Yemenite Children Affair

rdf:langString Yemenite Children Affair

rdf:langString The Yemenite Children Affair (Hebrew: פרשת ילדי תימן, romanized: Parshat Yaldei Teiman) refers to the disappearance of mainly Yemenite Jewish babies and toddlers of immigrants to the newly founded state of Israel from 1948 to 1954. The number of affected ranges from 1,000 to 5,000. The majority of immigrants arriving in Israel during this period were from Yemen, with considerable numbers coming from Iraq, Morocco, Tunisia, Libya and the Balkans. According to low estimates, one in eight children of Yemenite families disappeared. Hundreds of documented statements made over the years by the parents of these infants allege that their children were removed from them. There have been allegations that no death certificates were issued, and that parents did not receive any information from Israeli and Jewish organizations as to what had happened to their infants. However, Yaacov Lozowick, Chief Archivist at the Israel State Archives, has documented records showing that while the fate of a small fraction of the "missing" children cannot be traced, in the overwhelming majority of cases the children died in hospital, were buried, and the families notified, although these illnesses, deaths, and family notifications were handled with enormous insensitivity. In Lozowick's opinion, "There was no crime, but there was a sin." Widespread accusations continue that the infants were given or sold to childless Holocaust survivors in a covert systematic operation. Conclusions reached by three separate official commissions set up to investigate the issue unanimously found that the majority of the children were buried having died from diseases. Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, described the issue as ‘an open wound that continues to bleed’ for the many families not knowing what happened to the children who disappeared.