Six decades later, Shlomo Malach is still thanking Hashem for the miracle of surviving

Photos: Elchanan Kotler, Family archives

The order that came from the command center of the Italian passenger ship didn’t leave room for an argument: “Get rid of the boy as quickly as possible!”

At sea, that means only one thing: Throw the young fellow overboard.

It was 1962, and Shlomo Malach, a 13-year-old Jewish boy from Damascus, had crossed the border to Lebanon and stolen onto the ship at the port of Beirut. The security agents who were commanded to carry out the brutal order requested backup.

A dozen sailor hands found Shlomo in a tiny steerage cabin, grabbed him, and dragged him onto the deck. He was a fast and wiry little guy and at first managed to escape their grasp, zigzagging all over the large ship in order to avoid becoming fish food.

But it was a hopeless battle — and just a matter of time until the posse caught up with him. He reconciled with his fate of being tossed overboard, his mind empty except for one painful thought: After everything he’d been through, his mission had not been accomplished.

Just before he was hurled amid the waves, he had an opportunity for a last request. “Give me a life preserver,” he begged. “I prefer to throw myself into the water.” No one objected. In the middle of the Mediterranean Sea, it really made no difference if you had a life preserver or not...

Every Shavuos, Syrian-born Shlomo Malach celebrates an anniversary, and this year will be no different: not a birthday exactly, but maybe a kind of rebirth. It was right before Shavuos of 1963 that then-13-year-old Shlomo Malach finally managed to cross the border between Syria and Lebanon after several attempts, sending him on a years-long odyssey of peril and torture. He was determined to get to Eretz Yisrael — so close, really, just over 60 miles — but his harrowing, heart-stopping journey traversed several years and continents with open miracles that kept death in abeyance.

Shlomo Malach was born in Damascus, Syria, in October of 1949, the fourth of nine children. It was a year after the establishment of the State of Israel, which meant a difficult and dangerous period for the Jews of Arab nations in general, and of Syria in particular. In Damascus, Jews weren’t allowed to travel more than ten kilometers from their place of residence, and their ID cards were stamped with the word “Jew” in a bright red ink. The Jewish state that had been established to the south had turned the locals into spies and traitors. Arabs who had fled from the war to Syria disseminated hate and fear, which began to rage in the Jewish quarter. The Mukhabarat — the secret police — patrolled the streets hunting for “traitors.”

No one was allowed to talk about the fledgling state, but Shlomo dreamed about the Holy Land. And soon after his bar mitzvah, his childish thoughts about making his way to Israel gave way to more realistic plans, as he tried to practically work out an escape.