Noam was 4 years old when he came with his grandmother to deposit his grandfather's gun at Yad Vashem • Since then he has followed him: "In every challenge I think what he would have done"
Noam with a picture of his grandfather
Photography:
IDF spokesperson
"Sometimes I feel like I'm more 'grandson' than Noam, but it's pride. There's definitely a big sense of missing out on not knowing my grandfather. I wish I could sit down for a cup of coffee with him," smiles Noam Ditsheim Kovner, 20, the leader's grandson The partisans and poet Abba Kovner, who was one of the founders of the Givati Brigade.
Exactly 33 years after his grandfather passed away, Noam points with his feet and practically observes his grandfather's immortal sentence "not as a sheep to the slaughter" as a fighter in a paratroop patrol.
Father Kovner (1918 - 1987) was a poet, writer and artist.
He served as a partisan leader in the Vilnius (Vilna) ghetto and after the Holocaust was one of the leaders of the "Revenge" group that tried to avenge the Nazis.
He coined the phrase "We will not go like sheep to the slaughter" in December 1941, after learning of the massive murder of the Jewish people.
At the assembly of the pioneering movements he clarified that "the only answer to the enemy is resistance."
During the War of Independence he served as the cultural officer of the Givati Brigade and encouraged his fighters through battle pages he wrote, including a particularly famous sentence - "It is better to fall in the house dig than to surrender to the murderous invader. Surrender - as long as the body lives and the last bullet breathes ! ".
4-year-old Noam deposits his grandfather's gun // Photo: Yad Vashem
Although Noam did not get to know his grandfather, he says that his unique story accompanies him at every moment of his life.
When he was 4 years old, he went with his grandmother to deposit at Yad Vashem the gun that Father Kovner received from the previous leader of the underground in the Vilnius (Vilna) ghetto and that accompanied him until the day he died in 1987.
In 2018, on the 100th anniversary of Abba Kovner's birth, Noam wrote a song about his grandfather called "What if" in which he talks about his impact on his life.
He performed the song in a performance in memory of his grandfather and he says that it was a particularly moving evening "I felt he heard me".
Last November, after a year of service at a boarding school for at-risk youth, in which he said he was persuaded to go into meaningful combat service ("I was not in high school eager to serve in combat, and in the year of service my thinking changed and I decided to push myself to the edge"), he enlisted in the Paratroopers Regiment.
"Since I enlisted I feel like Grandpa accompanies me in some way. Whenever there are physical challenges, journeys or navigations, I imagine him and think what he would have done, how he would have overcome the challenge. I think about the things he went through and it gives me strength."
"Feels like Grandpa by my side" // Photo: IDF Spokesman
Even today, nearly a year after enlisting, his grandfather's spirit leads him forward.
Today is the day of remembrance for the death of Father Kovner, and Noam says he proudly tells everywhere that this is his grandfather.
"Although as the years go by people know him less, but I still meet a lot of people who have heard of him in history classes or in a museum. I am very proud to tell that he is my grandfather."