I, Yochi Cohen (Kachila), daughter of Yehuda Cohen, may his memory be a blessing, and Esther Cohen may she live a long life, bring before you the chain of events that are connected to the kidnapped of the eldest daughter of the Cohen family.

My parents immigrated from Morocco to Israel on the May 4, 1950. They came to Israel with a lot of joy, married and without kids, arrived on their own without any family, hoping to live, work and expand the family in Jerusalem the holy city they and their entire family that stayed in Morocco had dreamt of, and all their vision was to build and be built. They lived at Talpiot transit camp, transit camp number 712. At that time dad was drafted to the IDF and served in Jerusalem.

On June 20, 1952 they had their first daughter at the old Ziv hospital at the center of the town. On the day of the birth, dad arrived to the obstetric department to visit the baby. He saw her alert, big, healthy and with that happiness and the big smile he had returned to serve at the military base.

The day after, my mom, who was overjoyed, was waiting patiently for the baby she delivered to be brought to her, she wanted to breastfeed her and to head home. The joy and the excitement from the birth of the daughter were suddenly cut short and replaced by anxiety and frustration when the nurses kept on whispering to each other behind the curtain and delayed bringing her the baby. When she asked and begged again for her baby to be brought to her, they answered rudely that the baby was dead, and that she (the mother) probably hadn't breastfed her enough or maybe didn’t have milk – which was why the daughter had died. Horrified, mom asked to see her even if she was dead, and the same nurses answered her that the baby was no longer at the nursery but was taken to be buried. And just like that my mother left the obstetric department, injured, hurt, and mainly with that shame that maybe she was the reason her daughter is no longer alive. However, she didn’t accept that horrible pronouncement, because she wasn’t told that the baby had some kind of health issue, alongside the fact that she wasn't given the right to see her daughter before "she was taken to be buried". We think they took the opportunity- mother was alone, without language nor family.

My mom Esther was and still is at the age of 88 years old, a very curious and sensitive woman, she taught all of us, the siblings, to get ahead and learn, education was important to them. She sent us to various extracurricular activities and to the scouts , always took care of whatever we lacked, and never shared with us the trauma she has been through. For many years we didn’t know she's carrying a big, hurtful and tragic secret.

A year later, my eldest sister was born, today we are seven siblings. Several years ago the Uzi Meshulam affair made headlines, and then my father broke the silence and shared with us all (the siblings)that the sad story had happened to him and mother too. We were overwhelmed and shocked. My mom just nodded and we understood that the story was hard for her, maybe because she felt she hadn't fought enough to get information about the baby.

For years we didn’t do anything in order not to hurt our parents. After many years I took it upon myself to get to the truth, at least for my mom Esther while she is alive, because my father died of heartbreak without getting to the truth about the baby. My mother speaks over and over about the injustice, about the kidnapping of the lost eldest daughter. She always says she has seven kids and another one who was kidnapped from her.

I found a burial certificate of Chevra Kadisha in Jerusalem (attached). In the certificate there is the day of the burial and all of the details, but also it says that she was buried in Petah Tikvah. I contacted them and they referred me to the cemetery in Petah Tikva. When I contacted the representative who deals with the issue of the kidnapped children, he told me that in all his years of work with the families, he had not heard of such a weird case, that from a big central hospital in Jerusalem they transferred an infant for burial especially to a cemetery in Petah Tikva. He told me that I'm not the first one who gives them these numbers of burial plots, but they do not exist.

Myself and all of my brothers and sisters, seven altogether, who were born after the sad story, want to find our lost eldest sister. We have no doubt that our eldest sister lives in Israel or was smuggled abroad. Today the lost kidnapped baby is at least 70 years old. We would be very happy to know that she is also looking for us and for her biological mother that gave birth to her. We are interested that at least our mother Esther Cohen will have the opportunity to see her daughter and for her to know that there is closure in her lifetime.