Lone soldiers and survivors find special connection on Holocaust Remembrance Day
Two very different groups separated by generations are brought together by son of survivor who has dedicated his life to helping soldiers without families
Lone soldiers, those who protect the Jewish State yet have no families with whom to celebrate holidays or enjoy Shabbat, commemorated Holocaust Remembrance Day with a special ceremony in Jerusalem Tuesday night.
Survivors, their children and grandchildren, some of whom are currently serving in the IDF, gathered at the Wolfson Museum of Jewish Art for an evening sponsored by Tziki Aud, senior adviser at the Michael Levine Lone Soldier Center. Aud has been helping lone soldiers for years and is affectionately known as “father” of the lone soldiers.
Levine, for whom the center was named, was a lone soldier from the United States who served in an IDF paratrooper unit in 2006. While on special family leave in the US war broke out with Hezbollah and Levine voluntarily returned to Israel in order to take part in combat operations during the Second Lebanon War.He was killed in action shortly thereafter.
“So many of those who come from abroad have grandparents who survived the Holocaust,” Aud said. He himself is the son of a survivor. His father was in the Lodz ghetto, taken by the Nazis to Auschwitz and then transferred to Buchenwald and was subsequently marched out when Allied armies advanced towards the camp. Following the war Aud’s father came to Israel and served in the IDF during the War of Independence.
“The idea for the ceremony came from the remarkable interactions I’ve witnessed between the original generation of lone soldiers, the survivors’ generation, and the young people serving as lone soldiers in the IDF today,” Aud said.
Commemorating Holocaust Remembrance Day has taken on a special meaning for Aud. “We grew up in a period when being a Holocaust son was a bit of a shame,” he said. “Today I listen to my father when he talks – he only started talking back in ’93, when he decided to talk about what happened. Now when I listen to my father I know so much about my history that I didn’t know as a child.”
Survivors and lone soldiers, Aud has found, are connected in certain ways. “My father used to tell me that his home was his backpack. And that’s true also today for the lone soldiers. Their whole home is in a backpack – one day they live here, one day another place. We are trying to give them a feeling of a second home in Israel.”
Many lone soldiers come to Israel with nearly nothing and have little command of Hebrew. Their immediate concerns relate to the military and it’s often difficult for them to think of long term aspirations. “It’s good for the lone soldiers today to see there were people that came with nothing, from nothing, were here in the army and made a full life in spite of the difficultly,” Aud said.
Survivors and lone soldiers share an immediate connection, Aud said. “Survivors know what it means to come here not knowing the language, not knowing what’s going on, how the system works.”
Bringing together those who fought for the nation, from survivors to modern Zionists, is a natural expression of the “strong bond of deep respect and sacrifice (that) stretches across the generations of lone soldiers. I felt it was important to bring together those remaining survivors who fought to establish the State with their present-day counterparts who still come from abroad to carry on the Zionist dream”.
Professor Elazar Shafrir, a survivor and a former lone soldier, gave opening remarks and told his life story. Elazar escaped after two years in a concentration camp in Poland. At one point while in the camp he faked his own death. After arriving in Israel he served in the IDF and was stationed in Gush Etzion and Jerusalem. He was discharged from military service in 1949.
“Every year they ask me if there’s a ceremony just for lone soldiers,” Aud said. “This year we did it. Every year we’ll do it.”
The Times of Israel Community.