Murder in Syria

Terror gripped the 5,000 Jews of Syria in the wake of the unsolved brutal murder and mutilation of a pregnant Jewish woman and her two small children in Aleppo.

On December 28, 1983, Chaim Victor Abadi, a prominent jeweler and merchant returned home to find Lillian, his 25-year-old wife, shot, and repeatedly stabbed, her breasts cut, her stomach slit open, the fetus killed, and her body mutilated. Beside her lay the bodies of their two children, Joseph, six, and Sandy, three. The little boy’s arms had been broken and the girl’s body was cut to pieces.

This is not the first crime suffered by the Abadi family. During a house-to-house search in July 1980, a defense unit entered their home and took Abadi with them to identify other Jewish homes in the area. The captain remained behind, ostensibly to search the house. He ordered Mrs. Abadi to strip to prove she was not concealing Moslem Brotherhood literature on her person, and then raped her. Several other Jewish women in Aleppo were also raped, but were too afraid to protest.