Personal Recollections of Israel Bonan

Israel Bonan was a Jewish student, born and living in Egypt during the 1967 events…

…We start at the knock on the door, and me leaving at 10 p.m. with a couple of policemen who requested the pleasure of my company.

Israel Bonan

I left with them, apprehensive to say the least, in the dark of night made inkier with the air raid imposed extra blackness. I was escorted to a car, and we drove to another location where they picked up another soul mate, a young kid, that I did not know, who could not be older than 18 years of age; and I was 22 at the time. After we drove for a while we were escorted to the Mosqui precinct.

… My mother later on told me that my father ran after the car for a long while after he tried unsuccessfully to inquire as to where I was being taken, with no answers forthcoming to calm him down or ease their anxieties. He came home dried mouthed and frantic… the situations we put our parents through for just being nice Jewish boys.

… We found out later on that on the first night they started rounding up all Jewish males from 18 to 55 years old, my father was spared the indignities of it by being 57 at the time, his cousin was not so lucky, and he ended up in jail with his own son at the same time until released a few month later.

We walked into a large precinct hall, with the desk officer sitting further to our right, and a lot of uniformed and plain clothes policemen circling around, and we both faced “Captain Hosni” who started his introduction with a reddening slap across our faces. In my case that act of kindness ejected my glasses off my face which came tumbling down shattered to my feet. I bend down to pick them up, to his snickering and his voice saying that he really “meant was to break them into pieces”, so I handed the glasses back to him and he completely mangled them and handed the glasses back to me; the glasses were gold rimmed, and more to come on that.

The next few minutes of interrogation, if we can call it that, had to do more with using his cane on our backs and continuing his savagery while goading us for being Jews and that they will annihilate us etc… During that time the shirt and undershirt were torn off our backs; and all I can remember beyond that was, that the kid next to me, behaved exactly as I did, not a whimper, not a cry just stood ramrod in a tragic acceptance of physical abuse pretending no impact physical or otherwise; which succeeded only in infuriating him.

– Israel Bonan – A Personal Exodus Story [more…]