Many Were Saved by a Canadian Widow

A young widow with six children, Judy Feld Carr was a musicologist living in Toronto who learned of the plight of the Jews imprisoned in Syria in the early ‘70s. Known simply as “Mrs. Judy in Canada” she secretly arranged ransoms, oversaw escapes, and orchestrated other daring operations to save as many as 3,228 lives.

Except for 20 or 30 souls, all remaining Jews left Syria when Hafez al-Assad opened the doors in the early ‘90s, and today there are no more than perhaps a dozen Jews left in Syria, mainly in Damascus.