More than 400 people were captivated by the moving and powerful personal accounts recalled by Chicago-area Jewish refugees, forced to flee their homes in Arab lands and Iran during the first national day to commemorate displaced Jews, held this past Sunday, December 14. Hosted by the Consulate General of Israel to the Midwest, the Israeli House, the Jewish Federation of Chicago, StandWithUs, Jimena, the event was held at Anshe Emet Synagogue in Chicago. The Sephardic cuisine and music from Israeli-born flute player Hadar Noiberg and Israeli Jazz Guitarist and Oud player contributed to the atmosphere of the evening. A film, “The Forgotten Refugees” was also shown.
The Israeli government adopted a law this summer which designates November 30 as an annual, national day of commemoration for the 850,000 refugees who were displaced from Arab countries and Iran in the 20th century. The date is significant because it is the day after November 29th, the day in 1947 that the United Nations General Assembly approved the partition plan for the Palestine Mandate and the creation of a Jewish state. November 30, the day after the decision, is the day the Arab nations started their concerted attacks on Jews. Almost a million Jews lived in Arab and Muslim countries in 1948 when Israel was founded.
Consul General of Israel to the Midwest Roey Gilad introduced the speakers and moderated a panel discussion. The panelists recalled their past and the events that befell their families to help the audience understand why the event was organized. Isaac Cohen, a retired professor of cell and molecular biology at Northwestern University and Jacqueline Saper retold their compelling stories of the hardship, they and their families endured.
Isaac Cohen, a Jew born in Cairo, was attending a university in Montpellier, France in 1956 when he learned that war had broken out back home.
“I didn’t know whether my parents were dead or alive. France was an enemy country for Egypt so there were no communications,” he recalls. “And I was scared to death. Then one day I got a mail from Italy that they had left and they were expelled.”
His mother, grandmother, grandfather, great grandfather were Sephardi, and spoke Castillian Spanish of 1492, the time of the expulsion from Spain. Cohen’s great grandfather, Meir Castel, was the Chief Sephardic Rabbi of Hebron and the head of the Jewish Community. He was one of the 70 casualties massacred in the 1929 Arab pogrom. The survivors were saved by righteous Arab neighbors. They later fled to Egypt where Isaac was born, only to be expelled in 1956 following the Sinai/Suez campaign.
Jacqueline Saper, a C.P.A living in Chicago, was born in Tehran, Iran to an Esfahani born, Iranian father who served as a University Professor and to a British born, English, mother who worked for Pan Am airlines. Jacqueline was 18 when the Iranian revolution took place and 26 when she immigrated to the United States as a refugee. Unlike most Iranian Jews who left Iran in 1979, Jacqueline and her family lived in Iran for 8 more years after Ayatollah Khomeini took power from the Western leaning monarch, Mohammad Reza Shah.