-Caveat Lector- UNITY Deir Yassine * Red Cross eyewitness Jaques De Reynier** April 10-1948 On Saturday 10 April a very serious incident took place: I received a telephone call from the Arabs asking me to go immediately to the village of Deir Yassine, where the civilian population of the whole village had just been massacred. I learned that this sector, situated very near to Jerusalem, was held by Irgun extremists.: The Jewish Agency and the Headquar-ters of the Haganah told me that they knew nothing of the affair and that in any case it was impossible for anyone to penetrate into Irgun territory. They advised me not to get mixed up in the affair, as, if I did, my mission would almost certainly be terminated. Not only did they refuse to help me, they also refused to be responsible for what they were sure would happen to me. I replied that I intended to go, and that it was a matter of public knowledge that the Jewish Agency exercised its authority over all the territory in Jewish hands and was therefore responsible for my person as well as for my liberty of action, within the limits of my mission. However, I did not know what to do. Without Jewish help, it was impossible for me to reach the village. Then, by thinking hard, I remembered that a Jewish nurse in a nearby hospital had given me her telephone number, telling me, with an odd expression, that I could call her if ever I found myself in an inextricable situation. Taking a chance, I rang her up late at night and explained the situation. She told me to go to a certain place with my car at 7 o'clock next morning, and there pick up the person I found waiting. Then she rang off. The next morning, at the appointed place and time, a man in civilian clothes, but with pockets bulging with revolvers, jumped into my car and told me to drive on without stopping. At my request, he agreed to show me the road to Deir Yassine, but admitted that he could not do much for me. We went out of Jerusalem, leaving the main road behind the rear of the regular army, and took a road that cut across it. Very soon, we were stopped by two soldier-like individuals, whose looks were far from reassuring, with machine-guns in their hands, and large cutlasses in their belts. From their appearance I gathered they must be the men I was looking for. I got out of the car and submitted myself to a thorough search, then realized that I was a prisoner. Everything seemed lost, when, suddenly, a huge fellow, at least two meters tall, and as large as a cupboard, appeared, pushed his comrades aside, and seized my hand and squeezed it in his enormous paws, shouting incomprehensibly. He did not understand either English or French, but in German we seemed to be able to communicate perfectly. He expressed his joy at seeing a member of the Red Cross because, as be explained, its intervention had saved his life no less than three times when he was a prisoner in a German concentration camp. He said that I was more than a brother to him, and that he would do every-thing I asked him. With such a bodyguard I felt I could go to the end of the world, and so to start with, we went to Deir Yassine. After reaching a hill, 500 yards away from the village which we could just see, we had to wait a long time for the order to proceed. The commander of the Irgun detach-ment did not seem willing to receive me. At last he arrived, young, distinguished, and perfectly correct, but there was a peculiar glitter in his eyes, cold and cruel. I explained my mission to him, pointing out that it was no part of my task either to pass judgment or arbitrate-I only wanted to save the wounded and take back the dead. The Jews, in any case, had signed the Geneva Convention, so that my mission was an official one. This last statement angered the officer who asked me to understand once and for all that here the Irgun were in command and no one else, not even the Jewish Agency, with whom they had nothing in common. Here my "wardrobe" intervened, seeing the tension growing higher, and he seemed to find the right arguments, for suddenly the officer said that I could do as I wished but on my own responsibility. He told me the story of this village, inhabited exclusively by Arabs, to the number of approximately 400, never armed, and living on good terms with the surrounding Jews. According to him the Irgun had arrived 24 hours earlier and ordered the inhabitants by loudspeaker to evacuate all houses and surrender: the time given to obey the order was a quarter of an hour. Some of these miserable people had come forward and were taken prisoners, to be released later in the direction of the Arab lines. The rest, not having obeyed the order, had met the fate they deserved. But there was no point in exaggerating things, there were only a few dead, and they would be buried as soon as the "cleaning up" of the village was over. If I found any bodies, I could take them, but there were certainly no wounded. This account made my blood run cold. I went back then to the Jerusalem road and got an ambu-lance and a truck that I had alerted through the Red Shield. The two Jewish drivers and the Jewish doctor who boarded them were more dead than alive, but followed me courageously. Before reaching the Irgun outpost I stopped and inspected the two vehicles. A good thing I did, too, as I discovered two Jewish journalists preparing to get the scoop of their lives. Unfortunately for them, I very firmly got rid of them. I reached the village with my convoy, and the Arab firing stopped. The gang was wearing country uniform, with helmets. All of them were young, some even adolescents, men and women, armed to the teeth: revolvers, machine-guns, hand grenades, and also large cutlasses in their hands, most of them still blood-stained. A beautiful young girl, with criminal eyes, showed me hers still dripping with blood; she displayed it like a trophy. This was the "cleaning up" team, that was obviously performing its task very conscientiously. I tried to go into a house. A dozen soldiers surrounded me, their machine-guns aimed at my body, and their officer forbade me to move. The dead, if any, would be brought to me, he said. I then flew into one of the most towering rages of my life, telling these criminals what I thought of their conduct, threatening them with everything I could think of; and then pushed them aside and went into the house. The first room was dark, everything was in disorder, but there was no one. In the second, amid disemboweled furniture and covers and all sorts of debris, I found some bodies cold. Here, the "cleaning up" had been done with machine-guns, then hand grenades. It had been finished off with knives, anyone could see that. The same thing in the next room, but as I was about to leave, I heard something like a sigh. I looked every-where, turned over all the bodies, and eventually found a little foot, still warm. It was a little girl of ten, mutilated by a hand grenade, but still alive. As I was about to carry her out, the officer tried to stop me, blocking the doorway. I pushed him aside and went through with my precious load protected by my good friend the glass cupboard. The ambulance set off, with orders to come back as soon as possible. As the gang had not dared to attack me directly, I could continue. I gave orders for the bodies in this house to be loaded on the truck, and went into the next house, and so on. Everywhere, it was the same horrible sight. I found only two more people alive, both women, one of them an old grandmother, hidden behind a heap of firewood where she had kept quiet for at least 24 hours. There had been 400 people in this village; about fifty of them had escaped, and were still alive. All the rest had been deliberately massacred in cold blood for, as I observed for myself, this gang was admirably disciplined and only acted under orders. Back in Jerusalem I went straight to the Jewish Agency where I found the leaders dismayed, apologetic and pretending, which indeed was true, that they had no power over the Irgun or the Stern Gang.* However, they had done nothing to try and prevent about a hundred men from committing this unspeakable crime. Then I went to visit the Arabs. I said nothing about what I had seen, but only that after a preliminary hurried visit to the place, it seemed to me that there were several dead people, and that I wondered what to do with them and where to put them. The indignation of the Arabs was understandable, but it prevented them from taking a decision. They would have liked the corpses brought back to the Arab side, but feared a revolt of the population and did not know where to put them or bury them. Finally, they decided to ask me to see to it that they were decently buried in a place that could be recognised later. I agreed to undertake this task and went back to Deir Yassine. I found the Irgun people in a very bad temper; they tried to prevent me from approaching the village. I understood their attitude when I saw the number, and especially the state of the corpses that had been lined up all along the main road. I asked very firmly that the burial be started and insisted on being present. After discussion, digging was started on a big grave in a small garden. It was impossible to check the identity of the dead as they had no papers, but I took careful note of all their particulars, with approximate ages. As night fell, I went back to Jerusalem, stating clearly that I was coming back the next day. Two days later, the Irgun had disappeared from the place, and the Haganah had taken over; we discovered several places where the corpses had been stacked, without decency or respect, in the open air. After this last visit, I went back to my office where I was visited by two gentlemen, well-dressed in civilian clothes, who had been waiting for me for more than an hour. They were the commander of the Irgun detachment and his aide. They had prepared a paper that they wanted me to sign. It was a statement to the effect that I had been very courteously received by them, and obtained all the facilities I had requested, in the accomplishment of my mission, and thanking them for the help I had received. As I showed signs of hesitation and even started to argue with them, they said that if I valued my life, I had better sign immediately. The only course open to me was to convince them that I did not value my life in the least and that a declaration quite contrary to theirs had already gone to Geneva. I added that in any case I was not in the habit of signing statements written by others, but only those exclusively drawn up by me. Before I let them go, I tried to explain to them once more the purpose of our mission and asked them whether or not they intended to oppose us in the future. I did not get an answer that day, but later, in Tel Aviv, I saw them again; they needed our help for some of their own people, and in gratitude for our cooperation, they were of great assistance to us on several occasions, returning some hostages we claimed without argument. The affair of Deir Yassine had immense repercussions. The press and radio spread the news everywhere among Arabs as well as the Jews. In this way a general terror was built up among the Arabs, a terror astutely fostered by the Jews. On both sides, it was made into a political argument, and the results were tragic. Driven by fear, the Arabs left their homes to find shelter among their kindred; first isolated farms, then villages, and in the end whole towns were evacuated, even when the Jewish invader had done no more than make it appear that he intended to attack. Finally, about 700,000 Arabs became refugees, leaving everything behind in their haste, their one hope being to avoid the fate of the people of Deir Yassine. The effects of this massacre are far from being over today, as this immense crowd of refugees is still living in makeshift camps, without work and without hope, the Red Cross distributing to them emergency aid provided by the United Nations. -------------- * From Jacques de Reynier, A Jerusalem un drapeau flottait sur la ligne & feu (Neuchatel: Editions de la Baconniere, 1950), pp.69-74. Reprinted by permission of Les Editions de Ia Baconniere, S.A. Translated by the Institute for Palestine Studies. ** Head of the delegation in Palestine of the International Red Cross throughout the period of hostilities, 1948. + An Arab village of about four hundred inhabitants in the western suburbs of Jerusalem entirely surrounded by Jewish territory. A few weeks before the massacre its inhabitants had declared it an open village. The distance between Deir Yasin and Kastel is about two and a half miles. ++ For the Irgun, see Jabotinsky, pp.321-30, J. and D. Kimche, pp.615-23, and "The Zionist Military Organisations, 1946," pp. 595~00. (UNITY) <A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/">www.ctrl.org</A> DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substance—not soap-boxing—please! 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