My mother, Meriam (née Maduel, or Hassan) immigrated together with my father Ya'akov, alongside their three children: Yonah (a girl), eight years old, Aharon, six years old and Shimon, three years old. They came on November 14, 1949.

They were housed in tents in Ein Shemer B Immigrant Camp. My mother told me that Shimon caught the cold and was taken to the clinic and from there they wanted to move him to Rambam Hospital. My mother resisted, since, according to her, there were rumors at camp that children were being taken and not returned to their parents. My mother asked my sister Yonah who was with her, that she will transfer Shimon to Yonah through the window, and that Yonah shall escape with him. My sister, being very young, was afraid to cooperate and to this day she regrets not following through with my mother's request. The clinic's nurses insisted, and despite my mother's resistance my brother was taken to the Rambam Hospital in Haifa.

The next day, when my mother came to visit Shimon with my grandfather, the clerk who received them told them that there wasn't such a child. After my mother began to shout at him, and he didn't allow them to enter, he told her through the window that her child had died. She asked to see his body in order to bury him, but they claimed that he had already been buried. When my mother asked to see his grave she was refused. The clerk took his immigrant card, drew a circle round his name, and marked "dead.” My parents never sat Shiva on him, because they refused to believe he was dead, seeing as they didn't see neither a body nor a grave.

All through my childhood my mother never stopped repeating this story, and she sent a family member to search for him, reimbursing him with money, which she said was taken from the family's food budget. Neither were her inquiries to the Search Bureau for Missing Relatives during our childhood successful. Of course there was no death certificate whatsoever and a draft order came with his name on it.

In 1995 I decided to talk with my mother and to attempt to search for him. I approached the Kedmi Committee which investigated the matter. Before we went to the committee I approached the Ministry of Interior where my parents live, Rishon LeZion, with my brother's ID number, and asked for information. To my amazement, on July 31, 1995, I received an official document of the State of Israel which claims that my brother Shimon ceased to be a resident of Israel in November 1962.

Following this, a journalist of "Yediot BaMakom" [a local newspaper], where my mother's story was published, approached the Ministry of Interior. The spokeswoman of the Ministry clarified that the meaning of this document is that "the citizen settled abroad and he, or someone at his behalf, asked for him no longer to be registered as an Israeli resident."

How is it possible that someone, allegedly deceased in 1949, at the age of three, appears in a government document, asking no longer to been seen as a resident of Israel, at the age of thirteen?

The investigation committee mentioned in its letter to us, that as their examination found that the Rambam Hospital records state he is deceased, and so did the local Ministry of Health branch, it was concluded that he was definitely deceased. There is no explanation as to where he was buried. There is no explanation as to why no-one of the family saw his body, or why there is no grave. Was it a human being or an animal that they buried without parents or family? And why is there no explanation for the strange record from the Ministry of Interior?

Only God knows; or, rather, those who are still alive and refuse to expose the horrible wrongdoings that were done in this country to a population, who couldn't mount the barricades and expose the truth. Whoever did so was branded as a lunatic. Whoever can, let them publish this story and perhaps we will know the truth.

Orit (Ben Yehuda) Almasy, in the name of my mother, Miriam, who passed at the age of 99 at 5 Iyar 5775 [2015 CE], and who, until the day she passed, still had hope that she would see her son.