אוסף מאיר (מהראד) פרארו (פרארוי)

Meir (Mehrad) Fararo (Fararoi) was born in Hamadan in 1949 to Mehdi (1913) and Madlen nee Friedman (Kashiof) (1926). Mehdi (34) and Madlen (21) were married on July 26, 1946 in an arranged marriage. The couple had 4 children; the eldest daughter Nasrin (1947) and the boys: Mehrad-Meir (1949), Farid (1953) and Farhad (1959). When Mehrad-Meir was 3 years old the family moved from Hamadan to Teheran. The head of the family, Mehdi Fararoi, had 9 years of schooling in the 'Alliance" school in Hamadan. He was fluent in English and French. Between the years 1928-1930, after having completed his studies, he served as a teacher. In 1931, at the age of 18 he was drafted into the Iranian Army. He served for two years in Kermanshah (on the Iranian-Iraqi border).Upon completion of his army service he worked as a translator and an accountant for the company that was building the trans-Iranian train line in Southern Iran, between 1927—1938. His job was helping to translate from Farsi for the European engineers who came primarily from Belgium and England. This project was directed by the Shah and its goal was to connect the capital Teheran with the cities of the Persian Gulf in the South and those on the Caspian Sea in the North. This impressive project included train tracks, bridges and tunnels. Mehdi, who was an amateur photographer and owned his own camera, took pictures of the project. This album includes many pictures taken while working on the project. Mehdi also took pictures of his family. One of his brothers owned a photography store so he was able to develop the pictures by himself in the dark room. After completing three years working on the project, Mehdi returned to Hamadan and married Madlen Friedman. He opened a store where he sold ground coffee and herbs. The family moved to Tehran in 1952. Mehdi began working in a senior position in the Central Bank in Teheran. In the morning he would work in the bank and in the evening he studied technology and electronics, at the "Ort' school which opened in 1950 for the Jewish community. Despite being married and having a family, he continued his studies for a number of years and even built two radios. Mehdi passed away in 1983 and was buried in the Jewish cemetery in Teheran. Madlen moved to Israel in 1988. She passed away in 2013. Madlen, Mehdi's wife, was also born in Hamadan, in 1926, to Dina and Meir Freidman (originally Kashiof). Her family is most likely originally from the Persian community in Buchara. In the beginning of the 1920's her parents, Dina and Meir, moved to Israel. They lived there for two years. Her oldest brother, Reuven, was born in Israel.However they returned to Hamadan where the rest of their children were born. Because he had been to Israel, Meir Friedman, Madlen's father, was called by the Hamadan community 'Haj Meir' (Meir who has made the pilgrimage). After the establishment of the State of Israel, Meir and Dina moved to Israel for the second time, to the immigrant settlement – Beit Eliezer. Madlen, who was already married, stayed in Iran, whereas the rest of the family moved to Israel. This album includes pictures that the family sent to her from Israel in the first days of the State. Madlen was a housewife. She liked to sew and knit sweaters and do all sorts of handicrafts. She moved to Israel in 1988 to an absorption center in Lod and afterwards moved to Bat Yam. She passed away in 2013. Meir, the second child of Mehdi and Madlen, grew up in Tehran. Until the age of 5-6 he stayed at home with his mother. Only then did he begin his schooling. He went to a 'mixed' Farsi school where children of all religions studied. When the Moslem children had a class in Koran, the Jewish children were taken out of the class. Meir tells that the teachers were very strict and part of the discipline was to hit children who disturbed the class. In high school he studied at the "Astroda Madrasse". The family heard about the Six Day War from the radio. He completed high school and went to study chemistry in the university in Teheran, before serving in the army. During his studies he was forced to stop and join the army where he served for two years as a logistics officer. Afterwards he returned to the University and completed his BA in chemistry. He visited Israel for the first time as a tourist in 1974. He lived there for 5 months. His parents, Meir and Madlen, even came to visit him, and returned to Teheran. Meir had difficulty finding work in Israel. He returned to Teheran and worked as a pharmacist in a factory owned by a Jew. He later moved to Ghazvin, about 150 kilometers from Teheran. He worked in an aluminum and iron works factory. In February 1978 he started working as a chemist. He worked with explosives. In 1979 the Islamic Revolution took place in Iran. This revolution turned Iran, that was previously a pro-western monarchy under the rule of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, to an Islamic Republic, which hated Israel and the West, under the rule of the Ayatollah Khomeini. The revolution had two parts: At first the Shah was expelled from the country by a coalition of religious Moslem leaders, liberal activists and leftist. The second part, called the Islamic Revolution, brought Ayatollah Khomeini to power. The streets of Teheran were filled with wild demonstrations, shootings, arrests and executions. Meir married Nahid (Nurit) in February 1979, 6 months before the revolution. (His grandfather, Mehdi, filmed the wedding on video). After the revolution Meir was unemployed as the unemployment rate in Teheran skyrocketed and as a Jew he was unable to find a job. His wife, Nahid, supported the family, which at that time included two children. She worked in the Iranian Ministry of Welfare. Meir attempted to leave the country after the Revolution and even bought tickets to Frankfurt, Germany as a stop on the way to Israel. However in 1980 Iran entered into a bloody war with her neighbor, Sadam Hussein's Iraq, and as a result the borders were closed and Meir and his family were stuck in Iran. The borders re-opened in 1983, yet the Jews were forbidden to leave the country and those who tried were stopped at the border. After much effort and money Meir's family succeeded in getting false passports that presented them as Moslems and they left the country, to Istanbul, dressed up as Moslems. There they contacted the Jewish Agency that brought them to Israel in 1987. Upon their arrival they were placed in an absorption center in Be'er Sheva, however Nahid (Nurit) did not want to stay in such a foreign environment, one so different from the 'big city' life that she was used to in Teheran. She requested to be moved to another center in the center of the country or in the North. After her request was denied she decided to leave on her own. The very next day she left and went to her family in Tel Aviv. In the end Meir's family was given a space in the absorption center in Karmiel and after a year they moved to Bat-Yam. There the couple had two more children; Doron (1989) and Moran (1991). اقرأ أكثر