Growing Up in Beirut
Sarina Roffé
After the 1967 war with Israel, Beirut was no longer a safe place for Jews to live. While many Jews were still escaping from Syria to find safe haven in Beirut, the community was having its own internal difficulties.
Batia Shems née Sasson grew up in Beirut, the daughter of Edouard Sasson and Corine Pinto. Edouard Sasson came from a family with a long Sephardic heritage. He was an executive for Metro Goldwyn Mayer (MGM), an American company in the Middle East, and was responsible for the distribution of films to theaters.
Her mother was Corine Pinto, an only child who moved to Lebanon at the age of five from Istanbul, part of the Ottoman Empire. The Pintos hail back to 15th-century Spain. “I think her father had a premonition about what was going to happen to the Jews in that region and moved them to Beirut,” said Batia about her mother. “They ended up opening up a boutique called A L’Extra Luxe Michel.”
“My father’s sisters and brother happened to travel to Palestine. At the time, it was accessible, an easy bus ride from Lebanon to Israel before Israel was created in 1948,” said Batia. “After the war broke out, they remained in Israel while my father and his mother were left in Beirut. They never saw each other for years. The only way to communicate was through letters back and forth that went through other family members in other countries. You couldn’t write anything about Israel in those letters because the mail was censored. One time, one of the relatives made a mistake and referenced Israel in the letter and it was caught by Lebanese officials. “They came up to my father’s office and warned him, ‘Edouard, we know that you have family there, but be careful.’” Given his status in society, the officials left him alone.
“My father was well known in the Lebanese government, because we used to host a lot of actors and MGM executives. Jews in Lebanon felt that Beirut was a peaceful place to live. Compared to other Arab countries, we were much better off. We learned how to live in our surroundings and not draw attention to ourselves. But we did not have free speech like here in America and there were many competing political and religious factions.”
The Alliance Israelite Universelle school was bombed in March 1950. News reports said a time bomb was planted by Arab saboteurs under cover of a rainy night. The school principal and the custodian lost their lives in the blast. Years later, Batia attended the Alliance school along with most of the children of the community.
“When the Suez Canal was nationalized in 1956, you could feel life changing for the Jewish community,” said Batia. “There were more uprisings in Beirut. Between 1956 and 1958, there was an influx of immigrants from Syria into Beirut. It was during the civil war between the Maronites and the Muslims in Beirut. “Shula Cohen and the community helped them to get to Israel, but it was very dangerous. The atmosphere changed significantly. We had a lot of riots especially on Fridays. Muslims would come out of the mosque and run down the main road, with entrances to the Jewish community. They would burn tires and roll them into the streets, into our neighborhoods, into the Wadi (Jewish community) and chant ‘The Jews are our dogs and Palestine is our home.’ It rhymes when chanted in Arabic.
“At the time, Shula’s work wasn’t talked about, at least not to us kids. It was known that a lot of people came from Syria and they were hidden in the Wadi and then smuggled out. I wouldn’t be surprised if my father was involved in helping the Syrians flee to Israel.”
The films shown by MGM were often the subject of controversy as many Muslims objected to the content, often confronting Edouard and urging him not to show certain films. The PLO was trying to show their own propaganda documentary, Koulouna Fedaiyn, in support of the Palestinian resistance. Even though Edouard insisted he had no control over the company’s decisions, he was blamed. He went to his bosses at MGM to express his concern. However, the company insisted on showing the films. They did not truly understand the Arab mind or the idea that Edouard and his family were in danger. This raised security concerns to the extent that Edouard was concerned about his own safety and that of his family.
religion is stated as Israeli.
of the synagogue.
On February 28, 1970, Edouard was ambushed in his office and shot at point-blank range with a 9mm firearm reportedly from Syria. He was 54. “My mother was absolutely distraught,” said Batia. She was advised to leave her apartment and move out to a friend’s house for her safety.
“My brother Albert had two years left of medical school. He was married with a baby on the way. As soon as his wife delivered, my mother, grandmother, my brother and his family moved to Israel. It was a difficult move for my mother. Besides the language she had to adjust to a new life. In Beirut, my dad took care of everything, groceries and day-to-day life. “When the family moved to Israel, my brother was able to finish his medical school and complete his thesis in Lyon, France since it’s the sister school of the French Faculty in Beirut. Albert a’h became a very well-known and respected orthopedic surgeon in Israel.
“We were often subjected to threats and kidnapping, so my father had us escorted to many places. I was a ballet dancer and many times, especially after a show in one of the movie theaters that were owned by Muslims, I was driven back by a Muslim guard to ensure my safety.”
For high school, Batia attended the American School for Girls and was driven to and from school by a bodyguard. “When I went to the American school, I was the only Jewish girl there. I was long exposed to the Americans, and I wanted to perfect my English. At one point, the headmistress had some puppies and I took a puppy and a Muslim classmate of mine took one. For about six months or so, she would come over to my house, and we played with the puppies. I would never go to her. She didn’t know I was Jewish. “When it was Passover, I didn’t go to school. When I came back, they asked me how come I wasn’t there. I said it was Passover. They looked at me. ‘You’re Jewish?’ They were shocked because my classmates were princesses from neighboring Arab countries. They would run out and meet guys and I would cover for them, until they learned I was Jewish. Then I was off their radar.”
Batia met her husband when Moise came to Beirut from New Jersey, during Passover 1966 to see his family. He was in the second year of a medical residency in urology in the United States when they met. They got married in August at the synagogue in Bhamdoon.
“In December 1969, my grandmother had not seen her kids for many years, so my father took her to Cyprus to see them and his sisters insisted that their mother go back to Israel with them. That was the last time my grandmother saw my father alive. The news of his assassination was broadcast on the radio in Israel and that’s how the family heard the news. My grandmother passed away just a month later from a broken heart.
“There is one letter from my father that was sent to his sisters the day before he was murdered saying that he’s looking into things and wondering when he can leave. He knew something was going on. There were insinuations in the letter. He even asked his sisters in a different way of phrasing, like ‘if a person came to your country and would it be easy for him to learn a new language?’ There were really a lot of insinuations in these letters.”
An estimated 6,000 Lebanese Jews emigrated in the wake of the 1967 Arab-Israeli War, shrinking the community down to 450 by 1975. Albert Elia, the secretary of the community, was kidnapped in 1971 by the Syrian Mukhabarat. He was never heard from again, nor was his body returned to the family. “As young kids, we thought everything was beautiful. But there were cases of murders and kidnaping of community leaders that happened in the early 1970s. A candy store owner was murdered in his office in his shop. The Syrian government basically controlled Lebanon by the 1970s. A doctor was abducted to treat wounded Palestinians, then killed and tied to a tree.”
Jews were targeted in the later years of the Lebanese civil war. Isaac Sasson, a relative of Batia and leader of the Lebanese Jewish community, was kidnapped at gunpoint on March 31, 1985, on his way from the Beirut International Airport after a trip to Abu Dhabi, never to be heard of. From 1985 to 1987, there was a wave of abductions and murders of Jewish leaders in Lebanon. Complete chaos marked Lebanon, and the Lebanese government became powerless. By 1985, there were fewer than 100 Jews left in Beirut.
The Jews of Lebanon are now living in the four corners of the world. Despite being uprooted from their homeland, they succeeded in making a new life for themselves and their families.
