TORONTO — Since the mid-1970s, thousands of Syrian Jews hoping to escape a repressive regime have discovered that, when all else failed, a mysterious angel known to them only as “Mrs. Judy” could open the door to freedom.
Toronto resident Judy Feld Carr, who received a Haifa University merit award in June, recently broke a 23-year silence to acknowledge that she has helped more than 2,500 Jews flee Syria.
“There was nothing ever said publicly about this work because I didn’t want to jeopardize anybody’s chances of leaving the country or the work I was doing or my own security,” she said during a series of interviews about her efforts on behalf of Syrian Jewry.
Israeli media has focused intensely on the 57-year-old musicologist and grandmother since she received the prestigious award — one of whose recipients, years ago, was the late Prime Minister Menachem Begin.
Now that the estimated 130 Jews who remain in Syria are free to leave, Feld Carr feels her story may be safely told.
After hearing in 1972 that an exploding land mine had killed 12 Syrian Jews as they were attempting to escape to Turkey, Feld Carr and her late husband, Dr. Ronald Feld, established a committee at their Toronto synagogue, Beth Tzedek, to aid the 6,000 Jews then living in Syria.
After many tries, they eventually succeeded in reaching some Syrian Jews by telephone and then by telegram.
At the request of a Damascus rabbi, the couple began sending books, religious objects and money.
Even after her husband died suddenly in 1973, the 33-year-old widow and mother of three continued her secretive mission, aware that Syria’s isolated Jews had already come to rely upon her as a trusted Western contact.
As donations quietly poured into the Dr. Ronald Feld Fund for Jews in Arab Lands — the fund would eventually top $1 million — Feld Carr set out upon the delicate task of “buying Jews.”
Gradually, she built up an underground network of Syrian government officials, lawyers and judges willing to accept “baksheesh,” or bribes, in exchange for which they let Jews leave the country.
All money sent to Syria had to go through numerous secondary channels to keep it from being traced.
“At first we worked clandestinely with people who tried to smuggle Jews over the mountains from Syria to Lebanon, and later from Syria to Turkey,” she said.
Beginning by rescuing people one by one, she gradually advanced to redeeming whole families and groups at a time.
“By the time they found me, they had tried everything else to get out. I was their last resort,” she said.
“They had to find me, but they didn’t know my last name and they couldn’t write me a letter or telephone me. They had to go through the Syrian-Jewish underground.”
Syria’s Jews were forbidden to emigrate until 1992, when the gates to freedom opened briefly and then shut for two more years.
But during the years the restrictions were in place, Feld Carr helped them acquire temporary passports, usually valid for only a few weeks or months.
With passports and return airline tickets in hand, Syria’s Jews were permitted to “visit” the United States, Canada and sometimes France.
Most stayed in the United States; some went to Israel.
After she married Donald Carr in 1977, having three more children, Feld Carr’s house became a stopover point for scores of Syrian Jews in transit.
While a few of those she helped know nothing of their benefactress, many others claim she saved their lives.
Feld Carr also helped improve the living conditions of many Jews still in Syria, sometimes with the discreet assistance of Canadian diplomats.
She spoke about the case of the Suede brothers, Eli and Salim, who were imprisoned and tortured for 4-1/2 years in Damascus without charges or a trial.
She said she fought hard “for every bar of soap, for every shower” and other basic amenities for the brothers.
After contacting the U.N. Committee on Disappearance, she helped secure their release from prison in 1992 and their exit visas in 1994.
Attending the wedding of one of their daughters in New York, she was invited to stand beneath the wedding canopy, where the mother of the bride took off her own corsage and pinned it on Feld Carr.
Another Suede daughter was married last month in Israel and Feld Carr attended the ceremony.
“People were coming up to me that I had never seen before and saying, `Mrs. Judy, you don’t know me, but you took my father out, you took my sister out and you took me out.'”
For her part, Feld Carr said all she has ever wanted are photos of those she has rescued.
She has a letter she received last year from the late Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, in which he thanked her “for 23 years of hard and dangerous work, during which you devoted your life”to Syrian Jews.