On the night of Wednesday, August 20, 1947, a small American C-46 (“Commando”) transport plane landed in the airport in Baghdad. The airport was deserted. A single person emerged from the plane, Shlomo Hillel – a member of the Mossad LeAliyah Bet, who stole into the capital to organize the first group of olim to be flown from Iraq to Israel. The plan was for 50 immigrants to break into the airport, which was surrounded by guard dogs, go through a small breach in the fence, lie on the ground until the plane approached them while warming up its engines and then run to the plane, which would fly to Israel. The pilots were two American World War II veterans, who offered their services for the clandestine operations. Organizing the olim into small, covert groups was not easy, and the operation was sensitive and dangerous. Shlomo Hillel, later world chairman of Keren Hayesod, describes the operation as truly life-threatening. It was precisely executed with great success, and the plane bearing the first immigrants landed safely in a temporary landing field near Yavne’el, several hours after taking off from Baghdad. Two similar operations were subsequently carried out, one from Italy and the second, once again from Baghdad. This was the first time that the Hagana’s Mossad LeAliyah Bet, under the sponsorship of the Jewish Agency for Israel, carried out a secret, dangerous air rescue operation from a hostile country. Since then, the Jewish Agency for Israel and Keren Hayesod have executed many clandestine aliyah operations in hostile, distant countries, under difficult conditions. In 2017, 70 years after the rescue, a plane that was identical to the one that participated in the rescue operation was brought to Israel in a special ceremony, to which some of the rescued Jews were invited, along with Shlomo Hillel and other leaders of the operation. The plane was placed on display at the Atlit Detention Camp.
Photo: A plane that is identical to the one in Operation Michaelberg at the Atlit Detention Camp