My grandparents Binyamin and Nehama immigrated to Israel from Iraq before the establishment of the state, in an independent, illegal immigration, a few months after the Farhud.
During the attacks, my grandmother, who was pregnant, was severely beaten and lost the embryo. She was taken to a hospital and was smuggled away, because they threatened to poison the Jews hospitalized there.
They decided to immigrate to Israel, and they were smuggled with their three small children in trucks, from Baghdad to the “Bnot Yaakov” Bridge [between Syria and Palestine].
First they lived with relatives in Tiberias, and then they moved to Tel Aviv.
A few years later, not certain whether in 1946 or 1947, my grandparents and their three children lived at 14 Amzaleg Street in Tel Aviv. My grandmother became pregnant again, and Zion was born.
He was a few months old when he felt ill. My grandmother took him to “Hadassah” Hospital, with the innocent thought that a hospital of Jews, was safe for Jews from all ethnic groups. She came every day to breastfeed him, and the child recovered and felt better. When she came on the third day to take him home, she was expelled in disgrace, and all she was told was, "Go home lady, your child is dead." Without any explanation, without a body, without a death certificate, without a grave, only a family in pain, mourning their infant son, the one who was supposed to be the remedy for the loss of their child in the attacks, and the symbol of their new life in the country.
All these years we knew that my father, his sister and his brother had another brother, who died in Israel at a young age, probably at ten months. Since there was no information about the abductions and their extent, my grandmother and grandfather never suspected that their child did not die as they were told, and they mourned all their lives for him and for the cruel way they were told of his death, without a grave to visit, no place to mourn. Only when the extent of the horror was revealed, and the knowledge that non-Yemenite families also became a production incubator for infants, to help the adoption project of the Jewish community in Israel, did we realize that Zion, unfortunately, exactly fits the pattern of the abduction mechanism that emerged from the countless testimonies.
Since both parents are not alive and my father, sister and brother were small children in those years, many details, regarding age, dates and the like, remain vague, and we have no answers for them.
The only thing we know for sure about Zion's life and disappearance is that my grandmother repeatedly recounted, how she knocked on the gates of “Hadassah” Hospital, and how she was told, "Go home lady, your child is dead."
Note: The dates of Zion's birth and abduction are not exact. We do not know for certain. We assume, that the birth and abduction were in 1946 or 1947.
Hagit Marom, the granddaughter
The picture shows from left to right:
My grandmother Nehama My grandfather Binyamin
My father Hezi Yechezkel
My aunt Sarah
My uncle Shmuel
The taller child on the right is a cousin on the father's side
When she came on the third day to take him home, she was expelled in disgrace, and all she was told was, "Go home lady, your child is dead."