Summary
Representative of the ministry of minorities in the Safad region, a Jewish neighbour figure who recurs in Manna’s Galilee stories on both sides of the expulsion line: a protective letter from him is remembered in Majd al-Krum, his intervention helped spare Jish, and he also carried out the census of Kufr Bir’im a week before delivering its evacuation order (Nakba and Survival, PDF p.15-16, 108-109).
Details
-
Manna’s grandmother Zahra considered Mano Friedman, a Jewish neighbour’s son, her milk-brother; Abu Ma’yuf, her second husband, held a protective letter from Friedman, yet was the first person executed in al-‘Ayn Square at Majd al-Krum, after his house was blown up in front of his eyes (Nakba and Survival, PDF p.15-16).
-
The Christian dignitaries of Jish went to see Mano (Emanuel) Friedman, the representative of the ministry of minorities in the Safad region, concerning their fate after the village received orders to migrate to Lebanon (Nakba and Survival, PDF p.108).
-
On 7 November 1948 Friedman arrived in Kufr Bir’im accompanied by Raful, director of the minorities office in Safad, and carried out a census of the population, which totalled 1,050 people, a step that reassured the residents; he came back on 13 November with four soldiers and told the residents to leave their homes and go to Lebanon within forty-eight hours, on a promise the expulsion was temporary and for security reasons (Nakba and Survival, PDF p.109).
-
Some of Kufr Bir’im’s evicted residents moved to Rumaysh in southern Lebanon with promises from Mano that their rights would be preserved (Nakba and Survival, PDF p.109).
-
Friedman brought the Hulayhel clan of Qadditha back from south Lebanon in December 1948 — agreeing to Khaled Hulayhel’s condition that the whole clan return together — and the clan was settled in al-Ja’una and later forcibly moved to ‘Akbara, whose promised help Abu Husayn remembered as just “tranquilizers” (Nakba and Survival, PDF p.201-202).
Related pages
Nakba and Survival, Majd al-Krum, Jish, Kfar Bir’im, Bechor Shitrit