I saw the documentary “Bye Bye, Tiberias” on the same day that I attended an event organized by Berlin's Denk Mal Am Ort (Think about the Place) project.
The film, directed by Lina Soualem, is a personal journey with her mother, the actress Hiam Abbass, back to Tiberias, the city from which Abbass’ grandparents were expelled during the 1948 war, and to Deir Hanna, the village in northern Galilee to which they fled and where Abbass grew up.
Mixing old home movies and contemporary interviews, “Bye Bye, Tiberias” examines the dispersal of the family – one of Hiam’s aunts ends up fleeing to Syria and Hiam herself leaves for Paris to pursue acting.
It examines Hiam’s feelings upon visiting a place that is both recognizable – the unchanging lake, with the hills of Syria in the distance – and unrecognizable — a mid-sized Jewish city sits atop the vanishing remnants of Palestinian "Tabbariyeh."
Historical events are palpable in the background but “Bye Bye, Tiberias” focuses on Hiam, her sisters, her mother and her grandmother as strong individuals. At one point, Hiam describes a difficult conversation with her father about her romantic life; she also recounts joining al-Hakawati, a political theater group in Jerusalem, without telling her family.
It's a wistful, moving film, though it could have been cut by about 20 minutes.
The event I attended early that took place at the Berlin home of an acquaintance, Hugh Williamson, and his wife, Anke Hassel. It was part of an annual weekend of open houses, mostly in homes once occupied by Jews.
Researching their building a few years ago, Hugh and Anke had discovered that a Jewish shopkeeper, Hans Katzenellenbogen, and his family resided in the apartment in the 1930s, before fleeing to Argentina after Kristallnacht. Via Facebook, Hugh and Anke in 2018 tracked down Ludwig Katzenellenboggen, who was a small boy in the 1930s and who was now living in Israel.
Ludwig immediately accepted an invitation from Hugh and Anke to travel to Berlin to visit the home he had not seen in eight decades. Walking from room to room, Ludwig had lots to say about the place. Pointing to where the piano stood, he remarked that no one played it but every middle-class Jewish family had to have a piano in their home anyway.
Since Ludwig died in 2020, his daughter Elsa and her family have come every year for the Denk Mal Am Ort Open House event, to dwell momentarily in the home from which her father and his parents and siblings were expelled, and to speak to visitors about what he had told them about it.
(Denk Mal Am Ort made a video about the family, https://www.google.com/search..., in English starting at 5m39s.)
I wish to make no forced parallels between this Jewish German family and the Palestinian family in “Bye Bye Tiberias,” or between the Holocaust and the Nakba.
Just to say that, national narratives aside, both stories evoke the way that individual people carry with them connections, often fragmented and tenuous, to places that their ancestors were forced to leave.