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Shlomo Hillel spearheaded mass aliyah of Iraqi Jews
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Shlomo Hillel, who spearheaded mass aliyah of Iraqi Jews, dies at 97
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Daring Exploits of the Man who Brought 120,000 Jews to Israel
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(JTA) Shlomo Hillel’s life spanned the length and breadth of Israel’s immigrant story and he played a critical role in many of its chapters.
Hillel, who died Feb. 8 at 97, helped smuggle Iraqi Jewish immigrants into pre-state British Mandate Palestine and then brought more in in the state’s first years. His family fled Iraq’s horrors and he married a woman fleeing Europe’s horrors. His son married an Ethiopian Israeli, whose aliya Hillel, as a minister in the government, greenlighted.
A New York Times obituary on Sunday detailed how Hillel, who was born in Baghdad, executed at least four undercover operations in the pre-and post-state years in various guises including as a British businessman to spirit out Iraqi Jews.
Shlomo Hillel, a Baghdad-born Israeli operative who in the late 1940s and early 50s used bribes, fake visas and a network of smugglers to move more than 120,000 Jews from Iraq to Israel, died February 8 at his home in Ra anana, Israel. He was 97.
His death was confirmed by his son, Ari, who did not specify a cause.
Hillel was just 23 when the Haganah, a paramilitary organisation in what was then British-controlled Palestine, sent him undercover to Iraq. Jews had lived there for centuries, mostly in harmony with their neighbours, but growing Arab nationalism and anti-Zionist sentiment, including a 1941 pogrom in which several hundred Jews were killed, were making their situation precarious.