Sarah and Zechariya Adawi

My name is Sarah Adawi. I immigrated to Israel with my husband Zechariah Adawi from Yemen before the establishment of the state. We arrived from Sana'a to the Hashed Camp and from there we left in lorries in 1942 to the Jewish Agency ship that awaited us. We got off it at the Suez Canal and from there we were taken by train to the Atlit Camp.

After Atlit they brought us to Herzlyia, to the centre, where Magen David Adom is nowadays. We, and the other immigrants from Yemen, were given a hoe, a tent and a thorny piece of land. We made do with what there was, which wasn't much.

I gave birth to my first daughter in the tent, aided by a friend who lived near us. All went well. A year and a half after my eldest daughter Mazal was born, I had a son. Again, I had a good delivery in the tent, helped by my friends. There was an instructor-supervisor, a woman named Tova, maybe she was a social worker, who used to come over. We were fine after the birth, we circumcised the boy and named him Azriel.

Tova came and said the boy needs to be taken to Tel Aviv, to check, I don't know for what. I thought maybe for the circumcision, maybe she wants to see that all is well. She took him and never brought him back to this day. I wait and wait and we don't have a phone, or a way to get there, no money, nothing. Eventually we managed to get there after a few days and they told us the child had died. That's it. Nothing else.

It was over seventy years ago and I remember it and hope to find out what became of him.