The Special Committee on the Disappearance of Yemenite, Eastern & Balkan children, headed by MK (Likud) Nurit Koren, updates the public on hundreds of new documents and information that were recently found for families that have been demanding to learn what happened to their loved ones for years.

Knesset Member Koren said that for months, that after the opening of the state’s archives and the release of the documents to the public, slowly, “the committee succeeds in building the families’ trust with the establishment and bringing about important results.”

The committee, which was established by a government decision to examine the issue in depth, was given a special mandate in the Knesset to oversee the implementation of the government’s decision to expose the materials of the state commission of inquiry.

While the supervision of the disclosure of investigative materials could have easily been carried out, the difficult task was and still is to arrive at the truth of the painful affair, when more and more doubts and questions were raised about the many families whose loved ones had disappeared or died prematurely.

It should be noted that in recent months the committee has succeeded in bringing about constitutional achievements that have already begun to be implemented, such as permits to open a minor’s grave and open adoption files.

The Committee’s update, as published Wednesday, 13 Menachem Av, states that “this activity of the committee’s staff is almost never revealed in the ongoing joint Knesset work, since it is done personally with those who turned their stories into the committee and those who wished to remain anonymous. For all the applicants, the committee’s director, Ms. Merav Shimon, and the secretary, Ms. Shirley Barashi, went to the committee after thoroughly reading the minutes from the State Archives and reviewing all the information and data that began with the establishment of the committee from various government ministries and public bodies.

“The committee was astonished to find that a great deal of information existed in the possession of the commissions of inquiry that preceded the Knesset committee, but the facts revealed did not receive proper, thorough and professional treatment. The researchers adopted documents without verifying them, did not investigate them in depth, and contradictions and inaccuracies were discovered in the documents that were used to arrive at conclusions by the state inquiry committee, including the names of the children who disappeared.

“What is surprising is that quite a few families did not know until the establishment of the committee that the state archives already had documents published about their loved ones, shedding light on the story of a member of their family that was unknown.

“However, many cases have shown that the families who wanted to rely on these documents have brought evidence to the inquiry committee, proving that there is a contradiction compared to the documents which exist in the state archive.

“The more the activities of the committee’s staff is at its height during these days, it is becoming evident that an extremely large number of documents not found in the state archives are found in many offices, [such as the Ministry of Religious Services, Ministry of Public Security, Minister of Social Welfare, Ministry of Health, the Population & Immigration Authority, Bituach leumi (National Insurance Institute), and etc.] – and they provide answers to families as well as assisting in finding the family members who have disappeared”.

(YWN Israel Desk – Jerusalem)