During the recently marked Memorial Day, Arutz Sheva visited the home
of Shalom and Esther Hazan. Shalom and Esther Hazan’s bereavement
story is especially difficult to digest. They have lost a brother, a
son, a daughter and a son-in-law. The grandchildren who have remained
without parents have moved in with their grandparents. Their home is
one in which one cannot help but feel the mourning.
“My brother was killed one day before the ceasefire that ended the
Six Day War, and my son was killed on September 28, 1980,” Shalom
Hazan recalled. “My daughter and her husband were killed on December
3, 1993.”
Esther Hazan said, “We feel the grief all year, it’s not just on
Memorial Day. It’s all year long. We feel it every moment, every
second. We’re always with them. Our heads are only with them. We only
think about them. It’s extremely difficult for us.”
She painfully said that she does not celebrate Independence Day,
which for many bereaved families is a very painful transition after
Memorial Day – from mourning to celebration.
“The truth is that I don’t have an Independence Day,” she said. “I
had two children and I lost them. I was left without children. I
don’t have an Independence Day. It’s very difficult for me. I can’t
be happy after what happened to me. It doesn’t mean anything that so
many years have passed. It’s my entire life.”
Arutz Sheva came to the Hazan family home along with Elik Avrahami,
head of the Ground Forces teleprocessing unit. Avrahami visits the
Hazans on a regular basis as part of a special project in which
officers ´adopt´ bereaved families. The bereavement, as well as a
special date on the calendar, connected between Avrahami and the
Hazan family.
“I am a member of a bereaved family,” Avrahami said. “My father was
killed in the Yom Kippur War on the 19th of Tishrei, the tenth day of
the war. It comes out during Chol Hamoed Sukkot. In 2005, General
Elazar Stern, then the head of the Israeli Human Resources
Directorate, issued a call for accompanying bereaved families. After
thinking about it, I decided to go for it and I asked to join the
project.”
He recalled his first meeting with the Hazans and said, “I was really
welcomed with open arms by both Shalom and Esther. And then we sat
and talked a bit about their son Ami, about who he was and what he
was. And then we got to his date of death, and the date of death is
the 19th of Tishrei, which sent shivers down my spine. My date is the
19th of Tishrei, their date is the 19th of Tishrei. At the same
meeting, I found out about their daughter Dina and her husband Tzvi
who were killed in an accident and about Shalom’s brother, Yitzhak,
who died during the Six Day War. I remember coming out of the house
with a feeling that is hard for me to describe.”
Shalom said that Avrahami visits the family each Memorial Day and
also drops by every few months.
