Tuesday 2:45 AM CT / 10:45 AM IT
Sergeant Major (reserves) Vladimir Loza, 36, was killed in battle in Gaza when an explosive device was detonated near him. He is the 895th soldier killed on and since October 7.
The vast number of soldiers killed can sometimes numb us, as name after name is published, always in the exact same wording which never changes in the IDF announcements. The almost daily announcement, on the radio and television, always starts with the words: "Released for publication - soldier X (rank, name, age, and city of residence) was killed today, leaving behind (parents, siblings, children)."
But behind each name is an entire world, a life not yet lived to its fullest, and a family - grandparents, parents, siblings, and in the case of reservists, often young children robbed of a parent at a terribly young age.
The bereaved mother of fallen soldier Uri Yehonatan Cohen posted the following on Facebook. I thought it is particularly poignant and might convey a little bit of what we are going through here in Israel - multiplied by 895.
"My child left home after the holiday of Shavuot, and he came back in blue boxes.
They stand in the center of his bedroom, nobody understands and nobody can touch them. The boxes scream in deathly silence.
A uniform, a towel, a phone charger, sports clothes, toiletries, a wallet, a necklace, a broken watch, chewing gum, a candy... each carefully and separately wrapped.
So I get to keep his smell.
My Uri left home on a Tuesday morning, wearing a uniform, carrying a bag and a rifle, and he came back to me in a casket.
This morning at 7 when I visited him, I walked around the cemetery, and my tears washed over his new home.
The home of my 20-year-old child.
And all I wanted, all I yearned for was to get into his casket, and hug him tightly, tightly, tightly, tightly. And never leave him.
An unbearable pain."
May their memories be for a blessing and may all the families have a nechama as we keep them in our hearts.
SC
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