Yona Buagla (1908-1987) was an Ethiopian Jewish educator and public figure. He served as the director of the Beta Israel education network in Ethiopia and worked very hard for the immigration of Ethiopian Jews to the Land of Israel.
The story and work of Yona Bugala told us by his second son, Zachariah Zaudo Bugala, who lives in Israel. My father Yona Bugala was born in Gondar, Ethiopia, and as a young man was a shepherd. In the evenings he learned to read and write in Amharic with the High Priest, along with other young people of his age. In 1923, at the age of 13, my father was sent to Israel and studied at the "Tachkemoni" school in Jerusalem. He continued his educational journey in Germany, and later in Switzerland and Paris. In 1931,…show more content… When Addis Ababa was conquered, he returned to teaching, but soon found himself in prison because of an arrest warrant issued against him by the Italians. He managed to escape from detention and hid in the Volga region in the north of the country.
In 1941, he began working in the Ethiopian Ministry of Education as the director of the translation department and the chief translator of the Ethiopian emperor. At that time, Zachariah Bugala continues, the Christian missionaries began to expand their activities among the Jews. His father understood the magnitude of the danger and the need of the hour, and began to correspond with Dr. Pitlowitz and the then President of Israel, Yitzhak Ben Zvi, and asked for their help in saving Ethiopian Jewry.
In 1953, my father resigned from his job at the Ministry of Education, and with the assistance of the Jewish Agency, he opened a Jewish school in Asmara, Ethiopia. Some of the school's students were later sent to the Kfar Batya youth village in Israel, where they were trained to teach, and returned to Ethiopia to teach in the Jewish schools established by my father in the various villages. Altogether, 27 Jewish schools established at my father's initiative throughout
