Creative solution needed for Sudanese refugees, Yad Vashem chairman says

"The Israeli government must find a creative solution for the Sudanese refugees, even if it is an intermediate one," Yad Vashem chairman Avner Shalev said following a visit by a group of Darfur asylum seekers to the Holocaust memorial museum in Jerusalem Monday morning.

"Those who left Sudan are victims of a genocide that is going on right now," he said. "I feel a lot of empathy and understanding for them." Shalev called on the world to take action to stop the genocide in Darfur.

Over the last few years, over 300 Sudanese refugees have sought refuge in Israel, after a failed attempt to seek protection in Egypt. However, on their arrival in Israel, many of the asylum seekers have been imprisoned for violating the Infiltration Prevention Law of 1954, which allows for indefinite detention without judicial review of citizens from "enemy states" who infiltrate Israel.

Recently, the government has begun taking the refugees out of prison, and placed them in kibbuzim, where they live and work among the local community.  

A lobby group in Israel is working for a change of the law so as to prevent the refugees' incarceration and to allow them to claim asylum in Israel.

'I never thought it so horrible.' Asylum seekers at Holocaust museum (photo: Tamar Dresler) 

Echoing Shalev's remarks, Eytan Schwartz, spokesperson for the Committee for Advancement of Refugees from Darfur, told Ynetnews that the Israeli government had to find a solution for the refugees. "Israel is a nation that arose from the ashes of the Jewish people. We have a double responsibility to help these people, and we can't stand by silently," he said.

Israel was not in a position to intervene in Darfur or to absorb an unending number of refugees, Eitan said, but he argued that the government should "grant a status to those that are here."

'Never let this happen again'

The Sudanese asylum seekers left Yad Vashem shocked and overwhelmed after attending a guided tour of the museum. 

The men were no strangers to genocide – as they themselves have sought refuge in Israel following wide-scale massacres in Darfur, in southern Sudan, where nearly half a million people are estimated to have been killed following raids carried out by the Sudanese government-backed Janjaweed Arab militia.

"The Arabs are killing people all of the time," one of the refugees told Ynetnews.

After arriving in Israel, the men had begun hearing of the Holocaust, and asked to be taken to Yad Vashem to learn what had happened.

"I have heard of the Holocaust, but I never thought it so horrible," said one of the men upon leaving the museum, before breaking down in tears.

"I am so sad about what happened to the Jewish community at that time," said another Sudanese refugee. "In Darfur, at least there is the UN and America trying to stop the genocide. In Europe and Germany at that time, no one tried to help the Jews. It's so hard to view this," he added.

The young Sudanese men – whose names and identities are being withheld to protect their families back in Sudan - quietly moved through the museum, taking in the difficult video and photographic images, as historian Robert Rosett provided a full explanation of the events.

"I'm wondering whether the people who did these things are really human," said one of the refugees," adding: "The world must get together and never let this happen again."

Addressing the refugees, Shalev said: "I am really moved by your decision to come and visit Yad Vashem. This place symbolizes not only the tragedy that happened to the Jewish people, but suffering and mass killings inflicted on human beings by other human beings. We have a lot of empathy with your situation."