Agents risk all to rescue Jews from Georgia
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Israeli officials and Jewish organisations have been operating deep inside the war-torn provinces of Georgia this week to seek out and rescue Jews caught up in the conflict.
Israel and the Jewish Agency have also been planning an Operation Solomon-style airlift from Georgia in case the fragile ceasefire with Russia fails.
Close to 600 Israeli citizens who were caught in Georgia as fighting broke out in South Ossetia over the weekend were flown out on Tuesday on three specially chartered planes of El Al and Georgian Airlines.
Officials from the Israeli Foreign Ministry, Nativ and the Jewish Agency arrived at the embassy in Tbilisi - where most of Georgia’s 12,000 Jews live - to process the stream of requests for emigration to Israel. These normally take a month to process, but over 90 permits were authorised in one day.
About 30, mainly refugees from Gori, were flown to Israel on Tuesday. Some 200 from Gori, Abkhazia and South Ossetia are still unaccounted for. About 250 from Kotaisi and another 200 from Batumi have asked to emigrate, but since both towns are cut off by Russian forces from Tbilisi, attempts are being made to remove them by air or sea.
A handful who lived in the disputed enclaves of Abkhazia and South Ossetia were brought to Vladikavkaz, the capital of North Ossetia, in Russian territory.
Before fighting began, there were 19 confirmed Jewish residents of Tskhinvali, the capital of the unrecognised republic of South Ossetia. Their names and addresses were culled from the rolls of a Hessed in nearby Gori, the birthplace of Stalin.
The JC has also learned that, since hostilities began, a pair of representatives from a Jewish aid organisation, who asked to remain anonymous, have been working undercover to locate Jews who may be at risk.
Sitting in a caf in Vladikavkaz, one of the agents said: “My parents are Holocaust survivors. So I know what it means to hide in a basement waiting for an angel to rescue you[…]