Michaela Segal Levy testifies:

Until I was in my twenties I didn’t even know about my sister, Ora. At some point I saw in my mother’s identity card that another sister is listed. For years, my parents did not share and did not tell me anything about it.

My mother, Aziza, born in Tripoli, Libya, and my Father, Yossef (of blessed memory) was born in Yemen, believed in Israel and trusted the medical staff at the time.

I discovered I had a sister who was born on May 18th, 1963 in the Maternity Hospital in Rehovot. My parents lived at the time in Nehemia street in Ramla. My mother went there in an ambulance with my father.

Mom tells me that the pregnancy and the birth had gone well and everything was okay. They managed to register the child in the Ministry of Interior under the name Ora. They released my mother, Aziza, but they asked to leave the girl. After a few days they told my parents she had died. They didn’t show my parents the body.

Aziza says: What could we have done? We cried and went home.

Years later the family received a request to register the child to kindergarten, to first grade and also a military conscription letter. After they received the conscription letter, the family tried to investigate again through someone they knew, and through another person via Hevra Kadisha, and they received an answer that a registration was found in the file, saying the child had a congenital heart disorder. There was no burial site and no official announcement of death.

In the past year Aziza had lost her son Tzuriel and is in pain from his passing. Today (2023) Aziza, over the age of eighty, feels it is late, it has been many years, and if Ora is alive, she would accept her with joy and blessing.