We are five sisters and two brothers searching for our older sister, Badra Kulani.

Badra (Hebrew name: Rivka) was born in Yemen, probably in 1946, and immigrated to Israel in 1949 along with my parents and eldest sister. Upon arrival to Israel, they were housed in the Ein Shemer immigrant camp.

Throughout our lives we grew up with the feeling that we were missing a sister. We often wondered about her personality and appearance and hoped that she lived with a warm and loving family.

How much our hearts hurt for our dear mother, who used to tell us again and again that after Badra’s disappearance she was almost blinded from her shed tears. When she was alone or busy with household chores, she would sigh with sorrow and we knew without asking that she was thinking about our sister.

Our father did not use to speak about the case, but we know that he also carried his sorrow with him all those years. We found evidence for that after his death, when we found a little yellowing note in his bag that stated the exact location where he kept Badra’s jewels (our father was a jeweler and used to make Yemeni jewellery for the women of the family). We really did find the jewellery in that exact location—and shivers ran down our spines when we saw the little bracelets, that fit the wrists of a three year old baby.

At the time of the kidnapping, in 1949 or 1950, Badra was three. She was a beautiful girl and fair-skinned, relative to our ancestry. Badra contracted whooping cough, followed by our cousin, who was the same age. Both were taken from the Ein Shemer immigrant camp to a hospital.

One day, when our mother went to visit Badra, she was told that the girl had died and they turned her away. She returned again and again and demanded to see the body or to be shown where Badra was buried. Finally, the nurse had had enough and showed her a mess of rags through the window, saying: “here is the body, go away.”

After our parents were informed that Badra had died without evidence of a grave or a death certificate, our cousin’s mother feared for her own daughter’s fate. When her daughter got stronger, she smuggled her out of the hospital under her dress.

We have no remaining documents from that time. According to the Ministry of Interior’s registry, Badra ceased to be a resident of Israel on July 1, 1963 (no death certificate was found). Our longing to find her is equal to our parents’ longing to immigrate to Israel. An immigration in which the immigrants’ property was taken from them upon boarding the plane. That however, is nothing compared to the robbery that was committed upon the immigrants’ arrival, in Israel itself.

Where is our sister?

The Melamed family (Kulani)