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My Bukharan great Savta and Saba, & my Savta and Saba as well were Mizrahi & Bukharan refugees.
Stories so many erase, ignore or leave out of the Israeli and Jewish history discussion.
My Great Savta & Saba fled Samarkand due to violent antisemitism, leaving behind their halvah factory.
My great Savta was 9 months pregnant at the time with my Savta (baby in pic). She had to jump off a train, travel for days by foot, disguise herself as Muslim to keep from being attacked.
At one point her and the older kids had to hide under water using bamboo shoots to breathe.
She and my great Saba fled to (for a pit stop as she was pregnant) and lived in Afghanistan where my Savta was born and then 2 years later they continued the journey home to Jerusalem, where they would live in the Bukharan Quarter. This was the early 1930s.
They never got any of their money that was seized in Samarkand, nor their Halvah factory assets or anything else.
My Saba fled Aleppo at age 13, where he and his family had lived for as far back as can be recalled, because antisemitism became increasingly violent.
He was rescued by the first Youth Aliyah group along with kids from Lebanon in 1943.
He had to leave behind his mother as she was blind and unable to make the trip safely.
My Saba and Savta & her parents, are the inspiration behind this page and my passion for sharing stories so many of us have never heard.
The stories shared here will not be focused on finding refuge in Israel, although many will include that It will also about the hardships and discrimination many faced when they got there as well as the stories of those who remained in the diaspora, the good and the bad.
Thank you for being here.
