by Ruth Gruber
On Friday, October 5, 1973, the Russian advisers in Syria packed, pulled up their families, and flew home. Prime Minister Golda Meir waited for more signals.
Then, at dawn on Yom Kippur, the signals came. Egyptians were massing men and tanks along the Canal. This was no military exercise. Golda’s chief of staff, General Dado Elazar, pleaded for total mobilization and a preemptive strike. But Moshe Dayan, her minister of defense, disagreed. The United States had warned them against taking a preemptive strike.
It was a tragic dilemma.
Whoever strikes first in the Middle East has all the advantages. The lives of hundreds of soldiers would be saved; the war would be swift. But weighed against that strategic advantage was the threat of losing U.S. aid.
In the end, Golda agreed with Dayan. No total mobilization. No preemptive strike.
Not only Israel but the rest of the world as well, even U.S. Intelligence, was caught by surprise. And suddenly, throughout America and Europe, millions of people, Christians and Jews, galvanized themselves into action, expressing tangibly, emotionally, their ties with the beleaguered country.
In New York the associate dean of the Catholic Fordham University, Joseph Mulholland, sent a letter to the United Jewish Appeal: “We have already made a financial contribution,” he wrote of himself and his wife. “We are willing to help in any other way you feel possible—to answer phones or lick stamps. I would be willing to go to Israel to relieve a man for other duties. You know, the world stood silent while the Six Million went into the gas chambers, but I do not intend to remain silent while millions of the survivors are flushed down an oil well.”
Raquela, returning to work in the hospital, found a whole cadre of American, Canadian, and South African orthopedists, surgeons, burn specialists, and nurses who had rushed over to help.
The Israel Air Force was being decimated. Its planes were disintegrating in midair, destroyed by Russian-built SAM-6S. On Yom Kippur, ten Phantom jets and thirty Skyhawks were burned in the air. Most of the pilots’ bodies were pulverized before the men could even open their parachutes.
The Israel Army, fighting on two fronts, realized its first thrust must be against the Syrians. The heartland of Israel was in mortal danger. The Sinai could wait.
Raquela’s boys were in the north, on the Syrian front.
Gideon was with the Armored Corps somewhere in the Golan Heights.
Amnon was with an infantry unit.
Rafi, buck private, drove back and forth in a half-track, ferrying bombs to the north, where the nights had begun to freeze and Mount Hermon was draped with snow. Jenny and Yaakov were still in London, desperately trying to board a plane to Israel.
The television set was an altar; each evening, exhausted after work, Raquela sat with Vivian and Mama in front of the little screen. Moshe was in Beersheba supervising emergency procedures for wounded soldiers. On the television screen, black-and-white fire streaked through the sky. The war was in their living room. They sat anguished, watching the terrible beauty of tracers and shells lighting up the sky.
Tanks exploded on the screen. Was Gideon in one of them? Where was Amnon? Was Rafi safe?
Vivian was seven months pregnant.
They kept the telephone open. Maybe one of the boys would be near a field phone and could call them.
The telephone did not ring. Not the first night or the second.
On the third night, Rafi called. No news of Gideon. But Amnon was okay and he was exhilarated. The Syrians were being pushed back!
On the fourth night, Raquela threw her arms around Vivi. The Syrians were in total retreat. The surprise attack in the north had failed. Maybe the boys were all safe.
With the counterattack in the north in full momentum, the army could now turn to the war in the Sinai.
Once again the family watched the screen as the desert exploded in flames and heat and blood.
Vivian was not sleeping nights. There was still no word from Gideon.
The battles were taking ferocious losses in lives and matériel. Russia swiftly resupplied the Arabs; in the course of one day alone, Friday, October 12, Soviet cargo planes made sixty flights to Cairo and Damascus, ferrying in new military hardware.
Prime Minister Golda Meir turned to the United States. She had resisted the temptation of a preemptive strike, thereby suffering the tragic and dangerous losses of troops and planes and ammunition. She appealed to President Richard Nixon—not for men but to balance the aid the Russians were giving their Arab clients.
A few days passed; then President Nixon ordered a rescue airlift of giant C-56 Galaxies. A wave of gratitude lifted the depression and anguish in the country. The United States had not forgotten its commitment. Israel was not alone.
On Sunday, October 14, the first of the C-56 Galaxies landed at Lydda Airport. Then, dropping onto the tarmac every fifteen or twenty minutes, the massive planes unloaded their welcome cargo—tanks, ammunition, air-to-air rockets, medical supplies, even winter underwear and woolen helmets for the soldiers in the north. Phantom Jets were flown in, to replace the fighters destroyed by Russian missiles.
In the hospitals Israeli and foreign doctors and nurses worked without rest, using blood plasma and medicines to save lives. The air over the Hadassah-Hebrew University Medical Center was shattered by the whirling blades of army helicopters landing in the courtyard, bringing in soldiers with limbs torn off, faces mutilated, bodies hideously burned.
Thus far there had been no reports of the number of soldiers killed.
On the day the airlift started, the army lifted the curtain on the terrible losses of men.
Vivian, listening to the radio, rushed to the phone to call Moshe in the hospital in Beersheba. The university itself was closed; most of the students and faculty were at the front.
“Daddy”—Vivian’s voice was choked—“the chief of staff has just given out the figures. Six hundred fifty-six soldiers killed so far.”
“Six hundred fifty-six,” Moshe shuddered.
“Daddy, General Elazar said all the families of the dead soldiers have been informed. It must mean Gideon’s alive.”
“Of course, Vivi. That’s what it means.”
“But it’s more than a week since I’ve had any word. I can’t understand how Gideon can’t find some way to tell me he’s all right. Amnon called us; Rafi calls every chance he gets. But not Gideon. Surely by now he could send me a message; somebody must be coming to Jerusalem from the north. Some friend of his could have phoned me that they saw him somewhere.” Her voice broke. “I just don’t know what to think, Daddy.”
Moshe tried to reassure her. “Vivi,” he said softly into the phone, “he must be alive. The army would have sent someone to inform you otherwise.”
The next day, there was a knock on Vivian’s door. It was Gideon’s driver.
Sitting in the living room, he told her how, on the day the war broke out, Gideon had been promoted in the field to the rank of major—at twenty-three, deputy commander of a tank regiment.
Earlier, Major General Albert Mandler* tried to dissuade him from front-line duty because he had lost his brother. One death was enough for any family to endure. But Gideon had refused and gone right into battle.
Leading his tanks to the front lines, he had stopped on the highway to lay tires across the road, to save it from the heavy tread of his tanks.
Major General Dan Laner, responsible for the southern area of the Golan Heights, pulled up in his staff car. “Gideon, Gideon,” he said. “This is war. What are you worried about a road for?”
“I’m not worried, sir. But other vehicles will have to use it, to bring up reinforcements and supplies. We’ve got to leave it undamaged.”
Gideon and his men drove their tanks along the narrow ledge of the Golan. As Yom Kippur drew to a close, the Golan was strewn with burned-out tanks and the bodies of dead men.
Gideon and his tank crews fought without rest, outnumbered, ten tanks to one.
All through Sund
ay night and Monday, the tank battles raged. Nearly every tank in Gideon’s unit was destroyed.
He had not slept for nearly seventy-two hours. In a brief lull he pulled a yellow gasoline coupon out of his pocket and wrote on the back:
My sweet darling, I am writing these few words in the middle of a battle in the night. Only a few seconds ago, we destroyed five tanks. If, God forbid, something happens to me, know that I love you unto death and that I admire you always. I am thinking of our baby.
Three hours later, at two A.M. on Tuesday morning, a Russian-made bazooka hit his tank. Gideon, standing up in the turret, was ejected about thirty yards into the flaming sky. His men in the turret were burned to death.
Only his driver survived. It was he who found Gideon’s body, broken but intact, with the note to Vivian.
What does it mean to be a woman in Israel? Raquela thought, looking at Vivi’s pale strained face and swollen body, widowed at twenty-three.
How does one comfort a young woman whose body must hunger for her husband? How does one help her mourn? How does one comfort the wives and mothers and children of dead soldiers?
Once again, Israel defeated her enemies. The war, which had begun in disaster, ended in stunning victory, the most spectacular of all the four wars. Israel’s soldiers stood twenty-five miles from Damascus, sixty miles from Cairo.
But a whole generation of young men, twenty-six hundred, had been wiped out.
And in the hospitals, Raquela again moved among the burned and crippled men who filled the wards to overflowing.
On Christmas eve, Vivian gave birth to Gideon’s daughter, and named her Gal—the Hebrew word for “wave.”
The next year, 1974, Moshe opened the medical school of the Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. He turned the presidency of the university over to Yosef Tekoah, the former Israeli permanent delegate to the United Nations, and assumed the challenge he had given himself.
Moshe was given full control of the three agencies concerned with health in the Negev—the Ministry of Health, the Kupat Holim—the Sick Fund of the Histadrut Labor Federation—and the medical school. He was in effect the medical chief of the frontier.
Raquela, at fifty-one, more beautiful than ever, began to spend more time in Beersheba, as Moshe led young medical students into the villages and the Bedouin settlements in the Negev, into the baby clinics, the mother-and-child-care centers, the old-age homes and the hospitals, to become involved, from the first day at school, in the work of saving lives.
It was 1976. Amnon was in his fourth year of medical school and Rafi was ending his three-year army stint. Rafi had followed in Gideon’s footsteps; he was a lieutenant in the Tank Corps.
On a warm morning in August, he came home to Jerusalem. “Mother,” he said, “I’m scheduled to leave the army on Tisha B’Av*—on the fifth of August. My commanding officer has asked me to stay on, to volunteer for another year.”
Raquela’s heart began to pound. “I thought you were all set to go to the university to study philosophy and literature.”
“I know. But Mother, they’ve invested so much in me. They’ve trained me.…What do you think?”
Raquela put her arm on Rafi’s shoulder. Her fingers rested on his lieutenant’s bars.
Tears choked in her throat. “As a mother, Rafi, I want you to come home. I want you to go to the university. I want you to start your life. Begin your career…” She swallowed hard. “But as an Israeli, I can’t tell you to come home. Rafi, only you can make this decision.”
She saw his face tighten. “I’m convinced I cannot say no.”
On Tisha B’Av, he telephoned early in the morning. “I’m signing up for another year, Mother. I’ll try to get home this weekend…”
When would there be an end to this war? There had not been a single day of peace.…
She drove to the Hadassah hospital on Mount Scopus. It had been completely restored and reopened in October 1975. Three thousand Hadassah pilgrims had come, with joy and thanksgiving, to rededicate it.
She was restless. She jumped into her car and drove to her office in an old Arab house on Cremieux Street, in the quarter known as the German Colony. She opened the huge book for 1976. Each year had its own book, its own record, its own insights into how to save the lives of babies and their mothers.
She closed the book and got back into her car. Something impelled her to drive to the medical center on the hill in Ein Karem. She entered the delivery room. One of her friends was delivering a baby. She stood, watching. Tears welled in her eyes as she helped deliver a beautiful boy. Like Israel, she thought, born in travail and blood.
She drove home. The warm August sun dappled the road. She entered the house and began fixing dinner. Moshe was coming up from Beersheba in the late afternoon.
She walked through the French doors into the garden and stood under the tall tree Papa had planted for her. The garden was scented with roses. She walked down the small path to Mama’s cottage. Mama was smiling. “I bought a big bag of chocolates, biscuits, and sweets for Rafi when he comes home today.”
“Mama, he’s not coming today. He’s signing up for another year.”
Mama nodded. “The country needs him. Such a boy. One shouldn’t say it, but he’s my favorite. Kisses my cheeks, my head, my whole face, every time he comes home.”
“We’ll see him Saturday, I hope. He’s going to try to get leave.”
Raquela returned to the house.
At six-thirty in the morning the doorbell rang. Moshe went to the door.
Raquela heard him scream, “Rafi, Rafi, Rafi!”
She rushed out of the bedroom. “Moshe, what is it?”
She looked toward the door. Two officers and two young women in uniform stood in the doorway.
She steadied herself against the wall.
One of the officers was speaking. “We regret to inform you that your son, Lieutenant Rafael Brzezinski, died last night in the line of duty.”
Moshe held her close.
Raquela, dressed in a black shirtwaist and skirt, stood before the iron gate leading to the Soldiers’ Cemetery on Mount Herzl. Here thousands of men and women killed in the four wars lay buried in neat rows.
As each mourner approached her, Raquela extended her hand in mute recognition. Her face was pale and drawn; her eyes were dry; her mouth was fixed in the familiar Mona Lisa curve. Beside her, Moshe and Amnon, Jenny and Vivi, stood protectively. Moshe’s face was ashen. Amnon’s body seemed hunched with grief.
Mama wept openly. “If I don’t die now,” she cried, “there is no death.”
An army van pulled up; soldiers lifted out the simple army coffin draped with the flag of Israel. Rafi was carried by his closest friends through the crowded rows of graves strewn with plants and flowers.
The procession followed to a freshly dug grave. Rafi was being accorded a hero’s funeral, laid to rest next to General Dado Elazar, former chief of staff, hero of the Northern Command in the Six-Day War, and Yoni Netanyahu, the brilliant young commander of the Entebbe raid who was killed in the rescue of the hostages from Uganda.
Raquela listened as the army chaplain intoned the Kaddish:
Magnified and sanctified by God’s great name
In this world of His creation.
Then Rafi’s commanding officer spoke in a soft voice; he was flanked by dozens of Rafi’s friends and comrades, young men and women in uniform.
“We will always remember you, Rafi. Your sweet personality, how you played the guitar for us the long nights in camp, how you loved to read poetry and share it with us. You were a gifted officer and teacher in the Tank Corps. You taught your men what a tank is—how to drive it, how to take care of it, and what it means to be part of this army. You taught them what Israel means to you. They loved you, Rafi.”
The healing sun shone down upon Raquela. Her throat was choked; she was unable to speak.
“Rafi. Rafi.” She repeated his name over and over to herself. “My son, Rafael—Heale
d by God.”
Around her the people stood in the noon brilliance. From somewhere behind her in the cemetery she heard the quiet weeping of women kneeling upon the graves of their husbands and sons.
The brief ceremony was over. Raquela lifted a small stone and placed it on the grave. “Rafi, my beloved Rafi,” she whispered.
Each morning during the seven days of the shiva, Raquela left the house as soon as there was light in the sky and drove up the hill to Mount Herzl. She put fresh flowers from Papa’s garden on Rafi’s grave. Then she returned home and composed herself to receive the daily stream of visitors.
It was the ancient wisdom of the shiva that brought friends from the whole country to the house, to sit with Raquela and Moshe, with Amnon and Mama, with Jenny and Vivi, to comfort them, to talk to them of Rafi. Hundreds of soldiers came each day. They sat silently in the kitchen, in the dining room, upstairs in Rafi’s bedroom, neat and untouched, filled with Rafi’s books of poetry, its ceiling a collage of maps he had cut from the National Geographic.
Raquela sat among her circle of friends; photos of Rafi’s smiling face were on the coffee table; neighbors brought cakes and sweets and poured coffee for the visitors.
Late one morning, a hush fell on the people in the sunken living room. Golda Meir had come to comfort Raquela and Moshe, straight from the Hadassah Hospital in Ein Karem, where she had been undergoing a regular checkup.
She sat on the sofa, beside Raquela; for the first few minutes all the guests—neighbors, Hadassah nurses, soldiers—withdrew into themselves in awe. Naomi, Raquela’s Kurdish housekeeper, stood frozen, balancing a tray of coffee cups.
Golda was reminiscing; she had known Rafi since he was born. “Our children,” she said simply, “our soldiers. We mothers and fathers”—she spoke the words on everyone’s mind—“we nurture our children like precious flowers. Then they grow up…and go to war…”
The whole atmosphere changed. The neighbors began chatting with Golda, as if a member of the family had entered, as if their own mother or grandmother were talking to them, affectionately, informally. Naomi, no longer frozen, moved closer into the circle.