Former Israeli Pow in Syria Says Inner Strength Made It Possible ‘to Take’ Cruel Treatment

Eight months and 12 days after his release from eight month’s imprisonment in Syria Binyamin Mazuz of Beersheba says that despite the long ordeal and cruel treatment that he and the other Israeli prisoners suffered at Syrian hands, he believes that if forced to he could “take it again” because of his inner strength and his belief in God.

Interviewed by the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, Mazuz, who arrived here for a four-week cross-country speaking engagement sponsored by the American Friends of Yeshivat Kerem B’Yavneh, said that he brought with him a “message” derived from his experience in the Syrian jail: “I want to stress how important it is to learn more Torah, to increase the number of yeshivot,” the 22-year-old Mazuz said in almost-perfect English which he studied in the yeshiva in Israel.

Mazuz says that in perspective his eight months in a Syrian jail can be considered a “tragedy” for those who lost their lives or those who were mutilated. “The Syrians wanted to break our spirit,” Mazuz recalled, adding that their jailers wanted to achieve this goal through torture, beating and other forms of cruelty and mistreatment. “I was caught in a strange and tense environment,” he continued, “and my mind was preoccupied with attempts to cope with halachic problems. I longed to return to a life of Torah….In captivity, what I longed for most was the yeshiva, not because it is a haven of freedom, or because my close friends were there, but because it is a home of Torah.”

HELPED ORGANIZE RELIGIOUS ACTIVITIES

Born in Beersheba, Mazuz received his early education in religious and yeshiva high schools. At the age of 18, he enrolled in Kerem B’Yavneh and, as part of the regular program of the yeshiva, spent three months each year in regular army training. Together with more than 100 students of the yeshiva, he was mobilized at the outbreak of the Yom Kippur War and was captured in the early days of the fierce fighting on Mt. Hermon. He spent the next eight months in a narrow cell in Damascus. He said he organized religious activity in the camp and conducted regular weekly study groups, but never planned for the week ahead, since he always hoped that the next week would be spent at home.

Mazuz said that he does not have nightmares regarding the period of his captivity. “I am too busy for that.” Mazuz is the first Yom Kippur War Israeli POW to come to the United States to tell his story of captivity. He will visit many cities and Jewish community centers in America with Eli Klein, director of the yeshiva. Mazuz will begin his speaking tour tomorrow at the Lincoln Square Synagogue in New York.