"We didn't do our homework because there was a fulfilling-level shelling," reads a note submitted by 9-year-old Haim Garlick to his teacher in 1972. The note was written for him by none other than the head of the Northern Command in the days before the Yom Kippur War, Yitzhak Hofi (Haka).
In Moshav Ramat Magshimim in the Golan Heights, shelling was part of the routine in those days, parents were used to going down to bomb shelters, children were accustomed to traveling to school between falls. Therefore, when two soldiers arrived on the morning of Yom Kippur 5774 and announced that prayers had to be stopped because there was high alert, no one was moved. "At first the men got angry. The soldiers presented the situation as alert and we lived like that all the time, and because of the alert, people aren't evacuated," says Varda Hershkovitz.
The residents of Ramat Magshimim experienced the construction of the moshav, its abandonment and the exciting return to it, against the background of the battles of attrition after Yom Kippur and the fear of returning the areas on which it was built. They were caught up in the war and conducted themselves like a Somma, groping their way without knowing where they were headed.
The mothers remember the concern for the children when they fled to the shelters, the harsh sights and indescribable smells burned into the children, and for all of them, the familiar and beloved home instantly became a struggle for survival for life. Today, 50 years later, they look at the moshav they built and continue to develop with pride, and know that what they experienced on its land is an inseparable part of their lives.
In those days, the children played in the battlefield as a playground. This is not an image, but a reality of life - bullets, fragments of shells and military parachutes they found in their yard became toys and amusement facilities. They knew the sights, smells and sounds that make up a combat agenda. Garlick, who was 10 years old when the war broke out, tells of hosting the moshav of the division commander at the time, Yaakov Yaakov, nicknamed Double Jack, and of the children's total control over combat issues.
"During the hospitality, there was a loud boom and he jumped, so my 5-year-old sister said to him: 'Don't you hear that these are the exits of our mortars, and not of the Syrians?'" he says, laughing. Another time, a pilot was a guest at the family's home and told about the secret means the Air Force has against Syrian missiles. Young Haim went to his room and brought from there a particle that was common on the moshav paths. "It was a kind of cloud, like a Lipa, that the plane releases and homing on the missile. The whole economy would fill up with it, and we, the children, would collect it. He was shocked."
Take care of the albums, the dogs and the sukkah decorations. Hershkovitz, Garlick and Geniram, Photo: Gil Eliyahu
Garlick's cousin, Haim Ganiram, was 9 years old when the war broke out. Life in the shadow of the shelling was his daily routine, and he, too, saw war as an almost normal childhood experience. "It's unpleasant to say, but as a child I remember the war as an experience," he recalls. Living alongside the soldiers who secured the moshav after the war was his daily routine. "The tanks that were at the entrance to the community - that was our playground. We would go to the soldiers, they would bring sweets and we would bring them mother's cakes." During particularly tense times, the shelter was their home. "We adjusted our lives around the house and the shelter, we wouldn't roam freely during this period, but we learned to find other solutions and it was great. We played a lot of social games in the shelter and read books."
Accustomed to shells whistling over their homes, fasting and cut off from the media, the residents of Ramat Magshimim did not realize that war had broken out, even when they had already been evacuated from their seats on the bus. Little did they know that they would be the only settlement to be occupied during the war, just after its residents were evacuated after a long series of delays and disturbances. The first day of the war, the 14 families of the moshav experienced continuous shelling and repeated attempts to evacuate the residents from their homes located three kilometers east of the Syrian border. We returned to those days with two cousins and one mother, who experienced the national shock from within their home.
Haim Ganiram: "My younger brother Moti, who is 8, ran home alone. He went down to the shelter of the house, and although he knew how to use the connection, he did not do so because of Shabbat and Kippur. When they reached him, they found him asleep, after crying for several hours."
20 minutes like an eternity
Varda Hershkovitz arrived at the moshav as a service girl. She met her chosen one there, and they were the fifth couple to marry at Ramat Magshimim. When the war broke out, she was the mother of a two-and-a-half-year-old daughter and a four-month-old baby. "On Yom Kippur, we prayed in the shelter, which was also our synagogue. There was a small room that functioned as a switchboard, with a small walkie-talkie on, but we were not informed of anything. At 10:30 a.m. on Saturday, two soldiers arrived at the shelter to give a statement, saying that there was a high alert, an order from the military to evacuate women and children to Kibbutz Lavi, and that the men would remain in the moshav for further instructions. In retrospect, we discovered that by that time all the communities in the southern Golan Heights had already been evacuated towards the Jordan Valley."
After a halachic consultation, all the families left the prayers and went to their homes to prepare for the trip. "When you organize to travel on a holiday or on Shabbat, you shouldn't take things for the rest of the week, only what you need for that moment. We were in holiday clothes and took in a bag only what was needed for the babies. We also didn't think we were going for long, it wasn't in our heads that there would be anything big. When I tell secular people the story, they ask why we didn't turn on the radio, but it wasn't in our heads at all."
Families split up on the run during the shelling. Members of the Ganiram family in a shelter in the moshav, photo: courtesy of the Ganiram family and the Golan Heights Archives
The residents waited for an hour for the bus, not knowing what was happening. "We're waiting for the bus – and there's silence outside, there's no hint that there's going to be something and that you have to be stressed about something. The bus didn't arrive and there was no update. We began to think that they had cancelled the alert, maybe they had forgotten us. We didn't know whether to go home or not." Only after about an hour and a half did the bus arrive for evacuation. "A driver named Ben Tzur, who was Motta Gur's driver for the six days, arrived. I sat in the back with the two girls, ten minutes before the whole mess started. Suddenly I discover that I forgot the pacifier at home – it was a real mental oversight," she laughs.
Varda Hershkovitz: "When we entered the house, there were shrapnel in every corner. But in the living room there was a wonder - there was a table with a white tablecloth, with candlesticks that read 'Shabbat' on them, and everything was completely intact. It was a sign to me that we had a great miracle."
"I told my husband to run fast to get the pacifier until all the women got on the bus. He did not manage to return, and at 13:50 P.M. a heavy barrage of shelling began. We didn't understand that it was a war, we thought we were being shelled, as was the case in normal times before. The driver told us to rush to the shelters, but the bus was standing near the houses and the main shelter was too far away."
Varda and her daughters and all the other residents of the moshav began to run to the shelters and try to find refuge in the general chaos. "In the first shelter there was no room, neither in the second shelter, and then I went to the shelter near the third house, from where I saw that my house had been hit directly. There was a hole in the wall in the kitchen window and a shell fell on the shelter's bulletproof vest. The shrapnel flew into the house and caused a lot of damage. I didn't know where my husband was. I went into the shelter of the family next to me. There was a couple with two children, and when I arrived I discovered to my horror that I was without my eldest daughter. I've said it hundreds of times, and always when I do, I get goosebumps. I was horrified. The friend reassured me that I probably hadn't noticed, and the girl went with her father. Suddenly, my husband arrives, and he's alone. I tell him Nirit isn't with me and maybe stayed on the bus, but I remembered leaving with her in my arms."
"We thought, 'What, strangers are going to come into our house?'" Ramat Magshimim in War, Photo: Yigal Fir, courtesy of the Golan Heights Archives
Outside, shelling, and inside Varda feared for the life of her missing daughter. All the bad thoughts run through her head. "My husband tried to go look for her and it was impossible to leave the shelter. Shells fell in quantities. Suddenly, I saw the walkie-talkie on the wall, which was in every shelter. I told one of the women: 'Turn on the device, maybe someone evacuated the girl and I'll know what's going on.' She said: 'I can't - Shabbat.' I screamed: 'No Shabbat, no Kippur, it's all over!' and then she turned on the device. My husband went up the stairs, I tried to read on the radio if anyone heard. He said: 'If they don't answer, I'll run to the bus.' No one answers. He shouted to me: 'Get your hand off the device so the message can get through.' Someone from the house across the street answered me and told me to calm down, 'Nirit is here with us, everything is fine, she is asleep.' It was the worst 20 minutes I've ever had. Then the shelling was another three hours straight, and she slept all that time."
Instruction: Escape from the seat
Haim Ganiram was playing outside the synagogue when the soldiers arrived and announced their alert. "We went home to get organized. I was supposed to fast until noon, but my mother said to break the fast. I ate an apple, and at 12 o'clock we went to the station and the bus did not arrive. In retrospect, I know that he was delayed in the plant. At two, after we boarded it, the shelling began. First time in my life that I encountered the noise of a shell - the smell, a mushroom of smoke.
"Then there was pressure and hysteria, moving the children from one to the other. The children who were older and could walk ran after their parents. My mother held my baby sister in her arms, my father held the child above her. We ran to the shelter, and when we got there and went downstairs there were a lot of shells and noise and a lot of pressure, they started checking who was where.
"There were families split between the shelters in their homes. My younger brother, Moti, wasn't near us. The working assumption was that he ran to the other house, but it was impossible to check. They shouted to the second house - he wasn't there, not even on the third and fourth. The level of anxiety was very high. It was impossible to go outside. Every time they tried to get out, a shell fell, and from the blast we would fall down the stairs. After three hours of massive shelling, there was a lull. Go out and search. It turned out that Moti, who was 8 years old, ran home, alone. As far as he's concerned, he won't go into someone else's house. He went down to the shelter of the house, and although he knew how to use the connection, he did not do so because of Shabbat and Yom Kippur. When they reached him, they found him sleeping in a shelter, after crying for several hours."
Haim Ganiram: "The bus was completely perforated, there was an atmosphere of chaos. The sight of the frightened adults - it was very strange. You understand that something is happening here that is big on all of us, even on the most powerful people in the economy, even on your father."
Although he was familiar with the shelling throughout the Golan, it was the first time young Haim had seen the sights with his own eyes. "The noise of the shells, the completely perforated bus, the smell of the fire, the Golan covered in smoke, the fields burning around, chickens and cows running away and roaming outside, there was an atmosphere of chaos. The sight of the frightened adults - it was very strange. You understand that something is happening here that is big on all of us, even on the most powerful people in the economy, even on your father. Something happens that you don't understand exactly what it is, but you understand that it's something very unusual."
Haim Garlick (named, like his cousin, after his common grandfather) was 10 years old. His father was the first mayor of the Golan. A shell fell in his yard and the house filled with shrapnel. When the family was in the shelter, all young Haim thought about with sorrow was the necklace for the sukkah he had prepared ahead of time and was destroyed. The bus ride from the bombed seat at the end of the fast he will not forget.
"We got on the bus, the whole economy was on fire, the warehouses were on fire, and we drove off. I remember the trip. The whole plateau was burning, the sky was full of planes and shells. Like Independence Day. It was a scary ride. In Kibbutz Lavi, where we came, there were trees and grass and vegetation, and it was quiet. After all the noise we came to silence, that was my feeling as a child. When my father came to Lavi in the morning to say hello, and from there he went to his unit and participated in the liberation of the Golan Heights, as he did in the Six-Day War, my mother asked him: 'What, that's how you left the farm alone?'"
Haim Garlick: "Motta Gur said: 'Why should you plant? You won't get to pick fruit here.' My father told him: 'Not only will we eat, you will come, too.' And indeed, after four years, when he was chief of staff, my father invited him."
When I ask Haim how he felt the moment he heard that the moshav had been occupied, he replies: "We had a dog and I was very worried about him. It was strange to me, it seemed strange to me. I thought: What, strangers will come into our house?"
Ramat Magshimim was established in 1968 and was the first religious settlement in the Golan. Even before the war, the moshav knew some painful losses. In 1970, two residents went to the sunflower field to plan the work day together with three Nahal nuclear companies who came to visit. They boarded a mine and were killed. In honor of the girls, the nearby moshav Avnei Eitan was established. The driver's wife, Binyamin Kfir, who was the center of the farm, gave birth to their first daughter about a week after the disaster. Against the background of the shelling in 1973, the Golan Yeshiva was established there.
During the war, Ramat Magshimim (the only settlement occupied on Yom Kippur) was captured and held for a day by the Syrians. After the bus evacuated the women and children to Kibbutz Lavi, some of the men remained to guard the community and others joined their reserve units.
"Later in the evening, the men were ordered to flee the moshav," Varda said. "The Syrians have advanced here. The last men fled from the southern gate, and the Syrians entered from the northern gate. There was a great battle with the IDF to expel them from here. The men came to Lavi, and then we realized the magnitude of the tragedy. We started eulogizing the economy. We didn't think we would be back. My sister-in-law asked what would happen to the photo albums, what would happen to all the memories."
First encounter with death
During the war, the young families were scattered to their parents throughout the country, but Geniram remained with his orphaned mother in Kibbutz Lavi. "We joined the children's home," he recalls. "There was shared accommodation. We didn't like it, so we went back to live with my mom. We were at the children's home from morning to evening and at night we went to Mom.
Slowly, more families began to return north. My father went to Rafah, but they didn't recruit him because he had six children. He and all sorts of other men who were not drafted returned with the forces that liberated Ramat Magshimim. Then they began to rehabilitate the moshav. It was a period of about three weeks, and after Sukkot, as the war advanced deep into Syria, they decided we could return."
Haim Ganiram: "Today I look back and say, 'What kind of life is this for a child?' but then there were things that seemed really fun to me, like playing with tanks. Until Esti, who was defending her baby on the way to Tipat Halav during the shelling, was killed."
Then the Golan War of Attrition began. The war stopped, but the community continued to live in the shadow of repeated shelling. For Garlick and Gnierm, it was an experience as seared into the mind as the war itself. He remembers the death of Esther Ben David, who was killed in a shelling as she made her way with her infant son to the milk drop. "It was the first time I encountered death, and I understood the meaning of the tangible danger of living in the Golan Heights after the war," says Ganiram.
Esther shielded her infant son with her body, was hit by shrapnel and killed while saving her son. "We used to go to the school in Lavi and see the Syrian army's junk. There were times when we even saw the bodies of soldiers buried under the frames. We would find fragments of shells and replace them with marbles. The army was very present in our lives - there were three tanks at the gate of Ramat Magshimim. Our fun was going to them, getting on them, getting combat rations from the soldiers. Today I look back and say, 'What kind of life is this for a child?' but then it seemed very fun, until Esti was killed.
"That's when the meaning of this hit us. So they decided it was dangerous for us to go to another school, and they set up a school at the Magshimim level."
The school bell, Garlick says, was the whistle of shells in a sense. "We would study and wait for a shell to fall and then go down to the shelter, and that was the end of our school day."
After the war, alongside the shelling and tension and the development of the settlement, the cloud of the return of the Golan Heights to the Syrians hovered over the heads of the residents. In May 1974, the ceasefire agreement was signed and the borders between Israel and Syria were established, and Ramat Magshimim vigorously developed the plantations destroyed in the war and did not intend to give them up.
To the Glory of the Children of War
"We had an apple orchard in Tel Fares, and during the war tanks passed through there and the entire orchard was destroyed," Garlick says of those days. Then there were peace talks with Kissinger, and they kept talking about giving back the Golan, giving it up in exchange for peace. Finally, when they set the boundary, he went over the plantation of Ramat Magshimim. So at night, Uri Meir and Akela, Haim Ganiram's father, moved the barrels that set the border from the grove.
"The grove had to be replanted, and my father went to the head of Northern Command, Motta Gur, to get a permit. He said: 'Why should you, you won't get to pick fruit here.' My father told him: 'Not only will we eat the fruit, but you will come to eat too.' Indeed, after four years there was a 'Neta Quarterly' party, and Motta Gur was already chief of staff and my father invited him."
That same year, 10-year-old Garlick was privileged to participate in a unique and exciting occasion – to be one of the torchlighters on Independence Day <>. Together with other representatives from frontier communities – Eilat, Kiryat Shmona, the Jordan Valley, Katamonim – and one new immigrant, the group lit a torch in honor of the spirit displayed by the children during the war, and to the glory of the State of Israel. "It was very exciting," Garlick recalls. "We ate with the president, visited the Knesset, slept in the hotel for three days. We had with us a girl from Kiryat Shmona whose parents were murdered a month before the incident."
This year, Garlick came full circle when his mother-in-law, Vered Ben Saadon, lit a torch, and he came to the ceremony after 50 years.
Appreciation for the difficult days of the war. Garlick lighting a torch as a child, in 1973,
The sight of her private home bombarded and full of shrapnel is etched in Varda's head, as are many others who experienced the war that changed the face of the Golan Heights and Israeli society. The transition from routine shelling to an all-out and threatening war, the feeling of losing their home and the knowledge that the Syrian forces were in the community they established were seared into the hearts of the residents.
"My house was destroyed. We received three Sipollux as wedding gifts and they all exploded in shelling," Hershkovitz recalls. "When they entered the house, everything was full of shrapnel stuck in every corner. But in the living room there was a wonder - there was a table with a white tablecloth with a pair of candlesticks on it that said 'Shabbat', and everything was completely intact. For me, it was a sign that we had a great miracle."
The moments of terror and fear of the war made Varda's deep connection to the Golan unbreakable. "I have an indescribable connection to the place, the community and the Golan. To my great joy, my children all chose to live here. I think part of the strong connection has to do with this thing I went through. After everything we've been through, we've established such a good community, and the older I get, the more I realize what a difficult thing we've been through – raising children like this and succeeding in establishing a place like this. I believe that even when there are difficulties, you have to see the good."
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