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As Pogroms Targeted Jews in Aleppo, Syria, My Family Sought to Escape
(Ha'aretz) Prof. Ofra Basul Bengio - The first time we attempted to escape Aleppo was shortly after the UN vote on the partition of Palestine in November 1947, when we witnessed the burning of our businesses, schools and synagogues. Everyone in the family put on Arab clothes and our parents assigned each of us an Arab name, like Fatma or Mohammed. Immediately after we got on the train to Lebanon, the conductor announced that if there were Jews among the passengers they had to disembark immediately or face severe punishment. We had no choice and were forced to get off. As early as 1944 the Syrian government had prohibited Jews from leaving the country, and had ordered the death penalty or lengthy imprisonment for anyone caught in the act. My father was a teacher in an Arab school and his students had great respect for him. One of his students become the governor of the city of Aleppo. In 1954, the governor helped us get valid Syrian passports. In return, my father had to agree to forgo his pension, as well as our house and all it contained. This may have been the only case in which Syrian passports were given to Jews, and our destination was cited as Turkey, not Israel, though the governor was very likely aware of our intentions. In Turkey we were met by Mossad agents who took our passports in order to forge others, so as to get additional Jewish families out of Syria, and we reached Israel two months later. The writer is a senior research fellow at the Moshe Dayan Center for Middle Eastern and African Studies at Tel Aviv University.