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This is the story of my father, Syed Ahmed, when he was growing up during the liberation war of Bangladesh. He was raised during a very strained and complicated period of the country yet lived on in ﻿ success. media type="file" key="English II Project Survivor.mp3" width="240" height="20"

I remember it like it was yesterday. I am Rachel and I was born in Brussels, Belgium in 1934. My life was peaceful until the Germans arrived. My parents decided to hide my somewhere when they heard of an official notification that I could no longer go to school. They thought of an all kinds of places to hide me and decided to give to some “strangers”. Our landlady’s nephew was a priest. He helped me go find a convent to live in. I had to frequently move from convent to convent and change names every time I would arrive at a new one. I remember the last time I saw my father. He visited me on my birthday and gave me great gifts with pink wrapping paper and a blue ribbon. I remember it clearly. Once when I was living with six nuns in Louvain, the Gestapo came. The nuns were Carmelite and were forbidden from seeing men. They banged on the door and asked for the “little Jewish girl”. The nuns denied any claims the Gestapo had about me until the Gestapo broke the door open. At that moment one of the nuns stuffed me into a basket of laundry so that no one could see me. Thanks to that basket of laundry, I was saved. A couple years later, I was put into a foster family in Virton. That family was great. I felt so loved and admired. I would also go to mass as much as I could. It made me feel safe. I always felt angry at my parents for giving me away, but I realized later that if they hadn’t, I would have died. Several years later my mother remarried another survivor of the holocaust. My brother’s birth reassured my belief in God. There were wonderful people who protected me and horrible people who wanted to kill me and in the end I felt thankful that I was alive.

Interview Person: Syed Ahmed Scheduled Date: Tuesday, 6:00 PM, 5/24/11 Event Survived: Liberation War of Bangladesh Questions:

1. What was your life like before the Independence movement? I don’t remember much from that long ago but before the movement, I remember that my family was much closer together and things were what you might call laid back. It was less tense back then. Plus since I was younger, I didn’t worry about very many things. Other than that, things were pretty much the same. I would still play with my siblings and friends. My brother hadn’t gone to a military school yet and was still at home. It was nice. 2. When you had heard that there was going to be a war in the future, how did you react? Well, we wanted our self government and some control and at my age, I was proud to be a Bengali. It was like “Yes! I will stand up and fight back! For my country, for my language, for culture!” I wanted to go and take the training and become a freedom fighter but for various reasons, I couldn’t. I was not allowed because my mother was worried about my safety. 3. Do you know what it was that led to the East Pakistani people to revolt against the West Pakistani people? The Bengali National movement was what actually one of the main things that started the entire revolution in 1952. This was when there was a massacre of several students from universities in Bangladesh (then known as East Pakistan). A sense of nationalism and pride also contributed to the revolution. Since then, there were a lot of movements to give people an equal share of wealth and rights in East and West Pakistan. For example, at the Armed Forces, there were a huge difference of East and West Pakistanis. Most people were from the west. There were also more challenges for East Pakistani students to go to Western countries abroad. They would have to go through a lot of processes and those kinds of things. It was practically segregation. Then there was another movement in the 60’s when some East Pakistani leaders wanted more power at the parliament and rights. There was a leader of a party, who was from East Pakistan. There was a general election in 1970 in overall Pakistan and this leader received the absolute majority vote. They were legally to be the Prime minister. But then in West Pakistan a military leader objected that an East Pakistani should be the Prime Minister and just because of that they weren’t. At that time Pakistan was ruled by the military. Another time on the night of March 25th Pakistani police attacked the University students and their dorms. They also attacked the police station and we lived right across the street from the police station. We could see everything that was happening. There was a paramilitary group at that time. There wasn’t a military but there wasn’t a police. This was called the East Pakistan Rifles. They didn’t really take highly qualified people and they were mainly in charge of border control. In one night, they probably killed 30,000-50,000. This led to the revolution. 4. Do you think the war was worth it? Well, absolutely. We got that independence; we have our own country; we have our own freedom; we are proud to call ourselves Bangladeshis. It would be a total chaos if we were still a part of Pakistan. It’s absolutely worth it, but the nine months of gruesome killing, torturing, raping, and all the horrors like just burning the villages was the worth it. In just nine months, over 3 million people were killed by Pakistanis. If you compare the ratios of WWI and this war, this war’s ratios are much higher. There was a great amount of people killed in WWI, yes, but over a course of 6 years. It’s just horrible. 5.Do you know anybody who actually fought in the war or was involved in it? Well one of my brothers was at a Pakistani military school, and another brother was a freedom fighter. My eldest brother and the freedom fighter were once taken by official and tortured for information. They beat them with sticks and another person was your grandfather who was second in line for being in charge of a project called Kaptai Dam. Kaptai was city in Bangladesh where your mother was brought up. Sometime during the 9 months of liberation, the army came and took the people in charge of the engineers. A soldier had already shot the head engineer and when they were about to shoot your grandfather. A jeep came and a major general talked with the soldiers and told your grandfather to go. Pakistani people were oppressing Bangladesh by killing off the intellectuals which was why they were about to shoot your grandfather. Just like that, he was saved. Your youngest uncle wasn’t born yet. During this, your mother is 10 years old. 6. What were the conditions like during the war and throughout the independence? The conditions were quite poor. There were people inside of East Pakistan who betrayed Bangladesh and leaked information to the West Pakistanis. We knew that we had to move around to stay safe and so I often lived at one of my sister’s houses or a friend’s house. Plus, if any guerilla fighters came towards a village and learned that there were people from the opposing force there, they would just light a match and burn the entire village down. They wouldn’t care if there were children or other innocent people, they would just burn it down. There were a few times where I wouldn’t get food for long periods of time because we either couldn’t find any or we couldn’t stop for any. East Pakistan was practically in shambles at that point and we couldn’t do anything except run. 7. Did anything happen to you personally? Basically the army came in and started massacring people age 15 - 60. It was total horror at that point. I was 16 at this point. It was almost a miracle that I stayed alive. There have been a lot of nights where I have had dreams where I will hear the sound of the army and their boots and they will take my family away. I think that the Pakistanis thought that if they killed a significant number of people, they could cripple East Pakistan but the opposite happened and East Pakistani people began to fight back. Maybe 10 million people went to India for protection and they took the burden. They had to give shelter and feed people. I had to stay in East Pakistan. At one point, we let police come through our house and take position at our roof when we heard that the West Pakistani army was coming. When the army came, we caught them by surprise and began to shoot. This was around 4 o’clock in the morning. Later at 6:30 in the morning they opposition brought a tank. Soldiers became fearful at this point. They shivering because of how scared they were, so my mother began to make clothing for the soldiers. Later, my brother and some other people were digging soil very fast to bury the rifles and extra clothing because if the army came in and saw that people were shooting from this house, they would demolish everything. Around 8 o’clock we heard the sound of the soldiers footsteps. And I still don’t know what happened for sure but I think that 5 or 6 soldiers came onto our compound and just walked around our house and left. If they had come into our house itself, we would have surely been killed. We had about 25 people in our house. 8.How did you feel when the war ended? Well, I was both happy and relieved. This nine month war and fight for independence had finally ended with a positive conclusion. Even though many people had gotten hurt and many people lost their lives, now, it was done. But even after this, like I said before, I didn’t hate anybody, but I definitely blamed Pakistan for a lot and would not just let that go. I also felt very lucky that my family and I were even alive. We came close to a lot of bad things, but we survived and now, I am a successful person living in America still with that sense of nationalism I had before. <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 16px;">9. How do you feel about the war and independence today? <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 16px;">I feel that basically the army was brutal, inhumane, and that the army would do anything just to claim their might or dominance. If there was less of this struggle of superiority present in Pakistan things may not have turned out the way they did. So much could have been avoided if everyone was just more sharing. But, I am glad that now we are our own country and that we have this independence that we would not have had if there wasn’t the war with Pakistan. <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 16px;">10. Do you hold any grudges against Pakistan or blame them? <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 16px;">Absolutely, I mean how dumb could the military leaders of Pakistan be? As just a person, you should do something so that your countrymen realize that something wrong was happening. Most residents of Pakistan didn’t even understand the gravity of what was happening and I do hold a kind of grudge toward the leaders but not the civilians. Let me give you an example as to what happened. There were some Bengalis living in West Pakistan and there were some military officials who took these Bengali people and took these people and kept them captive. It was like an internment camp. My brother-in-law was a lieutenant colonel at this time and he was taken by other Pakistani officials along with other Bengali military officials because Pakistan thought that they were some sort of spies and wanted information. Pakistani people tortured my brother-in-law and did things like beat them. There was no kind of mental torture like there is today, only physical torture. <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 16px;">11. <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 24px;">How did the war change you? <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 24px;">After the war, I was a different person. Everyone was! Everything in the country changed right after the war so all the people changed along with it. The country became, in a sense, more liberal. <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 24px;">12. How do you think the war could have been avoided? <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 24px;">The war was, realistically speaking, inevitable. The oppression of Pakistan was too much. The only way this could have been avoided was if we were not part of Pakistan to begin with. <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 24px;">13. <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">What did Bangladesh do to end the war and do you think that you and/or the citizens of Bangladesh helped? <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">They retaliated against Pakistan and held protests and marches. The main thing that ended the war was the introduction of India in the fight. The citizens all played thier parts and in the end, things worked out.

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">14. What did the war mean to you? <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">This war was a symbol of everything wrong to me. People pointlessly died with no value of life. It was.. wrong. I think of someone I knew who was a part of the war and I become a different person. This war made me a better person <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">15. What is your most vivid experience of the war? I remeber on the last days of the war it rained like crazy. The morning I heard about the end of the war. I looked at the sky and saw the sunrise. It was the perfect sunrise but around the sun, there was fog and still some darkness. The sun was the ray of light in the night. It was beautiful.

This is the story of my father, Syed Ahmed, when he was growing up during the liberation war of Bangladesh. He was raised during a very strained and complicated period of the country and ended up supporting a family and became successful. Hi, I’m Syed Ahmed and I grew up during the independence of Bangladesh, the country I was brought up in. In 1971, war began against Pakistan in an effort to obtain independence. I was 18 years old. Until the liberation war, Bangladesh was East Pakistan. Bangladeshi people were forced to speak a language they did not want to speak, do things they did not want to do, and ultimately, live a life they did not want to live. During the liberation war many people died including the country’s brightest minds. People were tortured for information on these intellectuals including one of my brothers. In fact, my father-in-law almost was shot due to his position as the head engineer of the construction of Kaptai Dam. He was high-ranked and was easily targeted by Pakistani officials. He survived due to his connections with one of the Pakistani army generals. After India intervened, this pointless bloodshed shortly came to a stop. Finally, Bangladesh had become its own country. When I heard the news, I felt happiness like I had never felt before. Throughout the war I wanted to do something for my country but my mother never approved. Now that it was over, all I could think about was the future. Following this brief moment of happiness, there were several moments of sadness. So many people had lost their lives for the sake of this country. I was incredibly angry at Pakistan for their actions. When I look back on those days, I realize that it’s impossible for me to forget the things I saw.