ENGLISH + HEBREW
There were more than a million. A million forgotten, fugitive Jews between 1946 and 1974.
They were driven out of the Arab world and the world would like to forget them. The victims themselves have always hidden their fate out of modesty. The Jews have been living in Arab countries for thousands of years and seemed to accept their destiny forever. Some even saw the fact that they had survived as a miracle.
But 1948, the beginning of their exodus, was also the birth of the state of Israel. While the Arab armies are preparing to invade the young refugee land, Holocaust survivors embarked massively on unreliable boats to finally realize their return to the land of their dreams and prayers.
At the same time, a few hundred thousand Arabs from Palestine prepared to flee their homes, convinced they would return as victors and conquerors. They would soon fill the refugee camps built on their brothers’ lands and, because they refused to integrate, they passed on their refugee status to the next generations.
The Jews did not receive special status. They had only returned to the land of their fathers. And whether they came from Aden, Yemen, Egypt, Iraq, Syria, Morocco, Tunisia or Libya, whether they had lost everything and everyone, even their relatives, their memories and their cemeteries – yet they were prepared in Israel and in rebuild their lives. Without asking for compensation or the right to return, or even wishing their story to be told.
