09/21/2025
Adnan Yahya, was born in Tantura, PaIestine. At 17, when Zionist militias attacked his village, he was seized—one of ~40 boys forced to bury their own neighbors, friends, and family members.
Marched away at gunpoint, hands raised on his head, he locked eyes with his mother—holding his baby brother and sisters. He gave them the only comfort he could: a warm, luminating smile. He thought it might be the last time they’d see him and he wanted them to remember him smiling.
He buried the living with the dead. One body was his best friend’s father—wounded but still breathing.
“Adnan, that’s my dad. He’s alive. What do we do?”
His reply, calm through horror: “We have no choice. We may end up buried with him.”
Half the boys were kiIIed that day. He survived—only to be sent to a forced-labor prison camp with my grandfather, my uncle, and my father, who was only 15.
After several years, he was released and expelled to Syria with the rest of our family. They arrived with nothing—no home, no belongings, no money, no childhood, now refugees—he rebuilt everything. He taught school in Syria. He studied. And finally had an opportunity to study in Germany. Without speaking a word of German, he learned it in months, and became a respected doctor—healing others while quietly healing himself.
In his final years, he watched Gaza burn—77 years after Tantura—and wept. His heart never stopped breaking for his people. His love never dimmed.
He was the most extraordinary human I’ve ever known. I will miss him beyond language.
Rest in power, Uncle (Amo) Adnan.
Your smile still lights the dark.
Your legacy is unbreakable.