My mother Leah, of blessed memory, made sure to tell me that when she was young, in 1954, she gave birth to a baby girl at Beilinson Hospital in Petah-Tikva. This was the first time that my mother had given birth. The child was born healthy and my mother said that she could always remember her face. On the day of the birth, my mother saw the child and even breastfed her. During the first night following the birth, at midnight, a doctor and a nurse came to my mother’s bedside and, and without giving her any information about the cause, told her suddenly that the child had died. My mother, as a young girl, was totally shocked, as was my father and all the rest of her family.

During the same night, my mother asked the doctor to be allowed to see the baby, but both he and the nurse at the hospital absolutely refused this request. To my mother, this sounded strange, and in the middle of the night she sneaked into the cupboard where all the mothers’ files were kept, because she wanted to know why her baby had died, and she discovered that her file had disappeared. As if she had never given birth at all!! We never ever received any documents from the authorities concerning the baby.

Until her dying day, my mother never forgot this, and she repeatedly asked me to try and get some information about the incident. Some years ago, she attempted, with a lawyer representing her, to shed some light on the incident and even got as far as the Knesset (the Israeli parliament) but no answers were received. Today, as the issue is again being raised, I sincerely hope that it will be possible to get some information on the subject, and thus, I will be able to come full circle on the incident that saddened my mother for so many years.