City University of New York (CUNY) CUNY Academic Works Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects CUNY Graduate Center 6-2021 Traces of Absence: How the Trauma of the Yemenite, Mizrahi and Balkan Kidnapped Children Affair Is Present in Photographs and Home Movies Natalie Haziza The Graduate Center, City University of New York How does access to this work benefit ou?y Let us know! More information about this work at: https://academicworks.cuny.edu/gc_etds/4423 Discover additional works at: https://academicworks.cuny.edu This work is made publicly available by the City University of New York (CUNY). Contact: [email protected] Running head: TRACES OF ABSENCE i Traces of Absence: How the trauma of the Yemenite, Mizrahi and Balkan Kidnapped Children Affair is present in photographs and home movies Natalie Haziza The Graduate Center & City College – CUNY A dissertation submitted to the Graduate Faculty in Psychology in partial fulfillment of the requirement for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. The City University of New York 2021 TRACES OF ABSENCE © 2021 NATALIE HAZIZA All Rights Reserved ii TRACES OF ABSENCE This manuscript has been read and accepted for the Graduate Faculty in Clinical Psychology Doctoral program to satisfy the dissertation. Elliot Jurist, PhD – Dissertation Chair ________________________________ Date ____________ Richard Bodnar, PhD - Executive Officer ________________________________ Date ____________ Dissertation Committee: Sarah O’Neill, PhD ___________________________ Adeyinka M. Akinsulure-Smith, PhD, ABPP ___________________________ Shoshana Madmoni-Gerber, PhD __________________________ Marianne Hirsch, PhD __________________________ iii TRACES OF ABSENCE For Avigail and Yoyi, to many more muddy puddles אתסלב סמ ו ד י , לבק י ברהה ישנ ק ו ת ממ נ י . קמ ו ו ה ארל ו ת א ו ךת רקב ו ב ב י דח םע דה י לפ ו המ ! iv TRACES OF ABSENCE ABSTRACT Traces of Absence: How the trauma of the Yemenite, Mizrahi and Balkan Kidnapped Children Affair is present in photographs and home movies by Natalie Haziza Advisor: Elliot Jurist, PhD Between 1948 and 1956, an estimated thousands of babies and young children were kidnapped through the state medical system, in the newly established State of Israel. They were offered for adoption to barren parents (often Holocaust survivors), sold to international adoptive families (often in the United States), and in the most disturbing cases used in medical experiments. Parents were often told that their children had died during routine medical care, but were provided with neither death certificate nor body. The majority of the victims of these kidnappings were Mizrahi - Jewish immigrant families from Arab and Muslim countries. Most families were of Yemenite origin. Despite the large scale of this affair, it has gone unrecognized by state systems, the legal system, the media, and Israeli society at large. Thousands of families affected by this affair have to date received no state recognition of this crime nor any closure as to where their loved ones might be. The purpose of this dissertation is to explore how these families and individuals experienced this loss. How did they continue to raise their families in the shadow of extreme unresolved trauma and loss? How did they contend with the denial of official state systems? How did they reconcile the betrayal of medical professionals and the medical institution? These questions will be answered by examining images (home movies and photographs) and narratives of the families who had children kidnapped from them. Such images are often used to document joyous events, with the intent of v TRACES OF ABSENCE preserving a glimpse of our best selves and best moments, but they also contain traces of pain and conflict inherent to family life. I will also argue that these images reveal painful and still unexpressed aspects of the trauma of the Kidnapped Children Affair. Keywords: trauma; ambiguous loss; prolonged grief; Kidnapped Children Affair; home videos; vernacular photography; Mizrahi Jews vi TRACES OF ABSENCE Table of Contents Chapter 1. Introduction ...................................................................................................................... 3 Definition of Terms ........................................................................................................................ 8 Chapter 2. Literature Review ............................................................................................................ 10 1. The Kidnapped Children Affair .............................................................................................. 10 2. Immigration to Israel from Arab and Muslim countries and the Kidnapped Children Affair ............................................................................................................................................................. 14 i. Immigration from Yemen ..................................................................................................... 17 ii. Immigration from Morocco ................................................................................................ 20 iii. Immigration from Iran........................................................................................................ 21 iv. Immigration from Turkey ................................................................................................... 22 3. Psychology of Trauma and Loss............................................................................................. 24 i. Ambiguous Loss. .................................................................................................................... 24 ii. Trauma .................................................................................................................................... 26 Intergenerational Trauma ......................................................................................................... 27 3. Visual Postmemory: Photographs and Home Videos ......................................................... 31 i. Traumatic Seeing. ................................................................................................................... 32 Chapter 2. Methodology ................................................................................................................... 35 i. Participants:............................................................................................................................. 36 ii. Measures and Materials: ....................................................................................................... 36 1. Qualitative Methodology: Thematic Analysis .............................................................. 39 vii TRACES OF ABSENCE 2. Image-based Research .............................................................................................................. 42 iii. Procedure: ............................................................................................................................. 46 iv. Ethical Considerations and Context .................................................................................. 47 Chapter 3: Results .............................................................................................................................. 49 Participants ................................................................................................................................. 49 Visual Material ........................................................................................................................... 50 Table 1.1 Visual Materials ........................................................................................................ 50 Qualitative Data Analysis ......................................................................................................... 50 Theme 1: “There will always be a “maybe”: The burden and hope of ambiguous loss 54 Theme 2: “I started imagining that someone is stealing the baby from the cradle”: Fear of Separation, Protection and Paranoia. ............................................................................................. 61 Theme 3: “We were naïve and we didn’t know the language”: The vulnerability of immigration, racism and denial. ............................................................................................................ 69 Theme 4: Photography of Absence: Documentation and photography as protection against loss ............................................................................................................................................... 76 Quantitative Measure: ............................................................................................................... 85 Chapter 4: Discussion ........................................................................................................................ 91 Statement of the principal findings ............................................................................................ 91 Significance of the Study .............................................................................................................. 92 Comparisons with previous work ............................................................................................... 94 Appraisal of the methods ............................................................................................................. 94 viii TRACES OF ABSENCE Strengths ....................................................................................................................................