1929-2009 Of the Jewish Orphanings from Family and Country
"Of the Jewish Orphanings from Family and Country"
by Evelyn Hayes
Freeman Center For Strategic Studies
August 6, 2009
Today I met an orphan of the 1929 massacre of Jews in Jerusalem because of a blood libel. Shmuel Tsefania survived the massacre under his dead mother's body. He survived the Friday mutilations and massacre in the Jewish neighborhood of Jerusalem called Nissan Bak, across from Meah Shearim, near the Damascus gate. When the Jews came to bury their dead on Friday, the bodies were un-identifiable. The burial was postponed until Saturday evening. The sound of a baby's cry came from below the dead. That baby is now 81. His tale is the tale of Jewish rights and reality that needs rectification for the dead and for the living. We heard his story and said kaddish in front of the mass grave at the Mount of Olives Cemetery.
From a loving established family, left was a Jewish orphan. Not only was he orphaned, but the neighborhood of Batei Nissan lost most of its Jews in 1929 and all of its Jews by the Jordanian invasion and occupation in 1948. The neighborhood was established by a printer from Tsefat. He also put up a shul, the tallest in the Old City which housed 58 shuls which the Jordanians destroyed. It was called Batei Eshel Avraham. The parking lot outside this neighborhood where we parked today was all Jewish houses that were homes to 200 families. Jews were killed. An orphan survived. The neighborhood was almost Judenrid because of the pogroms that killed about 133 Jews. The dead of Nissan Bak are buried in a mass grave in the Mount of Olives Cemetery. We visited the dead again 80 years later.
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