Bearing witness: the journey of the Ethiopian Jews to Israel, 1979-1990

א.1 | The dangerous and heroic journey from Ethiopia to Sudan

This publication presents pages of testimony, specially designed forms filled out in memory of the Jews who died on their way to Israel, generally in the Sudan, in 1979-1990.

For generations, members of the Beta Israel community in Ethiopia have sought to immigrate to Israel. Since the 19th century, there have been attempts to realize this dream – but until the 1970s very few immigrants arrived, even after the establishment of the state in 1948. Even after they were recognized as Jews by the Chief Rabbinate and the government extended the Law of Return to them, the Marxist regime which ruled Ethiopia opposed the emigration of its citizens. But in the late 1970s the wars against the province of Eritrea and other rebels and natural disasters caused a large-scale migration of people from northern Ethiopia to Sudan to seek refuge there. Among the refugees were also Jews.

Map of the areas settled by the Beta Yisrael community in Ethiopia, Wikimedia

Mossad emissaries began secretly assisting and directing these Jews to bring them to Israel. Some of them took flights from Khartoum to intermediate stations in Europe and from there to Israel. Some were flown directly from the deserts of Sudan to Israel and some were taken out by sea. The culmination of the effort was “Operation Moses” in 1984-1985, carried out with US aid and after secret coordination with Sudanese ruler Ja’afar Numeiry. In January 1985 this operation was suspended by Sudan after leaks to the media.

The journey to Israel via Sudan was extremely dangerous. Jews living in the villages of northern Ethiopia organized in secret groups and set out on a long and difficult journey on foot, in the mountains and in the deserts. They used to walk at night and hide during the day. They were helped by guides – but some of these guides betrayed them and abandoned them before reaching their destination. They were often attacked by robbers who took not only their money but also their food. The Jews sometimes encountered Sudanese soldiers who abused them and even returned them to Ethiopia. On reaching Sudan the Ethiopian Jews found shelter in refugee camps in Sudan, mainly Um Rakuba, Gedarif and Tuba. It was here that mortality from hunger, disease and all kinds of other factors increased greatly. Many of the immigrants reported the deaths of their loved ones from injections that were supposed to help them.

Refugee camp in the Sudan. Photograph: “The Power of One: Ferede Yazezew Aklum”, courtesy of the Yerusalem Forum

It is believed that 18,000 or more Jews came from Ethiopia to Sudan. About 16,000 of them managed to reach Israel, but between 2,000 and 4,000 died on the way,  in Ethiopia or in Sudan. After “Operation Moses” and its successor, “Operation Joshua”, the wave of emigration to Sudan diminished and many Ethiopian Jews began to move to Addis Ababa, where they crowded together in a kind of refugee camp. Most of them immigrated to Israel in 1991 in “Operation Solomon.”

א.2 | The commemoration project

For many years the Ethiopian Jewish community in Israel demanded commemoration of the heroic and tragic story of their relatives who sought to reach Israel and did not reach their goal. In 2007, an impressive monument was inaugurated on Mount Herzl in Jerusalem, near the burial site of Theodor Herzl and other national figures and the military cemetery. This memorial provided collective commemoration but lacked a personal and individual dimension. In 2012 the Israeli government decided to record the names of those who perished on the memorial and in an official pamphlet. As a result, a project was carried out to record pages of witness testimony, probably inspired by the “Pages of Testimony” project for Holocaust victims at Yad VaShem, Israel’s Holocaust memorial.

An advisory committee was established which decided on the following criteria for commemoration on the memorial and in the booklet:

1. The deceased set out on a journey with the intention of reaching Israel via Sudan, between 1.1.1979 and 31.12.1990.
2. He or she died on the way to Israel, in Sudan or on the way to Sudan in Ethiopian territory.
3. The place of burial of the deceased is unknown or he or she is not buried in a Jewish cemetery.

The World Zionist Organization and the Government and Society Department of the Prime Minister’s Office took part in the project. About 1,800 testimonies were collected on special forms and examined by a verification committee. Some of the evidence proved to be duplicate – referring to the same person. In many cases where entire families perished, there was no one left to testify about them. In all, evidence was collected for about 1,600 victims and missing persons.

At the end of the project the names of the victims were engraved on the monument and a booklet was printed with their names and the names of those whose fate was unknown. The Government and Society Department deposited the forms in the Israel State Archives, recording a total of 1,627 cases. These forms were catalogued and scanned and 1,589 of them are now displayed on the ISA website. They were also declassified according to the ISA rules. Telephone numbers and sensitive personal information that could harm people now living in Israel were deleted.

We display all the forms signed by the witness, agreeing that the testimony would be included in the project to commemorate the victims. In about 30 cases where the witness did not sign the form, we tried to contact them and to obtain their approval for publication. Unfortunately there are cases where we failed to make telephone contact and one case where we did not receive confirmation. These forms do not appear on the website.

On our Hebrew website we present an Excel spreadsheet showing the pages of testimony. It includes the symbol of the archival file where the page is located (box number and file number), a description of the file giving the full name of the deceased, (first name, name of his or her parents and name of the father’s father – grandfather) and the date or year of death. If we have the data, we have added year of birth and other victims that the deceased was linked to. If the deceased died in 1984-1985, we have tagged the file as linked to “Operation Moses”. (In two cases, we found lists of victims who may not have been commemorated so far and added their names to the description: in File G-17855/32 and in File G-17857/113). Finally we give a link to the scanned file on the website.

As well as data on the name of the deceased and the date of death, the forms also include details of the witnesses and an account of the events leading up to the death. These accounts can be quite short, but are sometimes long and detailed and give us some idea of the trauma suffered by the survivors. Here, for example, is a form about an elderly kes (priest) who led the community in the Wegera area of Ethiopia. In 1983 he led 300 people safely all the way to Sudan but died in a refugee camp there. The witness, his son, also lost his wife and three children in Sudan.

Page of testimony about Kes Yahis Madhana who died in Sudan in June 1984, aged 90. ISA, File G-17851/19