The testimony of Rivka and Shira, Yosef's sisters:

Our parents, Yonatan and Mazal, immigrated from Iran in 1950 with four sons. The youngest of the four is Yosef. In Israel, my parents had four more children: two sons, and we - the 2 younger sisters.

Our parents arrived with the four children directly to the immigrant camp (ma’abara) in Karkur. In 1951, when Yosef was almost one year old, he fell ill and was hospitalized at “Hillel Yaffe” Hospital in Hadera. In those days, parents were not allowed to stay and sleep with the hospitalized children, so my parents arrived every day to visit Yosef. The last time they saw him he was very vital and even stood up in the crib.

The next day, when they returned to the hospital to visit him, they were told that he had passed away, without showing them a body and without being given a burial place. My parents, who were new immigrants, without the language or knowledge of how they should conduct themselves in such a situation here, simply remained helpless and did not know how to find out more details.

My father died in the first years after the immigration to Israel. Mom died 13 years ago [2011]. During all these years, mother never stopped talking about her child who disappeared. She talked about it all the time and so did our eldest brother, who is now 83 years old. All these years they never stopped mentioning Yosef. My eldest brother told us several times: My brother is not dead. My brother is definitely alive.

Before mother passed away, when we realized that not only Yemenite children were kidnapped, but also other Mizrahi children, we sat with her and asked her to tell us everything, so she and the older brothers gave us all the details. They also noted that Yosef has a large birthmark on his forehead.

Since then, we have not stopped looking for Yosef, in every possible way. We also provided a DNA sample through Nurit Koren, when she was a Member of Knesset.

We checked with the Chevra Kadisha in Hadera, if there is any location/grave plot in Yosef's name - we found nothing.

About three years ago, we received information from one of the databases. We have Yosef's ID number so there was no problem searching. In the database we saw that he is listed as alive, and his age is 71.2 years - exactly his age at that time.

We turned to the Ministry of Interior and there we received confirmation that Yosef ceased to be a resident in 1962, when he was about 12 years old.

We had a telephone conversation with one of the workers at the Ministry of Interior archive, at 14 Hillel Street in Jerusalem, and she told us that Yosef's file was there and that when he was 12 years old, his adoptive parents asked to revoke his Israeli citizenship, so that they could immigrate abroad with him. We asked to receive the documents, and she promised to deliver them to us within days, which in practice did not happen. When we called again, she denied it and we did not receive the documents.

We tried to locate Yosef in the USA, through the embassy, ​​but every time we were close to some kind of a breakthrough, they pushed us a few steps back and refused to cooperate.

We definitely know that our brother Yosef is alive, that he was kidnapped from our parents and given to others, and we assume that our parents, fraudulently, were signed on adoption documents, when it was known that they could not read Hebrew.

Our parents passed away with this pain. Our eldest brother does not stop crying and dreaming about him, and prays that he will get to see him before he dies.

What happened here is a very serious crime, and we will not give up until we find him.