My parents immigrated separately from Iraq. My father (Ezra) arrived in 1946 or 1947, and my mother (Carmela - Nazima) a short while after him. They met in Neve Ur [a kibbutz] in Northern Israel. They got married and lived there until my father reached the age of 20 or 21 and my mother the age of 18. They then left and my mother gave birth to my sister Aliza somewhere near Hadera, Pardes Hanna and Bayt Lid, where the Ma'abarot transit camps of the new immigrants were. That was around 1952. My sister Aliza was 6 or 7 months old and she had a mild cough, which usually does not require a medical treatment at the hospital but she was transferred to the Pardesiya Hospital near Hadera with my parents. My parents stayed with her on the first day for half an hour and when they left, they saw her cry. It was a minor cough, nothing to worry about.

After a few days a male nurse from the hospital came to see them and told them the child had died and that they had buried her up on the mountain near Hadera. He then walked away without giving them further details one would reasonably expect to get in such a case. My parents, naive as they were, did not ask any questions and believed the nurse, and that was the end of it. They did not even see the grave.

My aunts, my mother's sisters, saw the child at the hospital and said there was no reason for her to get to a hospital. She was okay, smiling and beautiful, and there was no threat to her life.

In the years that followed, my mother gave birth to 6 more children, three girls and three boys. The next oldest son after Aliza, David, passed away at the age of 19 in a vehicle collision during the Yom Kippur War.

My mother passed away 15 years ago, aged 69, and my father is now 85 years old, after a stroke.