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And she thinks of the last family whose freedom she bought, a couple and their seven children who left Damascus, coincidentally, on a day the world was reeling: Sept. 11, 2001.

“Hearing of the hell that is going on in Syria today substantiates everything that I had done for 28 years because I so closely watched the hell that was going on there before,” she said this week from her Toronto home.

“I had to live a double life. I was a mommy and a wife and a daughter… and then had to sneak away and do all of my secret stuff.”

The recent attention to Syria has not only rekindled tense memories for Ms. Feld Carr. It prompted criticism of her effort from disparate sources: in recent weeks she has been branded a tawdry human trafficker in the Arab press and accused in a letter in the Times of Israel of taking credit for the work of others.

Both contentions were doused by public confirmations of her behind-the-scenes work.

Indeed, Jehudi Kinar, a former director of the World Jewish Affairs Department at the Israeli Ministry for Foreign Affairs, whose file included Jewish communities in distress during several years of her work, confirmed her success.

Ms. Feld Carr, now in her 70s, appears to take the criticism well.

“What can I say? When something is successful, everyone likes to say they did it.”

She then says she will leave it to the official citations of her work — from Menachem Begin, Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres, and her admittance to the Order of Canada and granting of Israel’s Presidential Award of Distinction — to defend her record.