For years I have been hearing from my mother Kazaz Esperance (maiden name Mu’alem) that her sister Nuriya was hospitalized when she was about nine at Haifa's Rambam Hospital for eye surgery. Nuriya’s eyes were bulging out, my mother says. The family was told to come. The older sister, Rina Schwartz, who knew Hebrew, came to pick Nuriya up and was told that the child had died. It was late ‘51 or early ‘52. ​​Rina came back to her parents without any documentation of the death, and there was no body and no funeral. The family has lived for years with the feeling that the sister was kidnapped or given away for adoption.

Grandmother used to say that her daughter was probably given to an Ashkenazi family in Israel or that they took her abroad in a plane.

The name of the parents: Miriam and Micha'el Mu’alem.

The children's names: the late Rina Schwarz, Louise Gabai, the late Eliyahu, the late Shaul Salach, Spinones Kazaz.

Rachel Nishli