Yihye Haybi

During this period, Yihye Haybi was part of a team responsible for distributing food to the camp residents. At last an Israel-bound ship came through the canal to Port Said in Egypt. In 1944, the family travelled by train to the Atlit immigrant camp, where they stayed for a week before being sent to a transit camp in Ramat Hasharon. The camp had no electricity but the families were provided with tents, showers and public services. Haybi found work as an agricultural laborer. After a year and a half, the family was transferred to permanent housing in Ra'anana, where he became a partner in a laundry business.

Yihye Haybi (Hebrew: יחיא חייבי; 1911–1977) was a Yemenite photographer of Yemenite Jewish extraction who emigrated to Mandate Palestine and finished his life in Israel. At a time when there were no local photographers in Yemen, Haybi photographed the Jewish community to which he belonged, Europeans he encountered at the Italian medical clinic where he worked, members of the Muslim population, and even the royal family. His photographs offer unique historical and ethnographic glimpses of Sana'a at this time, including the illicit documentation of current events.

Yihye (Yechiel) Haybi was born in 1911 in Sana'a, what would soon become the capital of an independent Yemen. His parents were Joseph and Zahara Haybi. At the age of 12–13 he studied at the school of Rabbi Yiḥyah Qafiḥ. He helped his father who owned a shop selling salves, oils and creams. At the age of 18 he travelled to relatives in Eritrea. He then went to Italy and later returned to Eritrea. While travelling, he learned Italian and Habashi. He boarded a ship he thought was heading to the Land of Israel but was actually sailing to Hodeda, Yemen. While on the ship, Haybi met consultants, engineers, technicians and foreign doctors travelling to Yemen to work in Sana'a. He became friendly with an Italian physician who asked Haybi to join the staff of a new clinic he was establishing in Sana'a.