When Uzi Meshulam came and spoke out, I lived around Yehud. I heard the shots and then followed events on TV. I knew that he was hurting and I knew that he was right. A person doesn’t just start searching for Yemenite children out of the blue—he had information and he was right. I prayed for him, that they would not harm him. I also wanted to go and talk to him but my husband was modest and didn’t like publicity, so we didn’t talk to him after all.

I immigrated to Israel from Romania at the age of 14 on an illegal immigration ship, the Pan York. We were turned back to Cyprus, where I stayed three months until we finally were able to enter Israel. After our group of teenagers arrived at an orchard in Ra’anana, they split us up, and I was transferred to Kibbutz Ayanot, where I was taught to read and write, both of which I had not known before. I graduated from high-school there. I would work for half a day and study for a half day.

After that, they wanted to give us agricultural farming training so that we would become Moshavniks, so they sent me to Kfar Yehoshua. The people in the house I stayed at didn’t treat me well, and the lady turned me into their worker. I went to my sister and told her. My sister immigrated a few years before me and went to nursing school. She fit well in the Kibbutz, after the training she went through in Bucharest and here [in Israel] she also went through basic military training and served in the Palmach—the elite forces of the Haganah, the Jewish paramilitary organization in Mandatory Palestine—alongside Yitzhak Rabin. She was a nurse in Jerusalem and treated the wounded.

I went to her and she came with me to Tel-Aviv, to the Youth Aliyah organization to tell them of what I had went through. They sent me to Kfar Ruppin, where I started working in infant care, and at the same time they sent me to apprentice at a hospital in Afula. I worked in the neonatal intensive care unit. In 1951 I married my husband and we moved to Petah Tikva. I looked for work and went to the offices of HaPoel HaMizrachi [a religious-Zionist political party], because my husband belonged to HaPoel HaMizrachi and was educated with them and came from a religious background. I got a job in the Kadima transit camp in a nursery affiliated with Hapoel Hamizrachi, in daycare.

At the time, most of the immigrants in the transit camp were from Iraq and Yemen, and the conditions in the camp were very poor. They lived in deprivation—they didn’t have enough food or a designated and organized place to live. There were only tents and when it rained the water and mud would reach up to their, and our, knees. They also didn’t have enough clothes, and we would care for the children who arrived in the nursery. We would wash them, dress them in good clothing and feed them what we had: corn starch, margarine, etc.

The parents needed to work—they didn’t a choice—and so they would leave the infants with us. There were many families with lots of children, and the eldest child would be responsible for bringing or picking up the infant. There were mothers who would come to breastfeed their infants at noon and then go back to work. Many of them worked harvesting corn, and some of the women did housework. The manager at the nursery was called Yehuditz—she had received her training in Tel-Aviv and she was in regular phone contact with her supervisor, also named Yehudit, from Tel-Aviv. From time to time we would receive donations of clothing and food.

I remember delegations of women from out of the country would arrive, speaking English or French amongst themselves (some were from Belgium). They would leave us packages of food or clothing and would look at and examine the children. Then children would disappear.

I remember a nine-month-old Yemeni boy named Tzion—I would take such good care of him and he loved me and would get so excited and happy when I’d arrive in the mornings. He knew I would wash him, dress him, and care for him. He was a beautiful and healthy boy and one day he just wasn’t there. I asked about him, and was told that if anyone asks, to say that he was in the hospital. But I knew he wasn’t in the hospital. He was healthy.

There was also an Iraqi girl, whose mother would always hug and kiss her and say bdalak bdalak [an Iraqi-Jewish expression of affection]—you could tell she was her god, this girl. And her too, one day they told the mother her daughter was in the hospital. But the mother insisted and Yehudit called her supervisors in Tel Aviv and they brought the girl back. She was healthy.

You can’t say to me that these children died. I know that I took care of healthy infants. They were healthy and I never gave anyone a dead child. I saw that there were healthy children that were sent away, given to someone else. I never said anything to the parents, Yehudit would tell them each time that the child is in the hospital. Because they just wanted to get rid of the parents. How would the parents get to the hospital, and how would they know which hospital?

I knew something was happening but I didn’t know to what extent. The conditions were really terrible and maybe this really did save children, the conditions the children would have received in the other homes were certainly better, but there was no consent from the parents. No parent signed an approval to give their child away. These children were taken without their parents’ permission, even if it was done with the best intentions.

There was no need to issue an order to take children. It was obvious that these children would be better off if they lived in other homes and so that’s what they did—they gave the children away. I remember times that Yehudit told me to dress a child nicely. Why would I need to dress an infant nicely? I felt that something there wasn’t right.

After I had children, I couldn’t sleep at night because it pained me—the past pained me. After I had my first son I was scared for him; I didn’t want him to be taken away.

[Link to a video testimony of Shulamit Malik recorded by Amram and uploaded on August 12, 2017: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gct2ddlg-cc ]