For Holocaust survivors who lost their families in the camps, immigrated to Israel and educated their sons in the Israeli systems - this is a week consisting of a year • The corona closure forced upon them by being at risk, prevents them from sharing the pain with their friends:

• "Isaac fulfilled his dream of being a paratrooper - and was killed." Shandy Miller // Photo: Oren Ben Hakon

"It is very hard for me to tell about Isaac. I have no problem telling my parents and brothers who were murdered in the Holocaust, and there is no Saturday afternoon that I do not tell my grandchildren or grandchildren the story of my family. But Isaac I cannot speak," Sarah (Shandy) admits Miller. 

At the age of 90, Sarah is part of a considerable public of senior citizens in Israeli society, who, along with health problems resulting from their advanced age, face double loss - as Holocaust survivors who lost many members of their families, and as bereaved parents who lost a son in Israeli wars or attacks. In some cases, they also face a feeling of intense loneliness due to the heavy risk of the Corona virus, and the last week - between Holocaust Day and Memorial Day - has become extremely complex for them.

Shandy has been living in the same house for 71 years, which Arabs abandoned in the War of Independence. "Even the bullet holes are still here." She was born in Czechoslovakia, and after the occupation was brought into the ghetto, where she wrote a diary (recently published by the German "child") in which she described her feelings. She was then deported to Auschwitz and "To this day I can't board a train in Jerusalem, it reminds me ...". After the Holocaust, when she was only 17.5 years old, she married and immigrated to Israel in 1949 with her husband, Michael-Elhanan, and her infant daughter. In Israel, the two brought two more children into the world. The eldest son was Isaac. 

As a member of a religious family, Isaac's course of study was clear. He attended Horev Elementary School in Jerusalem, and then went on to attend Yerushalayim for Young People (Yitzhak) and Yeshiva of the Rabbi Center. In July 1971, he joined Nahal together with Keren Shlomim, who was a member of the Ezra youth movement, to which he belonged, On the blades. 

"If you die - then for the state"

"Haim Meir Avner, who was killed this week in the explosion of a car bomb near Metula, was an extraordinary figure in the belly of the most ultra-Orthodox in Jerusalem," a journalist described the bereavement that struck the Avner family on March 10, 1985. Keeping the commandments. On the other hand, he knew how to integrate prayers and religious studies into small matters. 

"Sports, for example, were his great hobby. Bella's son, the only Holocaust survivor in her family who carries a number on her arm, the son of Hanoch, a wise pupil born in Poland. The other day, two days after Haim was brought to rest, the mother could not hold back her tears." "They made us there in Auschwitz, after German soldiers followed us with weapons in hand and pointed their guns at us. I was most proud to see my boys holding weapons proudly," she said. 

In early March, moments before the Health Ministry's severe restrictions on the Corona virus were imposed on the public, the Avner family managed to ascend to a grave of life on Mount Herzl. They are already commemorating Memorial Day in the home of Moti, Haim's brother, in Efrat. Like Wendy, Bella also lives in the same house where the family lived on Zephaniah Street in Jerusalem, but because of her corona, her daughter, Rebecca, who lives with her, decided to move until the epidemic ended in the fireplace. 

"Haim Meir was a handsome young man, gentle and kind," says Bella (94). "All he could do for a human was in him. I miss him very much." She doesn't like to talk about the Holocaust, the awful period in Auschwitz, but the narrator's carving on her arm tells a wordless story. In her older age, the stories of her past life mix with one another, like the longing and bereavement. 

"Days of Sorrow - and of Unity"

Jacob Schwartz is also not easy these days, between Holocaust Day and Memorial Day. He was born in Yugoslavia, and when he was 13, the Nazis captured the country and his father was taken from the family. He was later deported with his mother and two sisters to the ghetto and from there to Auschwitz. "Me and my sisters Mengele sent to the right, but my mother held my sister's little daughter in hand and Mengele sent her to the left. My older sister saw that Mom went somewhere else. She ran to her and went with her." It was the last time he saw them. 

For years, Schwartz has toured from place to place, doing forced missile production in favor of the German war machine. At the end of the war, he was sent to a death march and abandoned with his comrades by the Nazis who fled. He reunited with his uncle in Budapest and from there he moved to his hometown in Yugoslavia, where he married and brought his first son into the world. He served in the army for a year and a half, and when he saw an ad in the newspaper "Establish a State for the Jews," he decided to immigrate to Israel. 

The bereavement hit the Schwartz family's home on October 28, 1973, four days after the official end of the Yom Kippur War. My father, the son of Jacob and Judith, was called to his unit at the beginning of the war, just months after the birth of his eldest son, Seagull, and sent to fights in Sinai. After the days of heavy fighting, his jeep hit a mine and he was killed in an explosion.

"Because of my son he was killed," Yaakov said in tears. Initially, my 22-year-old father was not called to reserve duty. "He kept asking why they weren't recruited," the father recalls. After the first three days of the war, during which he spent nights with his father, who worked as a fisherman in Tiberias, Jacob told him: "If you are not quiet and want to enlist - go to the city officer and find out." The next day my father performed his father's instruction, and was sent to join the forces in Sinai, where he found his death.