My parents, Lulu and Yizhak Hadad, my five-year-old sister Ilana, myself, Samir, my-three-year old brother Eli and one-year-old brother Carmel immigrated to Israel from Iraq on June 29, 1950. After first sorting things out in Pardes Hanna, we were transferred to a Ma’abara [immigrant’s absorption camp] in Rehovot. For two years, we lived in a tent there, and then until 1959 we lived in a shack. When they took down the camp we moved to the Sela housing project in Rehovot.

On January 17, 1951 our sister Shoshana was born. Her ID number is 5100064. When she was one year old she got sick because of the extremely low temperatures in the tent and was taken to the Assaf Harofeh Hospital near Be’er Ya’akov. My mother stayed with her and on Friday they told her to go home. She went home because she was told to do so and also because we were all still very young and not too healthy. On Sunday, my mother sent my father to see what was happening with the baby. My father did not speak Hebrew at all. He left in the morning and came back at night and said that he was told at the hospital that she was dead. He was given something wrapped in sheets and was told to give it to Chevra Kadisha [the Jewish burial society].

He gave the bundle to Chevra Kadisha without checking what was in it and returned home. (In those days it was very complicated to get from the Ma’abara to the hospital. You had to take a few different busses and it would took all day long. My mother said that they believed what they were told.

A few years ago we tried to verify these details with the Ministry of Internal Affairs and we got a paper saying that my sister passed away on December 1 1964.

Where is the grave? Where was she until 1964? There are no documents and there is no one to ask.

I think it was a well-organized gang of doctors, nurses, social workers, government officials, and people with connections in the government, that were making good profit off of it. Scumbags, may they never find peace. And don’t let anyone tell you that they did it out of care for the families of holocaust survivors who were childless.

The state must look into it and give answers and admit to the mistakes it made. Can anyone explain why the documents of the committee of the Yemenite children are sealed for another 50 years??? I will never forget what my mother told me: the government of Iraq took our property and the government of Israel took our children.