Darfuri activist inspired by Holocaust survivors to share his story
Like many high school students in Israel, Usumain Baraka, an asylum seeker from Sudan, listened to the testimony of Holocaust survivors. But he had a specific question for them, after they finished sharing the darkest moments of their lives: how long did it take for you to tell these stories? How long did it take you to be able to talk about these most difficult moments, things that no human should ever have to see?
Israel marks Yom HaShoah, or Holocaust Remembrance Day, starting on the evening of April 27. The common refrain about the Holocaust is “Never Again,” but organizations such as the Combat Genocide Association, part of the Dror Israel social movement, highlight the fact that there have been 11 genocides in the 20th and 21st centuries. President Joe Biden has also called Russia’s war against Ukraine a “genocide.”
Baraka’s own story is full of terror and heartbreak, a child witness to the genocide in Darfur. “I remember this day, it was a catastrophe: I lost my father, I lost my brother. I was a 9-year-old boy that knows what a dead body looks like,” Baraka recalled of the day the Janjaweed attacked his village in 2003.
Baraka, who fled Sudan and arrived in Israel alone at age 13, couldn’t speak of the horrors for six years after he arrived. But when he met the Holocaust survivors in high school as a student at the Yemin Orde Youth Village in Haifa, something began to slowly change.
“They said it took us a long time to share our own stories how we came to Israel,” Baraka said. “These are people that gave me strength, how to build self-confidence, how to take responsibility for my own story.”
As an advocate and activist for the nearly 30,000 asylum seekers in Israel, Baraka knows the power of his story. He knows how Israelis, once they hear about the circumstances that led him to flee to Israel, will start to see him as a person rather than a “cancer in our body ,” as MK Miri Regev has referred to Sudanese asylum seekers in a demonstration back in 2012. But telling that story also exacts a personal toll.
“They said it took us a long time to share our own stories how we came to Israel... These are people that gave me strength, how to build self-confidence, how to take responsibility for my own story.”
This year, Baraka took another step in the journey of telling his story with the publication of his first poem in Hebrew, part of an anthology of poems about genocide around the world. “The Voice of Thy Brother’s Blood” features the work of 100 poets reflecting on 11 genocides in the 20th and 21st century. The Combat Genocide Association organized the anthology, which took nine years to compile.
“It’s forbidden for us to be quiet, we promised ourselves this at the end of the last world war, and we need to remember that promise,” MK Dr Nachman Shai, (Labor) Minister of Diaspora Affairs, said at the book launch at the Rabin Center in Tel Aviv on February 28.
“We hear the voices of people in eastern Europe,” said Shai, referring to the conflict in Ukraine. “Thank God there is no genocide, but people are still dying. We are not allowing wars to run our lives. If countries are in conflict, they have to negotiate.”
Baraka himself understands the power of choosing an alternative to violence. When Baraka was 13, he considered joining the fighting to defend his village. His mother disagreed, he told the audience at the book launch. “She said, my son, listen, this is not the way. Look for the education you so desperately want, so you can know how to stop these wars.” Baraka has both a masters and bachelors degree in Public Policy from the Interdisciplinary Center Herziliya, and has founded the African Students Organization as well as Ulpan Usumain to help asylum seekers obtain higher education in Israel.
“This is a pioneering work that no precedent in the Israeli literary world,” said Maya Valentine, the editor of the anthology. “The Voice of Thy Brother’s Blood offers an intimate, personal glance and emotional connection to the experiences of genocide victims across the world: millions of men, women, and children. The poets included in the anthology have written from the depths of horror, in hope their voices will once be heard.”
“I had heard about the Holocaust and I heard about the Jews and I was sure that the Jews would protect me until the genocide in my country was over,” Baraka said. “I got here and they put me in jail. But something that is burning in me, I am always trying to raise awareness of the plight of asylum seekers… My friends and I are meeting people and telling our personal stories all the time. It’s not easy. We ask ourselves, what do we gain from telling these stories?
“I met Maya and she convinced me to write a poem for this book,” Baraka said at the event. “I didn’t know what to write about. She suggested I return to the boy that saw these things in Sudan. ‘Now I have Nothing’ is my first poem that I ever wrote in Hebrew, and it’s published.”
2003
Tukunyi Usumain Baraka
We had a large house, that everyone could fit inside
And a tall kongji tree, whose shade I enjoyed
I had a white cow, Dara, with a patch of color on her neck
For breakfast I would drink her milk
I had a black donkey, I called him Duji, that I rode from village to village
I had a dog the color of coffee, his name was Angel, he was afraid of his own shadow
I had five sheep to walk with
And six goats, the most beautiful in the village
I had many chickens who laid so many eggs that I loved to eat
And today I have nothing
And today I have nothing
And today I have nothing