A young Palestinian girl has started a search across 7,000 miles of land and sea for a brother. He is believed to be “somewhere in the vicinity of Chicago.”
The girl is Sarah Chakim (or Hakim). She is a graduate of Meier Shfeyah, the children’s village maintained by Junior Hadassah, in Palestine, and is now an agricultural worker at Petach-Tikvah, near Tel Aviv.
Sarah, an orphan, is twenty years old. She was approached two years ago by a fellow passenger in a train near Jerusalem and asked if her name were Chakim and whether she had a brother in America.
The conversation stirred half-forgotten childish memories, and she dimly recalled hearing about a brother when she was a very young child. From the time of this chance encounter Sarah has devoted herself unrelentingly to the search for her lost brother, according to information received here from the Palestinian representatives of Junior Hadassah.
She began to make investigations about her brother, finally tracing his probable whereabouts to the vicinity of Chicago. The facts she learned were that he was called Samuel, that he was born in Constantinople in 1905, and was brought to Palestine by his parents while still a child. The mother divorced the father and left for America. The father remarried and Sarah was the child of this second marriage. Toward the end of the War both her parents died. In 1918 Samuel entered the Mikveh Israel agricultural training school in Palestine and remained there until 1921. In the latter year his mother returned and took him back with her to America.
From her brother’s letter to his friends at the agricultural school Sarah learned that Samuel had settled on a farm near Chicago. From one of the friends she secured a photograph of her brother which she sent on to Junior Hadassah to aid in the search.
Since in none of the correspondence which Samuel had with his friends for a few years after he left Palestine does he mention a sister, Sarah believes he does not remember their early association.
Junior Hadassah is endeavoring to trace young Chakim through farmers’ cooperative groups in the Midwest and through the newspapers.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
