An Israeli-Druze doctor at Rambam Health Care Campus, Haifa, discovered that a Syrian-Druze family evacuated from Sweida being treated at the hospital were family members he had never met, a spokesperson for Rambam Health Care Campus announced on Tuesday.
The family members, a woman and two children, had been evacuated. During the violence, the family's father was killed, the mother and 16-year-old daughter were moderately injured, and the six-year-old son suffered "severe injuries with multiple fractures and gunshot wounds."
They were treated in a local clinic, where their condition worsened, and were transferred to Rambam Health Care Campus for treatment.
A relative connected the family name of the patients to the family name of the doctor, who was working a night shift at the time, and was summoned to the trauma room, the spokesperson added.
"My father came to Israel in 1947 as a very young man, but he left his whole family behind, brothers, sisters, parents," the doctor said.
"He always told us about the village he came from and the family, and we received indirect messages from them over the years, but we never met. Suddenly, I’m standing in the trauma room, speaking with a direct relative who shares the same last name as mine, and I could feel my hair standing up from the excitement," he added.
'I felt at home, with family,' in Israel
"I felt like I was in a place that felt like home, with my family. The tension of being in a hospital in a foreign country eased, thank God," the family's mother shared.
"My hope is that Israel will help me and all the Druze. What is happening in Syria has not stopped, and we don’t expect help from anyone else," she added.