My parents immigrated from Yemen in 1949, and my brother was born in Hashid [transit camp in Yemen] and was light-skinned. When we immigrated, we immigrated directly into Beit Lid, and we lived in a tent in a camp. The nurses in the camp told us, “The child is only a few months old. Come and see how well he’ll do there.” My mother was convinced and every day she went to play with the child and to breastfeed him. One day she went there and did not find her baby. “Where’s my baby?” “They gave him hot porridge and he died.” Like that, with these words. “We planted a tree in his name in the Ben Shemen forest,” they added, “in his memory.” How innocent and naïve we were.

All throughout her life, she would tell me, “I feel my child is still alive.” When she heard that Uzi Meshulam started his story, she started getting into this very deeply. We tried to calm her down because this is a story that has no solution. Her situation pained us.

Shoshana Cohen