Excerpts based on the book "From Babylon to Jerusalem"
The Story of the Barazani Family
Israeli historical fragmets
One Night of Aliyah*
in "Operation Ezra and Nehemiah"
*Immigration of Jews to Israel
In 1950, "Operation Exodus Iraq" began – the great operation to bring Iraqi and Kurdistan Jews to Israel.
Chartered planes landed at Baghdad International Airport and began flying groups of immigrants to the State of Israel as part of a continuous operation that has been etched into the history of the Jewish people in modern times as "Operation Ezra and Nehemiah." The planes operated around the clock, round after round, filling with passengers, flying to Israel to land them in Lod, and returning to take more passengers – from Basra, Kirkuk, Mosul, the mountains of Kurdistan, and from cities, towns, and remote villages throughout Iraq.
The streets of the capital city filled with Jews who had left their homes and possessions and came in mass transports to the central collection point at the "Massouda Shem Tov" synagogue. From there, they departed according to pre-prepared lists – each list with a group of Jews brought to the airport and from there boarded the waiting plane.
1951 - Baghdad - Central gathering point for Jews before their aliyah to Israel.
In April 1951, it was Yosef and Rachel's turn to leave their home in the Bab Al Sharqi neighborhood.
The transport vehicle awaited them outside the house, packed with nine souls: the parents, their youngest son Akram, and their son Ezra with his wife and children. The passengers cast last glances at the house that had been their home, at the landscape that had accompanied them through good times and bad, at sights they would never see again, at the passersby, the Muslim residents of Iraq who hurried – each to work, to markets, to shops, to prayer at the mosque, to the coffee shop on the banks of the Tigris River.
The vehicle took them a short distance from their home, bypassed the central Jewish collection point at the "Massouda Shem Tov" synagogue, and arrived directly at the Baghdad International Airport complex.
The terminal buzzed with Jewish passengers.
In the departure hall, thousands of men, women, and children of all ages stood in line, from all social classes, with every profession – rich and poor, senior government officials and hard-working laborers, peddlers and builders, accountants and engineers, rabbis and synagogue wardens, singers and actors, beggars and panhandlers. They all squeezed into long lines side-by-side – teachers and their students, judges and litigants who had appeared before them, the bank branch manager and the client who received credit from him, sellers and buyers, suppliers and customers.
Small boys and girls held their father's and mother's hands, siblings and cousins clung to each other, large and small families gathered in groups and ensured no one got lost in the great commotion. On the faces of the children and youth, wonder at the situation was evident from the situation they found themselves in; on the faces of the adults, joy and relief were mixed with worry and helplessness – in one moment, they all became immigrants making their way to another land that might treat them better, and where they might be free among their own people.
Akram, 14, underwent the final, particularly strict security check with his family.
Men were separated from women, and Iraqi police officers (male and female) conducted a final search of their clothing to ensure they had not brought any cash or jewelry with them.
In another moment, he entered a British "Constellation" aircraft. He sat in one of the seats and clung to his mother and father. The plane warmed its engines, and its passengers fastened their seatbelts. Everyone wanted to be in the State of Israel already.
1951 - Immigrant flight from Baghdad to Israel in "Operation Ezra and Nehemiah"
On Friday, the 20th of Nisan, 5711, April 27, 1951, Akram saw his hometown for the last time, through the plane window in the fading light of day.
As it set, the houses of Baghdad seemed to shrink and disappear from sight. Passengers looking at the landscape from above saw the Tigris River and the Euphrates River winding like snakes, side by side, almost meeting, then separating again and each river continuing on its path. Like a drawing on a map in geography lessons the youth learned in school, like a colorful painting – the blue river waters merging with green palm trees, black roads, and gray and dark rooftops, color after color, until the landscapes ended and darkness settled.
Night fell over the Middle East.
A hundred passengers, men, women, and children, were crammed into the plane that flew over the Iraqi desert. Struggling to comprehend the event – it wasn't a cart pulled by a horse taking them from point to point. Neither a bus nor a train. They were inside the belly of a "Tayara," a real airplane, an aircraft. Like an angel descended from heaven taking them on its wings. Like a real miracle unfolding. Like a scene from a movie they had only seen in a cinema.
They sat on upholstered seats, stood in the aisles, lay on the floor, a mother with her baby in her arms, a young woman embraced by her husband's arms, children and teenagers...and Akram among them. A 15-year-old boy sitting beside his father Yosef, and next to them his brother Ezra, his wife and children.
Occasionally, small lights lit up on the plane's ceiling.
A faint light filled the cramped space, thick with the passengers' breath, and revealed the tension and readiness. Dreams and expectations mingled with fears – what awaited them in their dreamland, who would greet them, and how they would begin a new chapter in their lives there.
The flight lasted three hours.
As they approached landing, the plane lowered its flight and jolted the passengers. Someone among them enthusiastically shouted: "Land of Israel!" Everyone turned their heads and squeezed towards the round windows, to see with their own eyes what could be seen from the darkness of the night: sparkling lights of small settlements scattered throughout the land. The roaring engines shut off, the plane door opened, and its passengers exited. One by one, they descended the stairs to the landing strip of Lod Airport. In the spotlight, they rubbed their eyes and looked around as if dreaming. Many of them touched the black asphalt surface, seeking to feel with their own hands the touch of the land they had reached.
Akram stepped behind his father and brother, and for a moment, he stopped. His father knelt, touched the black asphalt-covered ground with his hands, and his lips murmured a prayer.
This moment was never forgotten.
There was no camera there, and no photographer immortalized the moment, but the image of his father kissing the land of Israel was etched into his memory and has accompanied him throughout his life. Seventy years have passed since then. Only a few of the participants in that flight remain alive, and he is among them, passing on its magnificent glory to future generations. Akram, who was then a young boy, is still captivated by the charm of those rare moments of grace and immense power – moments of encounter between man and land, between hope and its fulfillment, between the Babylonian Exile and the return to the land of the forefathers.
The excitement was cut short at its peak, and everything that came after made it forgotten. Flight attendants stood by the plane's ramp, directing the new immigrants to a large shed. Under spotlights, the immigrants were led in a procession to a first reception station called: "Medical Treatment Station." A team of government health ministry personnel awaited them there. One of the team members wore a mask over his face and held a spray can filled with powder. He instructed each of them to approach him, and before they could understand what was happening, he pulled the spray handle and sprayed them with a generous dose of a pungent, eye- and lip-burning substance – D.D.T.
No one prepared them for the special reception.
No one told them about the "medical disinfection", as this short and rapid process, considered a hygienic treatment in those days, was called. This was a routine procedure inherited from the British Mandate. English officials had instituted the spraying for health reasons – when Holocaust refugees began knocking on the country's gates, and there was a concern about importing parasites and infectious diseases. The governmental health system of the State of Israel did not stop the procedure, which seemed logical to them, and trained teams that sprayed all new immigrants. The treatment did not stop for several years. And so, hundreds of thousands of men and women, children and teenagers who immigrated to Israel from Asia and Africa, Europe and America, all underwent the spraying that left them with psychological traumas and in many cases also harmed their bodies and health.
The immigrants from Iraq who had just disembarked from the plane obediently followed the instructions they received – Yosef removed his turban, stripped off his shirt, and approached the exterminator with his head bowed, who held the container and sprayed his hair and armpits with the pungent-smelling powder. Like him, his two sons, Ezra and Akram, did the same, followed by the women and all the children of the family, who received a generous dose of D.D.T.
From there, the immigrants continued, emitting a pungent odor, to the bureaucratic registration station.
Behind a long table sat clerks holding questionnaires, showering them with basic questions about their personal details. Among the officials were some who spoke Arabic, the immigrants' spoken language. Others used an interpreter who assisted in the short and quick conversations.
The immigrants' identification documents were incomplete and did not match the bureaucracy of the State of Israel – those who came from remote villages lacked basic details like birth dates or family names. The common identification in large areas of Iraq referred to the father's or grandfather's name (so-and-so son of so-and-so) without a family name. The officials facing them across the counter had no choice but to fill in the missing details inaccurately, and according to their best understanding. And what was recorded in the questionnaires accompanied the new citizens of the State throughout their lives.
When Yosef arrived at the registration station, excited and overwhelmed by the events, he did not understand all the questions he was asked. To one of them, he answered that his name was Yosef, and to another, he gave his father's name: Sasson. The clerk facing him assumed he had heard the first name and the family name, and recorded on the absorption certificate: Yosef Sasson. Following him, his sons, Akram and Ezra, also received the same family name.
Akram was also asked to change his first name to a Hebrew name, as other immigrants did, but he, who was already a mature teenager in spirit, refused any alternative offered to him and remained with the name his parents gave him on the day he was born.
A few years passed since that bureaucratic procedure, and by then, being citizens of the State and Hebrew speakers, Yosef and Akram decided to reclaim their name that had been lost in the scent of D.D.T., and changed their family name in their identity cards to the name bearing the heritage of the Kurdistan mountains: Barazani.
Yosef, Rachel, and their son Akram – photos from the aliyah passport, 1951.
A selected collection of additional chapters, and historical pieces from the life of Kurdistan and Iraq Jews, in the following links:
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The Introduction chapter to the book "From Babylon to Jerusalem" - The story of the Barazani family
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Akra and Barzan - The story of two Jewish communities in Kurdistan
All chapters are based on the book "From Babylon to Jerusalem". which tells the life story of Rachel and Akram Barazani and was written in Hebrew.
