One-Way Flight

Arthur Cohen and Jaap Sanders rescued over 3,000 Jews stranded in Pakistan after fleeing Iran. Two decades later, Jaap Sanders reveals the story — or at least, what he can

I t’s late afternoon and the winter sun is already low in the Jerusalem sky casting a curious glow over Jaap Sanders’s Har Nof home. The apartment is impeccably furnished the intricately engraved wooden chests and tables bearing testament to Sanders’s travels to far-off exotic places while the numerous paintings by his wife Marlene throw swathes of color across the room.

Jaap Sanders is a trim, dapper Dutch Jew, a fundraising consultant and former yeshivah director with a doctorate in clinical psychology. Smartly turned out, he is polite, precise, and professional, prepared with his own voice recorder to tape our interview. Everything you might expect from an educated European, perhaps. And it was that precision and professionalism that stood Sanders in good stead during the ten years he worked in secret with Amsterdam askan Arthur Cohen z”l to help thousands of Jews fleeing Iranduring the 1980s and ’90s. Much about those secret missions is still under wraps, but for the first time — as the heroes of the saga have either aged or passed on — Jaap Sanders has agreed to finally share the parts that can be told.

There are still an estimated 25,000 Jews in Iran today, including Iran’s “number-one Jew” — a Sabbath-observant member of parliament. Jews had lived in comparative safety and prosperity in Persia for over 2,000 years and had been successful and protected under the rule of the Shah. But in 1979, after the Islamic revolution overthrew the Shah and Ayatollah Khomeini seized power, most of the Jews realized the precariousness of their situation and knew it was time to get out, for both their physical and spiritual safety. The wealthiest managed to leave first and move their wealth out of the country as well, but soon the regime clamped down and there was no legal way out. Still, thousands decided to flee.

No Man’s Land

The preferred escape route at the time was through the mountains between Iran and Turkey. There was a Jewish family in eastern Turkey who would help the escapees as far as Istanbul, but many found themselves stranded without papers once they got there.