CENTRAL NEWS – Today we remember Sarah Handelmann, a German internationalist friend that joined the ranks of the global Revolution in Kurdistan. She was 34 years old when she was martyred on a turkish airstrike in the Medya Defence Zones, in Bashur Kurdistan in 2019.
The resistance war in all of Kurdistan continues with great heroism, labour and sacrifice. This freedom resistance that continues under the lead of the PKK has resonated throughout the world, as the struggles of our heroic martyrs who base their lives on sacrifice to build a free life go down in history as legends.
Memories from a Kurdish friend from Berlin:
“Still waters are deep!” This statement applies very much to you, Heval Sara. You were a very calm, quiet person, small and petite. Not a person at all who pushed to the front to draw attention. You watch your surroundings carefully, you took record. The calm that you radiated to the outside was only a sham, because I think inside you moved a lot. You worried a lot, you were looking for it. You asked yourself the question about the meaning of life.
When I met you (2015/2016) you were busy with others friends making a documentary film about the Kurdish women’s movement in Bakûr. Because you were a conscientious person, you only completed your part in the film before you started your trip to Kurdistan in 2017. You were also a very determined person, I also brought that with me during the Long March in February 2017 from Luxembourg to Strasbourg. You walked every meter from start to finish, without taking a few hours off, without driving a few kilometers. No, you ran the whole route without showing that you might have reached your limits. When Turkish fascists constantly provoked and attacked us during the Long March, you remained calm without panicking and were ready to defend yourself.
Memories from friends of the Jineolojî Academy in Amed:
When you came to Amed, Sûr – to the heart of the resistance – to make a documentary about the women’s movement in Bakûr, you all impressed us with your purity and enthusiasm in your eyes. Your eyes were like a volcano, ready to explode. When we said, “Tomorrow there will be a women’s meeting,” your calm face filled with delight. If there was a meeting, you would leave your camera behind to help everywhere. With the women from Sûr we would enjoy ourselves and remind you of your camera, which you had left somewhere in excitement. You came to shoot a documentary and you yourself became an important part of the documentary about the Kurdish women’s movement.
An internationalist Arîn Hêlîn remembers various encounters with Heval Sara in different places:
I met Heval Sara in Amed for the first time in the first months of 2016. Heval Sara worked on several documentaries about the Kurdish movement. A long one about the fight of women and a shorter one that eventually became a kind of episode about the women’s news agency “Jinha”. The Sara I knew was a serious and determined woman. An attentive ear and a deep listener. I’m sure Sara had many other qualities, but I never spent enough time with her to really get to know her. It always seemed to me that she had a big secret in her. But I think we got along well. I also have my secrets.
When we said goodbye in Amed, we promised to keep in touch. We both shared our desire to go to Rojava and learn about the revolution. We thought it would be a good opportunity to go together. Shortly afterwards we organized the trip.
In Rojava I remember that we were very impressed with the women of the HPC (the social self-defense forces). They are civilian women and men, as a rule.
Mothers and fathers of families who work without conflict to resolve conflicts and protect their neighborhoods and villages. We call them the “Mothers with Kalashnikovs” because they are dressed in their dresses, their colorful headscarves, their brown waistcoat with the logo of a rose (which is beautiful, but at the same time protects itself with its thorns) and their Kalashnikovs on the shoulders. For a while we talked about having a project together and making a documentary about the women of the HPC. We thought of something short. To this day, I still think it’s a great idea because the story of these women deserves to be told.
I particularly remember one night when Heval Sara and I were walking up and down in a small courtyard where we lived and Sara was wondering what I thought about going up into the mountains. I expressed my doubts. Going to the mountains is a very important decision and everything was new for me at the time, although of course I was impressed by the revolution and the Kurdish movement. She told me something I don’t know why I remembered it so much. She told me that she felt that in order to go to the mountains and really live there to the fullest, you still had to have a lot of youthful energy. In a way, I agreed with her. Heval Sara was always very careful. It was the first and last time that she told me something about the mountains of Kurdistan…
I remember feeling a little sad that I didn’t say goodbye to her more intensely. This is something that I learned in Kurdistan. You should never save anything for another time. We live with all of our friends every second as if every second was unique because they really are. Kurdistan teaches us to appreciate everyone and to see the beauty of every moment we spend together.
A friend’s memories of the Movement of Young Women:
“Believe me, Hevala Sara, I feel your calm and your simplicity as I write these words down. You were an internationalist who was very down to earth, extremely humble and very, very empathetic.
am very happy that I got to know you, this day on the internationalist Long March for the freedom of Rêber Apo. We quickly exchanged a few words. I quickly realized what a beautiful person I was going to be with. You just didn’t fit in this world, you were like a circle in a triangle. You were a quiet soul who watched what she said. You had always chosen your words to say nothing wrong. You were a circle looking for the right shape to find space in this world. “I can’t make a revolution. I can’t even put two words side by side without thinking so long… “you once told me. But you chose freedom and believed in the fraternity of the people. You are immortal Heval Sara, and it was a pleasure knowing you.”
Heval Ekîn Wan, a Turkish friend who spent the winter in a women’s unit with you, writes about you:
Believe me, I met the best people in the world at the PKK. And the best people in the world have also fallen in their ranks in the struggle for all of humanity. We live and fight with the legacy they have left us; they give us strength. Our friend Sara Dorşîn was one of the most valuable people I met in this fight. It is the same feeling for all other friends who, like me, were lucky enough to meet Sara. She was a comrade who, during the time we were together, especially as a German friend, strengthened my morals, influenced me and added many new things to our view of the world.
The friends of the women’s unit in which we were together come from many different regions of Kurdistan and they grew up with different religions. In theory, we may have always said that democratic confederalism is the only way for egalitarian, free coexistence of women, peoples to live in peace and dignity. But in the winter we were together, we also experienced this in our education in everyday life. Because of the strong cooperative connection of women from so many different nations and religions, we have better understood the importance of Abdullah Öcalan’s philosophy, which brought us together, especially for us women, and that we have to step up the fight for it. As I said, in our colorful community of women, Comrade Sara was one of the most beautiful colors.
My friend Sara’s saied that we “should feel revolutionary shame” has always stayed in my head. As a result, I once again questioned myself about revolutionary life. It taught me to feel in life the debt burden of what I didn’t do compared to what I did.
For me, the discussions with Heval Sara about philosophy were a stroke of luck, because she thought very deeply. The conversations were as intense as the guerrilla tea is strong. With the guerrillas, the conversations with tea are nice, we loved drinking tea and talking. With Heval Sara, we always dreamed of building an international women’s unit, in which every woman is from a different nation, and, as a YJA star, of guerrilla women’s actions.
For Heval Sara, what was said had to be done at the same time; it did not separate theory and practice. If what was said was not implemented, she felt the contradiction, spoke to him, criticized. In the PKK it is not important what you say, but how you live. This principle of the PKK was inherent in the personality of Heval Sara.
During practical work, Heval Sara never showed any signs of fatigue, looking at her gave us strength and morality. We were also impressed by her performance in military training. She got her physical strength from her ideology. Her strength came from not treating ideology and practice separately. Comrade Sara Dorşîn has always been the successor to internationalist like Andrea Wolf, Şehîd Ronahî (Andrea Wolf), Şehîd Nûdem (Uta Schneiderbanger), Şehîd Dilsoz (Kevin Jochim), Şehîd Hêlîn (Anna Campbell), Şehîd Şiyar Gabar (Jakob Riemer), Şehîd Bager Nûjiyan (Michael) who sided with the Kurdish people and dedicated their lives to the fight for the freedom of women and all oppressed peoples. They fought and left us with a very important internationalist legacy. We owe it above all to them to continue this legacy, to understand what they have added to human values through their sacrifice, and to live in the awareness of their legacy. We fight this fight for you at the same time, for our families, for everyone we love. We fight because, as Comrade Kemal Pir said, “We love life so much that we would die for it.”
Many of our comrades fighting against the fascist-colonialist Turkish army in Kurdistan have displayed many acts of heroism in this resistance and kept fascists out. One of our heroes is internationalist fighter Sara Dorsin (Sarah Handelmann). Comrade Sara was martyred in an airstrike by the invading Turkish state against the Medya Defense Zones on April 7, 2019.
Nom de guerre: Sara Dorşin
Real name: Sarah Handelmann
Date and place of birth: Germany, 1985
Date and place of martyrdom: April 7 2019, Medya Defense Zones, Başur (Southern Kurdistan)
