The Paratrooper's Stirring Tale: 'After the Liberation of the Western Wall, an Arab Man Approached Us and Signaled: "Save My Mother"'

Eric Bauckman was a young soldier, just 23 years old, when he participated in the battle to liberate Jerusalem. More than 50 years have passed since, but the memories remain vivid in his heart. He remembers every detail of the fighting, recalls the wounded and the friends who did not return from the battle, remembers the shout: "The Temple Mount is in our hands" and the stirring shofar blast, and more than anything he recalls the event that, for some reason, received minimal coverage after the war, but for him, was a life-changing event – the birth of a baby in the ‘house’ of the Old City moments after the liberation of the Western Wall.

Tears of Pain and Excitement

"I am excited," he says honestly at the beginning of our conversation, "This is not the first time I'm sharing my memories from the Six-Day War. I come at least once a month to meet visitors at Ammunition Hill and tell them about the battle and also give lectures, but I don't always tell 'the story of the baby.' It's a story that has become part of my life, and every time I talk about it, I get chills and find it hard to believe it really happened."

To better understand what happened, he returns to the start of the war: "Our brigade was initially at Geva Beren, along with parachute instructors. We were preparing for our first combat jump, which we had long awaited. We all walked around with puffed chests, excited about the jump, but just then the war broke out, and we received an urgent directive to drop everything and head to Jerusalem on buses. At that time, plans weren't laid out for us, we were simply rushed to Jerusalem, called to storm the police school, purify the place, and later moved to an 'eye hospital' where we discovered dozens of Jordanian soldiers pretending to be patients, allowing us to expose them and prevent them from fighting.

"After that, we were replaced by Brigade 16, and we continued to Mount Scopus, passing by the Augusta Victoria Church where we found the Jordanians had left just minutes before our arrival, with the coffee cups still warm. We proceeded towards the Old City and, as we got closer, heard the voice of the brigade commander, Mota Gur, over the radio: 'To the battalion commanders, march forward,' and we understood we had to advance toward the Western Wall. We did this very carefully, keeping a distance of 20 meters between soldiers, fingers on triggers, with only occasional sniper fire. No major battle ensued. Eventually, we reached the Western Wall and were part of the touching sight of setting foot in this sacred place after so many years of inaccessibility."

But along with the great excitement, Bauckman also recalls the indescribable, slicing pain. "When we were in the plaza of the Western Wall, which was very small, it was the first time since the start of the fighting that we met with all members of the brigade. I remember asking my friends, 'Where's Itzik?' and they replied, 'Didn't you know? He was killed,' and a friend asked, 'Where's Israel?' and was told, 'Israel only lost a hand,' 'And where's Moshe?' 'Gone,' and so on. It's hard to describe what we went through as young soldiers at that time, and then came the story of the birth in the Old City."

The Survivor's Secret

Bauckman continues the narrative: "While we stood in the plaza of the Western Wall, excited, crying, and updating on details, an Arab boy came out from one of the ‘houses’ in the Muslim Quarter and shouted something in Arabic that we couldn't understand. When he saw we didn't understand, he gestured that his mother was about to give birth.

"My initial reaction to the boy was: 'Bullshit, nonsense,' thinking he was trying to deceive us or lure us into a trap. But then I decided with my medic friend to enter the house nonetheless, and indeed, the woman was about to give birth. The medic shouted to me to gather canteens as it was impossible to deliver her with the polluted water she had in her bathtub. I went out and managed to gather ten canteens. Meanwhile, Dr. Eli Perend was summoned, and without a second thought, he hurried to assist her. It was an incredibly noble and unimaginable act, considering he had just treated 40 wounded soldiers and pronounced 34 dead warriors. The logical thing might not have been to treat an Arab woman, yet he rushed to help her, and I'll never forget his shout after the birth: 'A girl, not a soldier,' indicating he delivered a baby girl, not a boy."

The next day, Bauckman and his friends were already on their way to continue the battle on the Golan Heights, and the story of the birth was almost forgotten. "Over the years, it was scarcely mentioned in the documentation of the war, and even in the books written about the Six-Day War, it only received brief mentions," Bauckman notes.

But this story also has a surprising and unforeseen continuation. "In 1988, I was sitting with my wife watching a promo for the show 'From Me, Meni' hosted by Meni Pe'er," Bauckman recalls. "To my utter surprise, Meni interviewed a woman who talked about giving birth to her daughter on the 28th of Iyar 1967, in the Mughrabi neighborhood. I was shocked to realize this was 'my story,' and even more amazed when Meni asked the woman to share about herself, and she said: 'I am Judith Schwartz, a Holocaust survivor from Budapest; I was in Auschwitz, freed and came to Israel through the youth aliyah movement.' My astonishment knew no bounds. Only then did I realize that the woman we saved and helped deliver her baby was Jewish, as was the baby girl who by then was already 21 years old."

Bauckman's voice shakes as he mentions that the story has another chapter. "In 2017, I was asked at my workplace to write a small article for Memorial Day for fallen IDF soldiers, so I wrote this story of mine, unaware where it would lead. It was published in a booklet my workplace released, and to my surprise, just before Rosh Hashanah, I received a surprising phone call: 'Are you Eric from the paratroopers?' I answered affirmatively, then heard: 'I am Fanny, whom you and Dr. Uri Perend delivered; finally, after so many years, I've found you, and I want to meet and thank you.'"

An Emotional Reunion

The reunion between the two was tear-inducingly emotional. "We both cried like little children," Bauckman recounts, "Fanny told me that for years, her mother wanted to spare her the harsh story of her birth, so she would ignore it, instead telling only of her memories of Auschwitz. She couldn't understand why her mother cried every year on Memorial Day and would always say: 'I understand that Holocaust Memorial Day is hard for you, but why do you cry on Memorial Day? Who did you lose?' In one of those conversations, her mother opened up and told her everything, and emphasized the nobility of spirit of Dr. Perend, who was killed in the Yom Kippur War by a missile that hit a rescue helicopter he was on as a doctor. Fanny told me she grew up knowing Dr. Perend was almost like a father to her, one she never met as he passed away when she was young.

"It was enthralling to hear that Fanny is married to a Jewish man and has two sons, the eldest serving in the IDF without knowing that his grandfather was an Arab. Out of fear this might affect his military service, Fanny promised that one day she would reveal her story, which might only be possible in a people like ours, the people of Israel."