Lt to rt: Gideon Levitas & Avraham Yahel

This year will be the fortieth anniversary since Avraham Yahel and his wife Hannah lost their son, Shmulik, in a military training accident after the Six Day War in which he fought.....

Avraham Yahel passed away in 2004, at age 89. He was a great friend, neighbor and mentor. As time goes by I feel morally impelled to collect my recollections and create a personal memorial tribute to him. Each successive year my feeling has deepened that his legacy of unusually dedicated voluntarism and national chairmanship of the Yad LeBanim association of bereaved families, as well as my vivid memories of our personal friendship, remain intact.

Avraham

Hannah and Avraham emigrated from Rumania to Eretz Israel in 1936 and settled in Netanya in 1946. Hannah worked as a caregiver in a regional mental hospital; Avraham was a long time Histadrut Labor Federation cultural coordinator and also a corresponding reporter for both the labour movement Hebrew daily, Davar, and The Jerusalem Post.

Avraham was intellectually curious and largely self-taught. He completed Hebrew gymnasium high school in Rumania, joined the pioneer Jewish youth movement Gordonia and came on aliyah in 1936. He served as a recruit in the Palestine Jewish settlement police, attaining the rank of sergeant, and later became an official in the Mapai political party and the Histadrut Labor Federation, filling various positions including that of head of the Culture Department at the Netanya Labor Council, as well as being a gifted journalist and writer.

He invariably referred to having acquired his knowledge and experience in the University of Zegouritza - his birthplace and hometown till he was twenty. Much of his written work, particularly as an elderly man and retiree, revolved around that formative period of his childhood and youth.

Avraham had a large appetite for life and was quite adventurous, travelling abroad to visit many countries, particularly those with remnants of Jewish communities that had been decimated during the Holocaust, or those in the former Soviet Union which had endured repression and barely survived.

His dramatic article, "My search for a lost Jewish child", which cast light on a tragic aftermath of World War II, was published in Esra Magazine #77, June-August 1994. The article, which I translated from Hebrew, described Yahel's painstaking and risky search, in July 1991, in Moldova, for a missing grandson of the last rabbi of his hometown, Zegouritza. At age 6, in 1941, the child was separated, or perhaps abducted, from his mother as they fled the Nazi onslaught in Bessarabia, once part of Rumania, only to be sent north to forced labor camps by retreating Russian army units. Persevering, Yahel collated information that the missing lad had eventually been hidden, saved and later adopted by a Gentile Rumanian and had in fact married and lived as a non-Jew, in some ways aware of his Jewish ancestry, but unable to locate any of his former family. His death in 1976 had left his only son, whom Yahel finally identified as the surviving rabbi's great-grandson, the last link in the family.

Long before the term "coach" became fashionable and semi-professional, incorporating the terms "mentor" and "role model" still in vogue, I was fortunate to find and make friends with Avraham who became an exemplar, in Hebrew "chonech", or one who "shows you the ropes" through companionship and good neighborliness. Our relationship began as colleagues, both employed as journalists by The Jerusalem Post in 1964; he as a correspondent for Davar and The Jerusalem Post in Netanya, and I as a staff reporter at The Jerusalem Post Tel Aviv office. We collaborated on a two-part expose of conditions at the Tel Mond Juvenile Prison. "Behind the Bars of Tel Mond" appeared in The Jerusalem Post on August 7 and 9, 1964. The article attracted attention in Hebrew dailies and led to a review of the overall situation and subsequent changes.

Our friendship grew stronger over the years. In 1967, after Shmulik's tragic death, despite our living in different towns, we remained in touch. In 1975 my family and I moved to Netanya, and our paths drew closer, since the Labor Council at the time filled a klitah (absorption) function and support role for newcomers to the city, helping them find jobs and social connections. In my capacity as neighborhood community worker in Project Renewal of the Dora quarter, an underdeveloped area with a large proportion of hardship cases and welfare recipients, I found in Avraham a kindred spirit, a social worker at heart if not by vocation, who helped me navigate the frequently entangled and complex network of pressure groups, political players, and professional challenges of my many tasks.

Shmulik

Born in January 1949, Shmulik was the youngest of three children. He went to kindergarten and to the Be'eri primary school in Netanya, and to local secondary schools. Uri, his elder brother, recalls Shmulik's lively childhood, involvement in youthful escapades, his love of books and his favorites: Robinson Crusoe, Tarzan and the Hebrew Hasamba adventure series which so stimulated his imagination. Shmulik's elder sister Naomi remembers him as mischievous, outgoing, always on the go, hiking or cycling. Then, all too suddenly, their kid brother grew into adolescence, matured, loved and was loved. He followed Uri's choice of enlisting in the paratrooper corps, and participated in battles on the Sinai front during the Six Day War. He seemed, his father recalled, to have aged prematurely on returning home from the battlefields.

Then on September18, he was killed in a military accident on the Golan during a demonstration of a newly assembled anti-tank missile, which exploded prematurely while being fired. The deep trauma of this accident later motivated Avraham to a lifelong commitment to direct care for the welfare and rehabilitation of bereaved parents, siblings, spouses and orphans, via the Yad LeBanim association.

Shmulik Yahel is buried in the military section of Netanya's old cemetery in the Ben Zion neighborhood. Every year family members and friends attend a memorial service at his grave, on the anniversary itself and on The Fallen Soldiers’ Commemoration Day (Yom HaZikaron). As a family friend and associate of his late father Avraham Yahel, I have drawn on his parents' and siblings' memories encapsulated in a short film produced by the Association for the Heritage of the Paratrooper Corps.

When Shmuel was killed the shock and grief that enveloped the Yahel family in due course galvanized Avraham into a leading role as an advocate of bereaved families via the Yad LeBanim association, which represents surviving next-of-kin of soldiers killed during their active service. In 1971, after serving as the association's chairman in Netanya, Avraham was elected National Chairman of Yad LeBanim, and subsequently served as a member of the national executive and as editor of the association's journal "Siach Shkulim" (Discourse of the Bereaved) for over three decades, as well as undertaking numerous additional responsibilities over the years.

Avraham was a source of support, a guide to the perplexed, and it could be said, a beacon of hope for all those enveloped by the darkness of loss, particularly those bereaved families unable to comprehend and cope with the staggering reality of suddenly losing their motivation to continue living. Standing up for the rights, the dignity and the human needs of the bereaved, whose loved ones have been cut off in the prime of life, requires courage. It was that courage to face the devastating truth that Avraham imbued.