Few of the Yemenite Jews had ever seen an airplane. The pilots left each morning from their base in Asmara, Eritrea, and landed at Aden to pick up passengers. ![]() When news of the planned evacuation reached them, they walked, sometimes hundreds of miles, carrying bibles and Torah scrolls, until they reached a refugee camp at the British protectorate of Aden, on the southern tip of Yemen. But their deliverance into Israel was prophesied in a line from the Book of Isaiah: “They shall mount up with wings as eagles.” Maguire flew thousands of Jews out of Shanghai before being sent to the Middle East to help start Operation Magic Carpet in conjunction with the American Joint Jewish Distribution Committee, a humanitarian organization.Īn ancient nomadic people, Yemenite Jews had been oppressed since the advent of Islam in the eighth century. With the creation of the State of Israel in May 1948, the airline won a contract to fly Jewish refugees there from around the globe. He enlisted in the Army Air Corps the day after Pearl Harbor and flew in the Pacific region in the war.Īfter the war, Maguire became a pilot for Alaska Airlines. He began flying as a teenager, later attending Reed College and the University of Oregon. was born in Portland, Oregon on 7th January 1911. Jason Fenton (Machalnik from USA),Įxcerpts from the obituary/article by Margalit Fox which appeared in the New York Times on 18th June 2006 who served as a pilot in Air Transport Command. Stanley “Buddy” Epstein was a Machal volunteer from the U.S.A. If there was a single reason felt by all of the English-speaking flight crews and other volunteers, it was a feeling of “never again” after the press and other news media dramatically revealed the stories of the Holocaust.” “For the English-speaking volunteers in Israel, the story of the Jews from Yemen was just another amazing story of the ingathering of the Jewish People in their homeland. But the plight of the Jews is what drove everyone to keep going forward. And the DC-4s, licensed to carry 60 passengers, were flying with 150 Yemenite Jews per trip.Įpstein said the danger and logistical hurdles that had to be overcome were at the top of his mind at every turn. ![]() We had a few bullet holes.”Įpstein noted that the C-46 aircraft were carrying 76 passengers per trip – nearly 30 more than licensed for, based on the average passenger weight and the number of aircraft exits. One airplane undershot the runway in Asmara, but it didn’t burn, even though it was loaded with gasoline barrels. “We flew almost continuously from Christmas Eve 1948 to nearly a year later, and never lost a life or had an injury from an accident. Stanley “Buddy” Epstein says he is not a religious man, but Operation Magic Carpet” had to have been blessed by God because the possibility of any of these airplanes being successful was pretty remote.”Įpstein, a pilot and maintenance specialist, was airlifting supplies from Czechoslovakia to Israel, and when that operation ended, he contracted with Alaska Airlines to help with “Operation Magic Carpet.” and InspirationĪs recalled by two former Magic Carpet Pilots, Stanley Epstein and Bob Maguire Operation Magic Carpet: Challenges, Dangers. This was made possible by British and American transport planes which made some 380 flights from Aden in a secret operation that was only made public several months after it had taken place. In response to an increasingly perilous situation, most of the Yemenite-Jewish community secretly emigrated to Israel between June 1949 and September 1950 in Operation Magic Carpet. Aden’s Jewish community was economically paralyzed, since most of the Jewish stores and businesses were destroyed. In early 1948 accusations of the murder of two Muslim Yemeni girls led to the looting of Jewish property. Partition Plan of 1947, Muslim rioters engaged in clashes in Aden, killing 82 people and destroying a number of Jewish homes. ![]() Operation Magic Carpet is a nickname for the operation “On The Wings of Eagles.” This operation took place between June 1949 and September 1950 and brought over 46,000 Yemenite Jews to the newborn State of Israel.įollowing the U.N.
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