I'm writing to you the story of my sister Yafa. My parents immigrated from Morocco on 15 April, 1956 on a ship named Jerusalem from Marseille to Haifa. My mother's name was Dina, and my father's Makhlouf. From there they moved to Dimona, to be near my mother's brother. Before coming to Israel, my sister Yaffa, who was born in 1955, fell and suffered a groin injury but there was no time to get her treated.
A few days after my parents came to Israel, she was admitted for surgery at the Soroka Medical Center in Be'er Sheva. The operation was successful, and my mother visited my sister every day during the 10 days of her hospitalization. On the tenth day or so, my mother came to the hospital and the nurse told her that my sister Yaffa had died and that they had buried her. My mother, who did not know Hebrew, begged to see Yaffa’s body or her grave. They asked her to go home, without documents or proof that she had died.
The immigration card says she did immigrate to Israel, but the Ministry of Interior holds no record of her.