The dead were buried by the prisoners themselves in a cemetery on a hill outside the camp. The children in Jado were exposed to horrific scenes, witnesses to the cruel death and even death of their parents, brothers and sisters, and many parents experienced the worst of all: the loss of their children. The camp operated until March 1943, when it was liberated by the British army, led by Brigadier General Friedrich Hermann Kisch.
Kish was born in 1888 in India, to a British-Jewish family that served in colonial rule in India.He served in the British army in India for about ten years. He then immigrated to Israel and became a member of the Zionist Executive. With the outbreak of World War II, he enlisted again in the British army as a fighter, came to Libya and was in charge of the engineering corps in North Africa. On 7 April 1942 he was killed in Tunis when he was on a mine. "My grandfather, whom I did not know, managed all the British fighting that arrested the Nazis in North Africa, and in this framework he also had the right to participate in the liberation of the camps of the Libyan Jews," says his grandson, MK Yoav Kish.
Allied bombing in Libya. Photo: Organization of Libyan Jews
Businessman Meshulam Riklis (94) was also one of the Jadu camp liberators. "I was the personal driver of Rabbi Efraim Elimelech Auerbach, the military chaplain of the Eighth Army of the British Army in Egypt, Libya and Tunisia, and later the invasion of Italy," he relates. "Some of the Libyan Jews were expelled by the Italians to camps like Jado, and when the British occupied Libya and the deportees returned to their homes, they encountered severe hostility from their Muslim neighbors, and the Jewish soldiers in the British Army helped rehabilitate many communities, We found Jews who lived in caves in the mountains, in the Jado concentration camp, we found dozens of Jews sick with typhus, and we helped as best we could, and the Jews were encouraged and strengthened by the sight of a military car marked with a Star of David and a Jewish soldier armed with a pistol from Eretz Israel. The hope to realize their dream of reaching Jerusalem. "
Not in anyway to minimize what was going in Europe, we should always talk and remember about what was going on with our brothers in the the middle east at the time as well.
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