Mount of Olives
Mount of OlivesYoni Kempinski

Arutz Sheva brought the story of the Sasson family, who is closing a 71-year-old family-historical circle with the location of the grandmother Lulu's grave.

Eliahu, the 84-year-old grandson, tells of the grandmother who died about ten days before the November 29th UN vote on Israeli statehood and was buried unhindered on the Mount of Olives, as is customary among the Jews of Jerusalem.

"There was no reason not to hold the burial," he says, but a few days later, events that prevented the family from reaching their burial site occurred before they could lay a tombstone on the grave.

"A week later was November 29 and the Arabs began shooting at Jews on the fringes of the Old City and the Mount of Olives. Under the pretext of protecting Jews, the British prevented Jews from entering the Mount of Olives." The family hoped at the end of the seven day mourning period they would be able to reach the burial site, "but in reality it was more difficult".

"Time passed and connection with the Old City became more difficult, Jews hardly ever arrived there. We couldn't lay a gravestone. On May 15, 1948, the State was established and the situation in Jerusalem was more severe when a disconnect was created between the eastern part of the city that was under siege and the western part of the city. We stayed without being able to do what we wanted, to put a tombstone on our grandmother's grave.

Sasson continues his family's story: "Until the Six-Day War, we only thought about it and only hoped that we would get there. After the Six-Day War, my father, Yaakov, the eldest son of my grandmother, went with his brother to go to the grave and erect a gravestone, but we couldn't approach the area because the Jordanians paved a road inside the cemetery and everything that bothered them, stones, gravestones, and graves were strewn to the sides of the road. The sides of the road were full of overturned graves. It was impossible to access her grave because everything was covered with what was removed from the road.

"This went on for years. Every time we came to the Mount of Olives hoping to reach the tomb, but it was impossible," says Sasson and starts talking about today: "Recently we received a message from the Burial Society, an organization that does there an outstanding job, you can reach the area and locate the the tomb. We knew she was buried next to her father-in- law, Rabbi Sasson. After the inquiry into Burial Society records and searches where grandmother was buried with no gravestone, we were able to locate the burial plot among the Yotzei Bavel plot. We found her grave with no gravestone."

The family is preparing to arrive at the site with a tombstone that they will place on the grave of the deceased grandmother, 71 years after she was buried.