The Lemon Tree: An Arab, a Jew, and the Heart of the Middle East

by Sandy Tolan

  Chaim Weizmann's "forces of the desert" remark is quoted in Philip Mattar's The Mufti of Jerusalem, p. 100. Details of the Wednesday market come from interviews with the Palestinian folklorist Dr. Sharif Kanaana and from Widad Kawar, who has a large collection of embroidery, pottery, metalwork, jewelry, and textiles in her Amman home. The centerpiece is the collection of traditional dresses worn by rural Arab women of Palestine. Once disdained by the Arab elite as fit only for the fellahin, or peasantry, the dresses and their bodices have in exile come to symbolize solidarity with the Palestinian cause.

  Details of the Khairi family meals, and Ahmad's social life at the diwan, were described by Khanom Khairi. The arguileh, or water pipe, has many other names, including narguileh, shisha, hookah, and hubbly-bubbly.

  The strike by the Arab Higher Committee was suspended on October 11, 1936, and is documented in a timeline in Walid Khalidi's Before Their Diaspora. Work resumption is described in Palestine and Transjordan Administrative Reports, Vol. 6, p. 48. Lord Peel's attire is described by Segev in One Palestine Complete, p. 401. Peel's letter to London appears in the Political Diaries of the Arab World, Vol. 2, p. 681.

  The Peel Commission report was formally titled Palestine Royal Commission Report and appears in its entirety in Palestine and Transjordan Administrative Reports, Vol 6, pp. 433-850. On p. 835 (or p. 389 of the original report), the commission recommends an "Exchange of Land and Population." It cited the 1922 exchange of Turkish and Greek populations as precedent.

  One Palestine Complete, p. 402, describes the Jewish reaction to Peel. Arab reaction is noted in Before Their Diaspora, p. 193, and Yeshua Porath's The Palestinian Arab National Movement: From Riots to Rebellion, Vol. 2, 1929-1939, pp. 228-32.

  Theodor Herzl's quote about "the penniless population" comes from his diary entry of June 12, 1895, from The Complete Diaries of Theodor Herzl, translated by Harry Zohn. The same year, Israel Zangwill, a British Zionist leader, argued that Jews "must be prepared either to drive out by the sword the tribes in possession as our forefathers did or to grapple with the problem of a large alien population, mostly Mohammedan and accustomed for centuries to despise us" ("Israel Zangwill's Challenge to Zionism," by Hani A. Faris, in the Journal of Palestine Studies 4, no. 3 [Spring 1975]: 74-90). Zangwill also said, "If we receive Palestine, the Arabs will have to 'trek.' " A generation later, Chaim Weizmann, who would become the first president of Israel, suggested in the wake of Arab riots in Palestine that an "exchange of populations could be fostered and encouraged" to allow Arabs "to flow into neighboring countries" {The Letters and Papers of Chaim Weizmann, Vol. 14, p. 69, as cited in Masalha, Expulsion of the Palestinians: The Concept of "Transfer" in Zionist Political Thought, 1882-1948).

  Ben-Gurion's "transfer cause" quote comes from his diaries of July 1937 and was translated for me by the Israeli journalist Sami Sockol. His "I support compulsory transfer" remark was made on June 12, 1938, and is quoted in Morris {Righteous Victims, p. 253). Segev's One Palestine Complete, pp. 399-406, analyzes the Zionist reaction to Peel and its support of the concept of transfer. A broad overview of the transfer idea comes from Nur Masalha, a Palestinian scholar at St. Mary's College at the University of Surrey in London who worked from original documents in Hebrew from Israeli archives. A similar approach comes from a sharply different political perspective: that of Rabbi Dr. Chaim Simons, a West Bank settler and curator of A Historical Survey of Proposals to Transfer Arabs from Palestine, 1895—1947, a large collection of Zionist writings on transfer that can be found online at www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/ Senate/7854/transfer.html. (The Zangwill "trek" quote is cited at www.geocities.Senate/7854/transfer.html. (The Zangwill "trek" quote is cited at www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/Senate/7854/transfer07.html.) A briefer overview of transfer and Zionism comes from liana Sternbaum's "Historical Roots of the Idea of Transfer," www.afsi.org/OUTPOST/2002OCT/oct7.htm.

  Other Zionists, like Albert Einstein and Martin Buber, advocated coexistence with the Arab population and opposed any transfer plans. See Stanley Aronowitz in "Setting the Record Straight: Zionism from the Standpoint of Its Jewish Critics," www.logosjournal.com/issue_3.3/aronowitz.htm.

  The resumption of the Arab Rebellion and the British crackdown are chronicled in Political Diaries of the Arab World, Vol. 3, pp. 39-49. The air attack on rebel bands was documented in an article in the Times of London, October 3, 1938, as cited by Hirst, p. 215. Shukri Taji's sale of land is documented by Kenneth Stein in The Land Question in Palestine, 1917-1939, p. 171 and p. 238. Most of the sales were from 1922 and 1936. Stein cites original documents now housed in the Central Zionist Archives. The quote about Sheikh Mustafa comes from Political Diaries of the Arab World, p. 352. The political difficulties the mayor faced, the respect he commanded, and his attire are all documented by his admiring survivors, including Firdaws Taji and Khanom Khairi. Where exactly Sheikh Mustafa stood between the nationalists and the elites, or "notables," is not clear. While some family members say Mustafa and his sons may have gone so far as to aid the rebels, Mustafa's membership in the National Defense Party, run by the "notable" Nashashibi family, would have subjected him to strong criticism from the nationalists and the rebels. The nationalists considered the "notables" to be collaborators with the Zionists, and many were assassinated by Arab rebels. I explored these ideas in an interview with Hillel Cohen, author of Shadow Army: Palestinian Collaborators in the Service of Zionism: 1917-1948 (in Hebrew). Sheikh Mustafa's daughter-in-law, Firdaws, says his departure to Cairo in 1938 was "for health reasons," but rebel threats would have been more likely to force him into his brief exile. Fear of recrimination would also have prompted Mustafa's proclamation, upon his return, that he would focus exclusively on municipal affairs. All this may also help explain why Sheikh Mustafa was replaced as mayor in the mid-1940s.

  Discussion of the White Paper comes from various sources, including Memory of Revolt, p. xxi. Zionist reaction to the White Paper, including Ben-Gurion's "Satan himself quote, is documented in One Palestine Complete, pp. 440-41. Arab casualty figures are cited in From Haven to Conquest, p. 846.

  News events of the day Bashir was born come from the New York Times and the San Francisco Chronicle editions of February 16 and 17, 1942. The British high commissioner's monthly telegram is printed in Political Diaries of the Arab World, Vol. 6, 1941 1942, pp. 437-40. In closing, the commissioner noted new political recruiting efforts on both Arab and Jewish sides. "This development has its potentialities for mischief," the commissioner wrote, "and is being carefully watched."

  Chapter 3

  Dalia Eshkenazi grew up with the story of the wallet, as passed down by her father, Moshe. She was not yet born when the event in question took place, in 1943. The story, in its general outlines, is confirmed by Dalia's aunt Virginia, who in 2004 was eighty-two years old and living in Sofia. It is possible, of course, that some of the actual details were different or that the police officer used different words, but the gist of the story seems beyond question.

  Bulgaria's political history in the 1940s, in particular the nation's treatment of the Jews, is conveyed in Frederick Chary's 1975 account, The Bulgarian Jews and the Final Solution. Chary also reviewed this chapter, and chapter 5, for accuracy. Additional details come from Guy Haskell's "From Sofia to Jaffa"; Michael Bar-Zohar's Beyond Hitler's Grasp: The Heroic Rescue of Bulgaria s Jews; Jews in the Bulgarian Lands: Ancestral Memory and Historical Destiny (Emmy Barouh, ed.); Saving of the Jews in Bulgaria: 1941-1944, a 1977 account of the State Publishing House of the Bulgarian Communist Party; Tzvetan Todorov's fascinating combination of original essays and translated texts, The Fragility of Goodness; and The Survival: A Compilation of Documents, 1940—1944, large portions translated from the Bulgarian by journalist Polia Alexandrova. This history was more fully understood through dozens of inter views with Bulgarian Jews in Israel and on three trips to Bulgaria in 2003 and 2004. Polia did most of the translating for those interviews, as well as of original documents in the Bulgarian Natio
nal Archives and the National Library, both in Sofia.

  Bulgaria's alliance with the Axis powers is described on p. 3 of The Bulgarian Jews and the Final Solution. On p. 66 it describes the labor camps, which were also recalled by Dalia's cousin Yitzhak Yitzhaki in an interview Dalia conducted and sent to me by fax. Additional description is in Bar-Zohar, pp. 46-48, and Tamir, Bulgaria and Her Jews, pp. 176-77. Dalia and Virginia also recount the family stories of the work camps from Moshe and Jacques. The camps were at times brutal, but generally not on the scale of other parts of Europe: Moshe, Dalia was told, was excused after he developed a serious ear infection.

  The figure of forty-seven thousand Bulgarian Jews comes from correspondence with Chary. (Many others have used the round figure of fifty thousand.)

  The story of Susannah Shemuel Behar and her family comes from interviews I did with her in Plovdiv. The family details could not be corroborated separately, but her story fits credibly into the larger narrative of Bulgarian Jews in March 1943. The story of Moshe and Solia Eshkenazi waiting in Sliven with Solia's parents, the Arroyos, was passed down to Dalia by her parents over the years. Her aunt Virginia and cousin Yitzhak also confirm this. Additional confirmation comes from Dr. Corinna Solomo-nova of Sliven, who was eighteen years old in March 1943. Dr. Solomonova referred to Solia as "Solche" (SOUL-chay), a Bulgarian diminutive, and said she had worked as a seamstress. Moshe and Solia were "for certain" in Sliven in March 1943, she said. Dr. Solomonova also recalls receiving her own letter from the Bulgarian Commissariat for Jewish Questions:

  It reported that on the 10th of March we have to appear in a specific elementary school. We have to appear at 8 a.m. with only a little baggage. The letter was dated around the 7th of March. In our family we began to sew backpacks for everyone. We were very worried because we knew we were going to German camps in which they killed Jews. We knew about that because our [Gentile] friends listened to radio programs [from Radio Moscow and the BBC]. Jewish radios had been confiscated. We knew we were going to the death camps.

  Details on the Law for the Defense of the Nation are taken from numerous sources, including The Bulgarian Jews and the Final Solution, pp. 35-46 and 24-25 (regarding the link to the Nuremberg laws), and, to a lesser extent, Beyond Hitler's Grasp, pp. 2 7 40. Additional background is culled from more than twenty interviews with Jews still living in Bulgaria and additional Jews in Israel who are old enough to recall the details.

  Yitzhak Yitzhaki's memories were recounted in interviews with Dalia, which she transcribed for me.

  The quote from Bayazid II is confirmed by Turkish scholar Elif Shafak of the Near Eastern Studies Department at the University of Arizona in Tucson.

  Bulgarian revolutionary history is documented in R. J. Crampton's A Short History of Modern Bulgaria. The details of Levski can be found in a paper, "The Bulgarian Policy on the Balkan Countries and National Minorities, 1878-1912," by the Bulgarian scholar Vladimir Paounovski. Levski as the "George Washington of Bulgaria" is confirmed by Chary. Though he is a founding father of Bulgaria, the comparison stretches only so far: He was hanged by the Turks in Sofia several years before Bulgaria's liberation, and did not live to see the free state he had imagined. Levski is said to have been sheltered by Jews in Plovdiv during the nineteenth-century struggle for Bulgarian independence. In the early 1940s, his name was invoked in protests against the Fascist laws against the Jews; the Communist regime that followed considered him a "leader of the Bulgarian national-liberation revolutionary movement"; and in the early postwar period, according to Moshe Melamed, a Bulgarian Jew and former Israeli ambassador to Mexico, "Levski" brand cigarettes were among the most popular in Bulgaria.

  The testimonies against the Law for the Defense of the Nation come from The Survival. Additional documents, including the statement of the Bulgarian Writers' Union, the Lawyers' Union, and the open letter to the National Assembly Deputies, are from The Fragility of Goodness, pp. 45-53.

  The October 1942 quote from the Nazi authorities in Berlin comes from Saving of the Jews in Bulgaria, chapter 7, p. 3. Further details on Belev's powers come from The Bulgarian Jews and the Final Solution, pp. 35-46. Dannecker's arrival in Sofia is documented in Beyond Hitler's Grasp, pp. 59, 63-75. The Dannecker-Belev Agreement is printed in its entirety in The Bulgarian Jews and the Final Solution, pp. 208-10. The destination points of the February 22 memo is documented in Survival, p. 71. The "private" and "extremely important" memo appears in Survival, p. 206. Belev's note to Gabrovski about maintaining secrecy is taken from N. Greenberg, Documents, Central Consistory of the Jews in Bulgaria, 1945, pp. 8-11, and is referenced in Emmy Barouh's "The Fate of the Bulgarian Jews During W'orld War II," which appeared in Bulgaria for NATO 2002.

  The story of Liliana Panitza appears in many accounts, including The Bulgarian Jews and the Final Solution, p. 91, and Beyond Hitler's Grasp, pp. 77-86. An original source for both accounts is the testimony of Buko Levi from the postwar Protocols of the People's Court Number 7, V, 1498. Additional reference to Panitsa and Levi is in Vicki Tamir's Bulgaria and Her Jews, p. 198. The suggestion that Belev and Panitsa were lovers was made to me in several interviews and appears in various published accounts, most prominently Beyond Hitler's Grasp. Bar-Zohar's conclusions go further than others have been willing to go, and some remain skeptical that she was as devoted to him as Bar-Zohar suggests. However, Buko Levi's son, Yohanan, told me in a telephone interview that Belev and Panitsa were indeed lovers and that Buko's testimony at Yad Vashem, the Israeli Holocaust museum, makes that clear. In any case, Yohanan Levi told me, "She was the one who saved us. I can't express the gratitude that we owe her."

  The story of the optician and the bribe is told by Bar-Zohar (p. 104), Chaiy (p. 91), and Tamir (p. 198). The description of Kyustendil comes from personal observation and from interviews with Kyustendil natives, including Vela Dimitrova, Sabat Isakov, and my colleague at the Graduate School of Journalism at UC- Berkeley, Kyustendil native Mimi Chakarova. The initial fears in Kyustendil are recounted vividly in the excerpted memoir of Asen Suichmezov {Fragility, pp. 13236) and in interviews with Isakov and with Violeta Conforty, who told the story of the Macedonian leader Vladimir Kurtev and the party at Belev's house.

  The description of the Jews in the train cars traveling through Bulgaria on the way to Treblinka was recounted in numerous interviews, including with Yitzhak Yitzhaki. Metropolitan Stefan's memories of this appear in Fragility, p. 126. The story of Mati Braun, the locket of hair, and the photo album was retold by her old friend Vela Dimitrova. It is not clear how many Bulgarian Jews knew, by 1943, of the atrocities elsewhere in Europe, but it is clear from my dozens of interviews, from the Eshkenazi family oral history, and from written statements by Bulgarian religious leaders that terrible stories were being carried across the Bulgarian border. Mati survived the war, but Vela heard that soon after, she moved to Israel. She didn't come back for her album, and Vela never saw her again.

  The mobilization of the Jews of Kyustendil comes largely from Chary's account, pp. 92-93 (especially on Yako Barouh), and from Violeta Conforty, who recalls the arrival of Vladimir Kurtev in Kyustendil and his warnings to the Jewish community there. Description of Suichmezov and the journey comes from interviews with Dimitrova, Conforty, and Isakov. Suichmezov's recollections, including the pleas of the Jews, come from the aforementioned memoir excerpts.

  The description of the events in the school yard in Plovdiv comes from Susannah Behar, with additional details provided from interviews with other Jewish eyewitnesses in Plovdiv, including Berta Levi and Yvette Amavi. Kiril's defense of the Bulgarian Jews is well documented, including by Chary (pp. 138-39) and Bar-Zohar (pp. 126-27, 169-70).

  The story of Kiril's pledge to lie on the railroad tracks comes from an interview with a woman named Beba of Plovdiv, who was ten years old at the time. Susannah is skeptical of this and maintains that as an older eyewitness, who was at the school from the beginning of the day, her recollection is more reliable than that of a child'
s. "You know how kids make up stories," she said. Bar-Zohar (p. 126) goes further than either account, suggesting that Kiril, in his robes and heavy cross, managed to climb the fence, challenging the Bulgarian authorities to "try to stop me!" Neither Beba, Susannah, nor any of the other Plovdiv eyewitnesses I spoke with recalls such a thing.

  Susannah's recollection of the contingency plan to join the Partizans in the Rhodope Mountains has an echo in the story of Dr. Corinna Solomonova, the friend of Solia Arroyo Eshkenazi's family in Plovdiv. "I was only eighteen," she told me. "I had a wonderful family. I had a proposition from the Partizans to go to the mountains with them and not go to the camps. I had received their offer. I had no intention of going to the concentration camps."

  The portrait of Peshev is drawn largely from the interview I did in Kyustendil with his niece Kaluda Kiradzhieva. Additional details are taken from Gabriel Nissim's biography of Peshev, The Man Who Stopped Hitler. Further insight into Peshev, and especially the importance of his actions, can be found in Todorov's essays in Fragility, especially pp. 35-40. Peshev himself explores his political philosophy in his memoir, excerpted in Fragility, pp. 137-83.