Tag #127216 - Interview #97664 (Yasef Romano)

The birth of the nation of Israel makes me very emotional. For a person to have a country is wonderful.  It gives you  a lot of confidence. However we manage here, we live with that confidence. If they did not exist maybe we would be seen in a different light.  My wife never forgets, when the six-day war[4] started in Israel, the b’ris of our relative Niso was taking place at home in Edirne.  That day the war started,  we are very agitated, very scared,  very impatient, the circumcision was done, we dispersed to our homes. We all decided none of us should leave our homes. There was a panic that they might do something to us. We were the subject of a lot of discussions.  A lot of things were being said, this scared us, we were relieved when the war ended. Of course the fact that they were stable gave us a big peace of  mind.  More than a peace of mind, it is the place where we would find shelter.

One year we had the intention to do aliyah there. When we were in Edirne, before we moved to Istanbul, first my mother and father, we made our preparations that we would all go together, in the meantime my mother and father went to Israel for the wedding of their grandchild, my mother suffered a stroke, we thought that the atmosphere did not sit well with her, and we changed our minds. The government of Israel had provided my father with a furnished house to settle there. But it wasn’t meant to be.  We have friends and relatives who have gone to Israel to settle there.  We still keep in touch with them.