The boy in the picture is younger than my Abigail. His name is Rafael. Tiny baby. Here in his mother Eugenie's arms. He managed, after the picture was taken, to to be dragged from Damascus to Beirut all the way to the shores of the Promised Land and to the tents in Beit Lid ma’abara (Transit Camp). Rafael is my mother's youngest brother. My mother Aliza, who made the long way with him in a fishing boat when she was one and a half years old. Grandfather Mordechai wrote about what happened to them when they arrived at the Mahane Olim (immigrant camp) in his diary: "One night, a terrible wind blew, and heavy rain poured from the sky. The young children who slept in the tent with us caught a cold and became sick with diarrhea and fever. The little baby Rafael, who was five months old, got food poisoning and when we went down to Tel-Aviv we were led to the government hospital in Jaffa, where he took his last pure and immaculate breath on Tuesday, September 13, 1949 (Hebrew date also provided.)"

At the Donolo Hospital , they wouldn't show my grandfather his son's body, nor his burial place, and they refused to provide a death certificate. "Don't worry, ma’am," they told my grandmother. "You're young and you can make more children.”

For my grandfather and grandmother - religious people, believing, learned people, the three languages they spoke didn't help. The believed the doctors. They sat Shiva (Jewish mourning ritual). They didn't even imagine that they maybe they're being lied to. Who could believe that in Israel, of all places, Jews will take other Jews' children from them.

After a few years, when the dreadfully familiar stories began to be publicized, they understood. And since then they couldn't stop torturing themselves because of their naivety. They spoke about him and searched for him until their last day. Every conversation with Grandma Genia-Eugenie would end up with Rafi. "We didn't think, daughter, we didn't think.." she would tell me, her eyes filling with tears.

Later, uncle Ezra z''l searched through the documents and found a list in the hospital where the truth is printed, black on white: “Rafael Mish'an: Left [gone.]”

Where are you today, uncle Rafi? Who knows. My grandfather and grandmother, your parents, are gone. And we couldn't find relief for their pain.

At least we can publicize their story.

Yael Golan

In honor of memorial day for the kidnapped children of Yemen, the East, and the Balkans, Aliza Golan wrote an article for Ynet, telling about her younger brother who is still missing and asking Israel to admit the incidents http://www.ynet.co.il/articles/0,7340,L-4669151,00.html