Mrs. Judy: Rescuer of the Syrian Jews

For 28 years, Canadian Judith Feld Carr ran a clandestine
rescue network that spirited most of Syria’s Jews from captivity. Her little-known heroic feat rivals that of
celebrated Holocaust saviors such as Oskar Schindler.

The final family arrived in New York in the early morning
hours of Sept. 11, 2001. Just 38 Jews remain — by choice — in Syria, she said,
where they are barred from emigrating and tortured for trying to escape.

Her mission concluded, Feld Carr is free to talk about the
international exploits of “Mrs. Judy,” as she was known by Syria’s Jewish
underground. Yet, she still zealously guards many secrets of the covert mission
that ultimately freed 3,228 people.

For instance, the Toronto musicologist never explains how
she bribes drug-dealing Syrian commanders who control border escape routes
through Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley. Neither does she say how one goes about
learning which military official hungers for payoffs because of “overhead,” a
euphemism for funds required to keep second wives and support illegitimate
children.

What Feld Carr does outline is fueling a dangerous,
modern-day exodus from one of the last Stalinist police states to survive the
Cold War, rivaling ancient Egypt for its oppression.

“It was a lifeline like no other,” Feld Carr said. “The Jews
of Syria didn’t make the agenda of any human rights organization.”

And she is belatedly receiving international credit. Last
June, Feld Carr received a humanitarian award by Los Angeles’ Simon Wiesenthal
Center; the year before, she was appointed to the Order of Canada; and, in
1999, she became the subject of a book, “The Ransomed of God,” by Harold Troper
(Malcolm Lester Books).

In a lecture last month at Tustin’s Congregation B’nai
Israel, she recounted relying on a Mideast network of shadowy agents and
trusted smugglers, coaxed into paying ransoms and bribes for her. The audience
of 150 were held spellbound by the woman, with auburn hair primly clasped in a
white-and-navy bow, which coordinated with a double strand of pearls that
topped a close-fitting, blue suit.

Among them were congregants Joe Bati and his wife, Yolande,
who in 1947, when 40,000 Jews lived in Syria, escaped Aleppo by fleeing to
Israel through Lebanon. The Batis invited Feld Carr to pick up the tale, Rabbi
Eli Spitz explained, of “what happened to [Yolande’s] friends who were left
behind in Syria, which became a prison for Jews.”

As an isolated but telling example, Feld Carr described the
plight of two Damascus brothers, who failed to return home from a trip to Rome
and disappeared for two years. Held in solitary confinement in underground
cells by Syria’s notorious Nazi-trained secret police, the brothers were
subjected to a trial without counsel.

Living conditions were so barbaric that the wife of one
brother, when permitted a visit, could not recognize her spouse. “Their crime?”
Feld Carr asked. “They had secretly visited their sister in Israel.”

To win the brothers release, Feld Carr went so far as to
bribe Syrian Supreme Court judges. “Every month, bribe money went to pay for
medicine,” she said. “We paid for every piece of soap, every cold shower once a
month.”

“Jews were being sold at a price like cattle, and I was
buying them,” Feld Carr said, although few would ever meet her.

Feld Carr, 63, and now a grandmother, started living a
parallel existence in 1973, continuing work begun with her late husband, Ronald
Feld. She described the pair as activists. They raised money quietly by word of
mouth and with the help of Beth Tzedek Congregation, their Toronto synagogue,
and another in Baltimore. In 1977, she married again to Donald Carr.

“I’m painfully aware my country is only referred to in
weather forecasts. It couldn’t have been done from any place except Canada,”
she said, since her secret would not have escaped media scrutiny in the United
States, Europe or Israel.

“It is precisely that we didn’t hear about her that she was
able to succeed,” Spitz added, calling her “a hero of our time.”

Her second career of intrigue included late-night phone
calls from desperate parents, payoffs to Syrian immigration officials for
passports and exit visas, currency smuggling, midnight visits to Israeli
embassies and becoming accustomed to the watchful eyes of security minders.
Israel’s late Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin was the first to mention her work in
April 1995, seven months before his assassination.

Explaining little more than that she was off for another
“spa” visit, Feld Carr would change her appearance, loosening her dark hair and
rimming her eyes boldly in the style of Arab women. “It was hard to live two
lives,” she said. “The kids knew I was leaving from the briskets I was freezing.”

The dual lives did cross paths, sometimes humorously,
sometimes not. Feld Carr described shopping for pantyhose with her daughter,
who was attending graduate school in New York. “Is he with you?” the girl asked
her mother, referring to a plainclothes security guard. “Is he going to the bra
department, too?”

En route home after a “spa” trip, inevitably the gin
inventory on Feld Carr’s flight would be depleted. “My nerves were shot,” she
said. Often, she needed to recuperate from her “vacation.”

Feld Carr has never stepped foot in Syria, despite an
invitation by a diplomat. Canadian officials advise against it. “If I did, I
wouldn’t be talking to you now,” Feld Carr said.

Her extraordinary feat was born out of a half-hearted
gesture by a rabbi, who wrote an op-ed piece appearing in Canada’s national
newspaper, the Globe and Mail, in 1972. Distraught over 12 Syrian Jews killed
trying to flee across a mined border to Turkey, the rabbi pledged to establish
a group to aid Syrian Jewry. The Felds wanted to join. They never heard from
him.

Undeterred, they decided to contact Syrian’s Jewish
community on their own.

“Anyone special?” the operator asked.

“The rabbi,” they answered.

“What’s a rabbi?”

“A Jewish priest.”

Eventually, the Felds got through, offering to send
religious books.

“That was the opening in Syria,” she said.