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6/26/2002 (20:40) |
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Jewish lawyer:
'I want to save the soul of my people'
Polish refugee from the Nazis tells of her struggle
for Palestinian rights and battle with Israeli state
The Daily Star
March 14, 2002
By Christina Foerch
Berlin -- Felicia Langer is small and fragile, an intellectual with vivid blue eyes. Her voice is determined, though sometimes it becomes weak when she recalls bad memories. 'I want to save the soul of my people.' She says this of the citizens of Israel, though she is herself a Polish Jew who fled to the Soviet Union to escape the Nazis, and now lives in Germany. Her husband Mieciu can make everybody laugh. His jokes are well-known to family and friends. He is also a Polish Jew who spent five years in Nazi concentration camps. He lost his entire family in the holocaust. Felicia and Mieciu have been together for 51 years now, 'and we are still on our honeymoon,' Mieciu says, taking his wife's hand.
They are sitting in front of their television set in a small apartment in the German town of Tbingen, watching a feature story about Felicia Langer, the human rights lawyer. She has defended Palestinians for 22 years, arguing cases in front of countless Israeli military courts. In 1990, she received the Right Livelihood Award in Oslo. 'My wife is a saint,' Mieciu says. 'Oh my God, this is awful!' Felicia responds. But then she takes his hand. 'We don't have a normal marriage. And the life we're leading isn't normal either,' she said. The lawyer suffered during her career -- her compatriots saw her as a traitor. But all she ever wanted was justice for the Palestinian people. At the age of 71, 11 years after retiring from law, she still struggles for the same goals as a writer.
Her latest book, Quo Vadis Israel, is an accumulation of material and eye-witness accounts of Israeli human rights violations. 'The suffering and the destiny of the victims was my motivation to write this book,' she says. The book is addressed to a public that doesn't know much about Palestinian reality since the beginning of the second intifada, and wants information beyond the reports of European and American media. She describes the daily sufferings of the Palestinians living a life of blockade: pregnant women forced to give birth in cars instead of hospitals because Israeli soldiers won't let them through a checkpoint, for example; the sick who die at checkpoints; the destruction of livelihoods because of Israeli aggression.
Somehow, Langer seems to have transformed from a public defender to a prosecuter of the Israeli State. 'I'm part of the other Israel,' Langer claims. 'I'm for justice and against all those for whom the conclusion of the holocaust is hatred, cruelty and insensitivity.' Langer was born in 1930 in Poland. The family was well off until the German invasion, but she learned at an early age what it means to be a refugee. 'Being a refugee is burnt into my consciousness, she said. 'When I met Palestinian refugees for the first time, I could feel their pain. You never forget the horrifying experiences of life as a refugee.' During their stay in Russia, her father died of malnutrition. After World War II, Langer and her mother returned to Krakow, Poland.
There she took up her studies, attending a boarding school for orphans. This is where she met her husband. In 1950, at the request of Felicia's mother, the couple emigrated to Israel. During the early years there they missed Poland and weren't happy, but then the Langers had their first and only child, Michael. After this Felicia fulfilled her strongest wish, to study law. 'I studied law because I wanted to help the poor, the oppressed, but I knew that it would never be a source of money,' she recalls. The 1967 war was the turning point. Palestinian lawyers stopped working in protest at Israeli aggression. Suddenly the Palestinians didn't have legal representation anymore, and this was when Langer decided to become active.
'One day, there was a Palestinian woman in my office. She told me that her husband had been killed by Israeli soldiers. 'In the end, you will win,' I told her. 'Yes, maybe there will be a Palestinian state,' the woman said, 'but my husband will not become alive again.' 'Suddenly, I remembered my joy after the liberation of Poland in 1945, but at the same time I was so sad because due to the war I had lost my father.' There was not much time for privacy for the young couple. Langer represented thousands of Palestinian detainees. Her compatriots hated her, and sent her death threats.
She continued with her work, though most of her clients lost their cases. At the end of the 1980s, during the first intifada, many parents of young Palestinians came to visit her seeking legal assistance. Many youngsters and children were imprisoned because they threw stones at Israeli soldiers. The prisons were crowded, the courts overloaded. Most of the detainees didn't even receive a trial. In that situation, Felicia could do nothing. She finally concluded that she could not fight for the Palestinians within the Israeli legal system, and closed her office. 'I gave up because I'd reached a dead end. Finally, the Israeli authorities made me surrender. There are no rights for the Palestinians, and no justice.'
The Langers followed their son, who had been working as an actor and musician in Germany. In December 1990, on her 60th birthday, Felicia was honoured with the Right Livelihood Award for her work as a human rights lawyer. Finally, her 20-year-long struggle had been recognized. 'The dead of my family who are victims of fascism and national socialism live within my soul,' she said in her speech in Oslo. 'These are the beloved ones who never had a tomb. 'The victims of tyranny on all continents are also in my heart. I am proud of those Israeli sons and daughters who refuse to participate in the Zionist oppression. They are the conscience of Israel, in accordance with the tradition of the Jewish people, in order not to betray our dead.
'I had sworn to defend the rights of the Palestinians without compromise. It was then that I learned that the ones who mistreat another people (the Palestinians), are also the enemies of their own people (in Israel).' In Germany, Felicia Langer has participated in public discussions and talk shows. Many members of the German Jewish community attack her, and she has received death threats. Langer began writing books about the peace process. She says peace will only be possible after a complete Israeli withdrawal from Gaza and the West Bank, and when a real Palestinian state is created within the pre-1967 borders. 'The Jewish people, due to our particular history, are the ones who can best understand the desire to have a state. But this time it has to be a state for the Palestinians, not for the Jews,' she says. She knows that for now this is wishful thinking, 'but I'm very motivated to continue with the struggle.'
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