Eliahu and Tzadika Shemesh

My grandparents, Eliyahu and Tzadika Shemesh, immigrated from Iraq in 1950 and lived in Kiryat Shmona. In 1951, sometime between April and September, my grandmother gave birth to a boy weighing 4 kilos at the Scottish Hospital in Tiberias. She was hospitalized for three to four days, during which she nursed the baby. On the fourth day, one of the hospital personnel escorted her to the bus stop, bought her a ticket and urged her to get on the bus, promising her the baby would soon be brought to her home. My grandfather was on mandatory military service as a Golani brigade soldier, and my grandmother was unfamiliar with the Hebrew language or with local regulations regarding birth and infants.

Every day after that, my grandmother would talk to the head nurse, Esther Rose, who would promise her that her son would soon be delivered to her, until one day, Rose threw her out of the hospital, yelling at my grandmother that she was a young woman and could easily have more children, and she must stop badgering the staff.

In the 1990's, my Mother Galila, sister of the abducted infant, corresponded with Dr. Shulman, who was at the time a gynecologist and obstetrician at the Scottish Hospital. He told her that unfortunately, the hospital’s archives had been moved to a hospital in Jerusalem, and the records hadn't been properly stored.

We mourn this loss and continue our constant search for our lost brother and uncle. His appearance could be dark- or fair-skinned. Some members of our family have light colored (blue) eyes. Our family shows an inclination for practical occupations, so we have a doctor, a bank manager, an accountant and an economist in our family. I am a social worker and my mother and her sister are teachers.

We pray to our Lord to meet our beloved missing uncle. We want to get to know him, to embrace him, and to fill out the painful missing chapter in our grandmother’s biography, caused by her naivety on the one hand, and by the cruelty of those involved on the other.