Nakba

October 13th, 2024

There is a relatively large Muslim population in our local area. When I take my grandson, Asher, to the playground, I often meet a parent or caregiver who is originally from an Arab country: Iraq, Jordan, Qatar. A week ago, I had a conversation with a young mom from Palestine. She was at the park with her two little daughters. Asher played with them. While they were occupied with that, the mother of the girls spoke with me. It was interesting for both of us.

As we talked, she became aware that I have friends who are Palestinian and friends who are Jewish. This prompted her to ask me my opinion about the crisis in Gaza. She told me,

“I just want to know what you think. No judgment.”

Well, maybe a little bit of judgment. As she had already used the word, “genocide” with regards to the violence in Gaza, I decided to choose my words carefully. I stated the obvious fact that the Israelis and the Palestinians need to stop killing each other before anything can be resolved. A ceasefire is necessary and overdue. She talked about how it was impossible to make peace while the Israelis were stealing Palestinian land. We did not come to any agreement on the situation, but we never expected to do so. She gave me some things to think about, and that is what I have been doing since I met her at the playground.

I have been thinking about the Nakba (“catastrophe” in Arabic) that occurred in 1948 when Israel fought for its independence. Thousands of Palestinians were uprooted from their towns and villages by the war. The vast majority of them never went back to their homes. They became refugees and many of them did not assimilate into their host countries. It truly was a humanitarian disaster.

Then I thought about my wife’s family. Her relatives on her father’s side suffered a fate like the Nakba at the end of WWII. Her father’s family lived in Silesia, which now part of Poland. They, along with thousands of other ethnic Germans, fled from the advancing Soviet armies. They had heard of the atrocities that happened to Germans living further to the east. With the sounds of Soviet artillery in the background, they marched westward, leaving their homes and property behind. They took almost nothing with them besides the clothes on their backs.

I had the opportunity to talk with Karin’s father and her other relatives when I was dating Karin. I was stationed with the Army in West Germany at the time. During the early 1980’s, I heard some of their stories from the war years and their aftermath. Karin’s family members settled in the west among strangers. Her father worked the night shift at a health spa and married a local girl. Karin’s Onkel Kurt found a job as a salesman. Their lives were difficult at first, but they eventually adapted to their new surroundings. They sometimes missed Silesia, but they seemed to be at home in West Germany. Silesia was part of their past, and that past was nearly forgotten.

Are there actually similarities between the Palestinian experience and what Karins’ elders went through, or am I comparing apples to oranges? Why did Karin’s family succeed in starting new lives, but many Palestinians could not?

Karin’s relatives suffered much, but they also had some advantages over the Palestinian refugees. They were displaced within Germany, so they didn’t need visas, and they did not need to worry about being deported. They were relocated from one place to another where people spoke the same language and had the same culture. The German economy recovered rapidly, partly due to money from the Marshall Plan. It took time, but they found jobs and homes, and they raised families in an environment where their children had access to higher education.

Karin’s relatives had no illusions about having “a right to return”. For over forty years, the Soviet Union held a tight grip on the lands east of the Oder River, and most of those territories were occupied by Poles and Russians. Some Germans in the West carried hopes that Germany would eventually be restored to its 1937 borders. That was always a fantasy. When the Berlin Wall finally fell, Karin’s aunt and uncle made a trip back to their hometown, and quickly regretted do that. They were shocked and disappointed that the town they remembered was no more. The physical structures were still there, but it was no longer German, and it never would be again.

Are there any lessons here? Maybe.

In a just world, Karin’s family and the Palestinians who have suffered since 1948 would get some kind of compensation for their losses. Perhaps they would not be able to return home, but they would receive something in exchange.

We don’t live in a just world, so these people get nothing.

Karin’s relatives knew they would get nothing. Some Palestinians still hope to get back their olive groves and farm fields. Karin’s family had a bright future in their new land and so they could let go of the past. Many Palestinians do not a future full of hope, and that makes it nearly impossible for them to escape from the past.

For Karin’s family, what’s done is done. For the Palestinians the Nakba continues to this very day. The Palestinians are still being robbed of their land, and they are still suffering brutal violence. As Faulkner wrote,

“The past is never dead, It’s not even past.”