Nechemia Sharabi was born in February of 1948 and was the seventh child of the family. When he was two and a half years old he became sick. According to his older siblings he had a rash from an unknown source. His father was referred to the Hadassa Hospital in Tel Aviv where the doctors decided to hospitalize Nechemya. The father was sent home because according to the hospital staff “parents cannot stay in the hospital” and he was told to “come back tomorrow”.

When he returned the next day he saw that the bed was empty and was given the terrible news that his son has passed away during the night. He asked where the body was and was told that it has already been buried. My father, who was a very religious man, was very naive, and he had to return home and to give the terrible news to my mother who was just after giving birth to another daughter (the eighth child). They then sat shiva for the son, without having seen a grave and without having had a proper funeral. Father agonized over it for many years and he finally passed away after a series of strokes.

After he died my brothers started looking into this disappearance. They went to the hospital, to the Ministry of Interior, to Chevra Kadisha [the Jewish burial society]. From Chevra Kadisha they got the details of the grave, and they even dug where he was supposed to be buried, but they found nothing. We tried to get birth and death certificates: they refused to give us the birth certificate, but they did give us a death certificate. It was obviously written in an unprofessional manner, hand-written and all of the details there were completely wrong!

Today our brother is supposed to be 67, time is running out and we don’t have anyone to tell us who to turn to or what to do.

Ruth Kochavi