Community member Joseph Aboudi recently wrote a book about his adventures as a young man in Syria and his fight for the creation of Israel.
Following World War II, after 6,000,000 of our people perished, nothing was more important than rescuing Holocaust survivors languishing in DP camps and elsewhere and bringing them to Eretz Yisrael, The Promised Land.
The Palyam, the naval branch of the Palmach, striking arm of the Haganah, rescued over 70,000 Ma’apilim (refugees) from various points in Europe eluding the British Blockade and taking them to Palestine. Most were caught and sent to Cyprus as detainees but were later released after the State of Israel was declared.
In the center of this rescue effort was teenager Joseph Aboudi from Aleppo, Syria, whose family members in Marseilles, France, had been sent to Auschwitz. Joe was mad. He believed that the only way Jews could survive was through the creation of a sovereign Jewish nation.
A two-time runaway from his loving, comfortable, colorful life in Aleppo, the 15-year-old boy worked as a laborer in the Yishuv, joined the Palmach and was transferred to the Palyam, where he served in defense, rescue and demolition.
After his service Joe moved to the United States and built a fabulous career in retailing. He went on with his wife Lilly, whose roots were also in Syria, to help build a beautiful family and a successful Syrian community in South Brooklyn.
In the book, Joe reminisces about WWII. In Halab, we knew that the Jews were being massacred in Europe. We knew that Jews were being shot, sent to concentration camps or otherwise disappearing but not to the extent that we learned about the Holocaunear the end of the war and after it. But even early on we knew that Jews were in danger everywhere in Europe, he says.
Eventually I found out that my father’s family in France was killed by the Nazis. At the start of the war we sent packages of food to my aunt and uncle in France. In the middle of the war we stopped hearing from them. We knew something was terribly wrong. After the war, we learned that my Uncle Selim had survived because he was hidden in the mountains. He wrote to my father and told him what had happened. He told my father that Jewish families were desperate for safe havens, places to escape, but there weren’t any.
The Jews needed one place in the world to call home. There was only one such placeEretz Yisrael. Uncle Selim’s letter described the urgency of establishing a Jewish homeland in Palestine. I became more passionate about making aliyah to build a new Jewish-Zionist community.
His emotional description of the day David Ben Gurion rose in front of Zionist leaders in Tel Aviv, under a giant photo of Theodore Herzl, and declared an independent State of Israel will bring tears to your eyes. “Jews in Israel and around the world cheered,” he continued.
This book is a must read. Email aibservice@adinfinitumbooks.com for more information or to purchase the book. All proceeds will be donated to charity
