treated. Yitzhak Pundik, who led a unit’s assault from the front, to save his people who were surrounded by Arabs and British.
* * *
One day I discovered a harrowing document in a newspaper: the obitu-ary written by Dr Elieser Rachmilevitch for his son Yaakov, our com-pany medic, who had fallen in Isdud. He wrote:
"Your commanders, my son, did not mourn you. The battalions of theHaganah, in whose ranks you fought for several years, did not honor you. Your comrades too, who you treated in battle and whose lives you perhaps saved, have forgotten you. Your parents learnt the terrible news that you had fallen on 4 July 1948, in a chance encounter with a young woman in the street. "The news is already three weeks old that Yaakov, the medical orderly, fell in the battle for Isdud, " she told us...
Don’t be sad, my son. Do not grieve. One day Israel will live in peace. Then a new generation will honor those who gave their lives for freedom. This new generation will appreciate your kind, will recognize you as heroes who saved Israel and brought freedom.
And I, your bereaved father, what can I say to you? No gravestone will commemorate you, because we don’t know your resting place. Only your image, my son, I will carry that in my heart till the last of my days.
With love, your father Dr Elieser Rachmilevitch. "
* * *
During the fighting we often thought of our parents. If we thought about the possibility of dying in battle, we didn’t think about ourselves, but about them. And if one of our comrades fell, our first thoughts were for the father, the mother. But we never dared to visit the parents of our fallen.
I had the feeling that the time had come to explain the attitude of our fighting comrades to the bereaved parents. Not to comfort them. But to free them of the terrible fear that his comrades had forgotten their fallen son.
Letter to a bereaved father
I felt shame in the depths of my heart as I read the awful words you used to formulate your obituary for your son, company medical orderly Yaakov Rachmilevitch.