Carmela (Daisy) was born on 17.9.1929 in Baghdad, Iraq, to her mother Tafaha and father Levi Levi. She studied in the central general government school, where Arabs, Christians and Jews all studied together. In their house, Hagana emissaries who dealt inter alia with aliyah would come to visit.
In 1945, Carmella herself made aliyah, at age sixteen, with forged documentation prepared for her in the Land of Israel. As an unaccompanied minor, she was sent to the Meir Shfeya Youth Village, near Zikhron Yaakov. She spent about a year there.
Her family in Baghdad wanted her to return “home,” and as a young woman alone in the country, she could not withstand the pressure and did not want to cause them pain. In order to arrange her travel to Iraq, she moved to the Mizrahi Girls’ Dormitory. While she was arranging her documentation, she ran into Albert Shemesh, who had arranged her aliyah a year earlier. He was very opposed to her planned return to Iraq. He turned to the Jewish Agency, explaining the inherent danger. Since she had made aliyah with the organization’s assistance, her return would make her a suspect. She would be arrested and interrogated, and the damage to the cause of aliyah would be immense.
This stopped her. Albert sent her to relatives of his in Haifa, and in the meantime, he recruited Carmella for Lehi. She was assigned to the youth division of the Haifa branch. This all happened in 1946.
Carmella started by putting up posters and disseminating promotional material, serving as a lookout and courier for various missions. She was very active and dedicated.
After the State was established, when Lehi members joined the IDF, Carmella did so in Haifa. Her fluency in Arabic was invaluable, and she was assigned to Jaffa’s Green House to server in the Intelligence Corps.
In 1950, she married Albert and they had two daughters and a son. In 1951, her parents came themselves, in the great aliyah from Iraq.
Albert worked in customs in Haifa and passed away in 1982.