WHEN ISRAELI FORCES withdrew from Beirut in 2000, a few dozen Lebanese Jews ignored their warnings to evacuate the city, choosing to stay in the place they considered their home. They believed they were safe from the violence of the civil war due to their political neutrality. For ten of them, who were abducted and disappeared in 1984 and 1985, this decision would prove fatal. Haim Cohen and Isaac Tarrab were executed by the Organization of the Oppressed on Earth, which was demanding the liberation of all prisoners from the Khiam prison in southern Lebanon. We couldn’t just accept these murders or those that threatened to follow, even if we knew our chances of success were slim.
I do not find it easy to leave my family behind, particularly when it means entering such a violent country, but how could we defend the memory of Jews murdered more than forty years before if we did not defend Jews whose lives were currently endangered?
I made my reasons for going to Beirut clear in a press release on January 17, 1986: “I am going to Beirut for two reasons. First, to denounce the murders of two Jewish hostages. The perpetrators of those crimes, committed against Lebanese Jews purely because they were Jews, are as low as Nazi war criminals. Second, as a German woman, I always feel a solidarity with Jews persecuted because they are Jews. That is why I am going, to try to save the lives of the five Jewish hostages who are still alive, and why I will propose to their kidnappers that they release those hostages and take me as a hostage in their place.”
I had no visa, so I decided to enter Lebanon illegally by boat. When the ship docked in the port of Jounieh, I waited while all the other passengers disembarked, and then, when the customs officials had gone, I got off the boat with my suitcase. I was in the Christian sector of Beirut, and I needed to reach the Muslim sector, but when I took a taxi to the border between the two sectors, the guards checked my papers and sent me to a police station, where I spent the night. In the morning, the West German ambassador got me a two-month residence permit while advising me to leave because the city was too dangerous. I thanked him and went to the Muslim sector. There, I checked into the Hotel Cavalier, where foreign reporters stay.
The Lebanese press reported the reasons behind my visit. On February 3, Himat, a Shiite, drove me to the suburbs of Beirut. He stopped, and another car came to a halt beside us; a young man got out. We spoke to each other in English. He told me the hostages would not be freed unless all the prisoners in the Khiam prison were liberated first. “Why are you attacking innocents?” I asked. “All the Jews are brothers and all the Jews are responsible,” he replied. He said he would be in touch with me if there was any news.
Serge went to Israel, where he was told that all the Lebanese Jews had been warned in plenty of time to leave the country and that there was no possibility of any prisoners being freed in an exchange.
On February 10, I went back to Paris, having achieved nothing. But at least I had done my best for three weeks in a city filled with gunshots and explosions. Two days later, Serge took over from me.