Last week, Ezra Bar-Yosef and Itzik Sharir stood in the cemetery at Kibbutz Dorot, near Sderot, opposite the grave of Staff Sergeant Nadav Cohen.
Nadav was killed on the first day of the Yom Kippur War, but only three years ago did the two get to know his name, to see his face. They never exchanged a word with him. The special bond between the three was forged on the first night of the war, during six hours next to Nadav's covered body. Since then, he has never left them.
"It took me almost 50 years to locate you, to hear about you from your brother," Bar-Yosef wrote to Nadav on the Defense Ministry's Yizkor page. "Every now and then I read about you again and again. You didn't mean to, but I feel like your friend. Rest in peace."
Staff Sgt. Nadav Cohen z"l, photo: from the family album
Bar-Yosef was a 21-year-old tank commander in the 195th Battalion when the war broke out. "Our battalion sat near the Gidi crossing in Sinai," he says. "A week before the outbreak of fighting, we began to be on alert, and on Friday they already said that there was probably going to be a war. There was excitement among the guys, along with a general sense of security. I thought it was a short event. We'll start, we'll finish, and we can run to the book at home. I had a friend in the paratroopers, and I kept sitting in my head that I would meet him and explain that not only was he fighting, I was there too."
But the war looked completely different. On Yom Kippur, just before 2 p.m., Egyptian Sukhoi planes suddenly appeared over the base and began heavy bombardment. "There were two rounds of terrifying bombing," recalls Bar-Yosef, 71. "We were just on our way to the tanks, so you dig into the ground, try to get as deep as you can, but it doesn't work. You're not a mole. We lay down on the ground, and you see the pilot pass over you, really noticing his features. The biggest square at the base was the kitchen building, and it was shelled at the very beginning, many guys from the administration were killed in that bombing."
Bar-Yosef's tank was quickly joined by loader Itzik Sharir, who was a month away from his military service. "Has a plane ever passed 40 meters above you?" he asks. "It's shocking. Your head flies to all sides. You don't understand what's going on, you just realize that someone is trying to kill you and you have to run away as soon as possible. To this day, I don't know if I got into the tank I was assigned to. I just got into the first tool I saw, followed by a guy who was shaking like a drill. I had to stabilize his legs and while I was shouting to the driver, 'Start and drive before we explode.' The main thing is to fly away.
"When I got into the tank and we started driving, I clung to it as if my life depended on it, I wasn't ready to get off. I didn't mind being a driver, a gunner, any job. I'm not leaving the tank."
"I shot like crazy"
According to the drills and planning that preceded the war, the 195th Battalion was supposed to reach the northern side of the canal, where the fighters became familiar with the trails and the targets. However, after several kilometers of driving, the commander of the 401st Brigade, Dan Shomron, who later became the IDF's 13th Chief of Staff, ordered a change of direction and a dash to help the "village" and "pier" strongholds, which were in urgent need of help.
"On Rosh Hashanah Eve, I went on my first reserve service," says Eli Yaniv (Vishnitzky), who commanded the village stronghold during the war. "Since I completed my regular service as an instructor in Bahad 1, I was placed in a pool of officers, and the intention was to reinforce the strongholds with us so that the commander there could go on leave. When I arrived, the post was manned by Nahal soldiers. On October 6, 1973, there were 15 of us, three of whom came that Saturday morning to fix the generator."
Sharir and Bar-Yosef in the army, photo: from the private album
At 13:50 P.M., an urgent phone call from the division arrived at the stronghold, warning and ordering them to go on septic alert. "An immediate shelling is expected," they were told.
"The late Nadav Cohen, who was the platoon sergeant, ran to wake up the guys and asked them to put on their shoes and go into the bunkers," Yaniv (72) recalls. "According to practice, the commander of the post comes to the periscope position and watches what is happening beyond the ditch, and I did. At 2 o'clock a bombing began, my periscope was hit directly and nothing could be seen. Horrible noise all around, hell. I went out with my personal weapon, went to the post during the shelling, and when I stood in front of the ditch, my eyes darkened. Boats with Egyptian commandos were already sailing in the water. I ran back to the war room and shouted, 'Get on us, everyone is in positions!' People panicked, had to hand out a few slaps to wake them up.
"I grabbed a machine gun, shot like crazy, and a few minutes later I heard the mag rattling on the right. It was Nadav, who took up a position above me and sprayed the commando boats. You see them torn and drowning. Some boats escaped. Suddenly, I didn't hear the mag anymore and asked, 'Why did he stop shooting?' I sent someone to check, and they said Nadav had been killed. It turns out that an Egyptian sniper shot him in the head. He was 20 years old, the first casualty of the stronghold."
Itzik Sharir: "When we drove Nadav to the Brigade, I drove a tank and it kept sitting in my head that we had to be careful. I remember watching that he wasn't falling, I realized that I had to watch over him. It's a corpse, and you understand it's a corpse, but it's also a holy soldier."
Yaniv got in touch and asked for help in evacuating the dead man, as well as evacuating one of the soldiers, who was in shock. It was decided that the 195th Battalion would send the tank of the platoon commander, Haim Afrima, to the village stronghold, with Bar-Yosef's tank under cover at the back.
"Not long ago, following the movie 'The Pier,' the director connected me after 50 years with Afrima, the tank commander who came in to help us. It was a very moving conversation," Yaniv says. "He arrived at the post on the night between Saturday and Sunday, just after midnight. The tank broke through the gate of the stronghold, became entangled in the barbed wire fence and stayed with me for several hours until it managed to fix the problem. I evacuated the dead and wounded man to him, and he left."
Two days later, the Egyptians captured the stronghold, which had lost four fighters and captured 13 soldiers. Yaniv was severely wounded and held captive by the Egyptians for 45 days.
"We didn't know who he was"
Commander Afrima's tank, carrying the dead Nadav, lying on a stretcher with a blanket covering his upper body, met Bar-Yosef's tank, which was suffering from a technical malfunction at the time. "We got an RPG in the wall and I couldn't shift gears," says Sharir, who was operating the vehicle at the time. "It's like taking your car and driving to Jerusalem in first gear. Tank, night, war, shooting around. The company commander realized there was a lame tank in the company, so he sent us to stand at the entrance to the stronghold so that we would be a kind of half-ambulance."
Efraima handed Bar-Yosef the stretcher so that he could evacuate the dead man to the Brigade. "He came to us covered with a blanket," Bar-Yosef says of his first encounter with Nadav. "At first we put his body on the deck of the tank. It was not natural to meet a dead soldier, but almost 'casual' at those moments. After all, you are in the middle of a war, you know that there are losses. It was a bit like they put equipment on my tool.
"We tied the stretcher tightly, part of it was sitting in a turret basket and part was lying next to me. I didn't have to turn around to see his red shoes, which were arranged like in a parade."
There were blood stains, harsh sights?
"Not at all. He was probably hit by a bullet and bandaged. We didn't know who he was, what his name was, we didn't see his face. Why should I know? He's not from my unit and I don't know him."
"Suddenly everything is tangible." Right: Ezra Bar-Yosef, brother Yuval Cohen and Itzik Sharir at Nadav's grave, photo: Liron Moldovan
The order was to transfer the space to the Brigade in the morning, and in the meantime it was necessary to burn several dead hours, without a fight. "These are the essential hours to do soul-searching," Bar-Yosef says. "At first there is no time to think, but inside, in the soul, it turns out that everything is turbulent and questions begin to arise. Who are the parents of the deceased, and do they know that their son has fallen? What did he do in life? What unit is it from? It keeps you busy and never leaves. Thoughts about whether he had a girlfriend, and questions such as why at such a young age to die, when the whole world is hanging out? It's kind of a conversation you're having with him, and I can't say if he answered or not."
Itzik Sharir, Ezra's teammate, actually came prepared for the sudden encounter with death. "Nadav was the first casualty we saw, but in our heads we understood that we were in a crazy war, so at the beginning I built defensive walls for myself in my head.
"I said to myself, 'Don't take it personally, don't take it to heart,'" he recalls, "I kept having a dialogue with myself and saying that maybe I'd get hurt too and hope they would rescue me. I stayed absolutely cold. In the morning, when we drove him to the Brigade, I drove the tank and it kept sitting in my head that we had to be careful. I remember going out and watching that he wasn't falling, that nothing was happening to him. I realized that I had to watch over him. It's a corpse, and you understand it's a corpse, but it's also a holy soldier."
"Friendship keeps you going"
The team placed Nadav's body in the Brigade without knowing who he was - and returned to the war. The 195th Battalion experienced difficult days of battle in the southern sector, in which it suffered 27 dead and quite a few wounded.
"It's hard to say about a 'wonderful' war, but we had a battle on Hill 110, one of the classic battles on Yom Kippur," Bar-Yosef recalls. "It was a hill on which Egyptian commandos were stationed and we fought a battle with them like in a tank commanders' course. We surrounded the hill on both sides and destroyed the enemy force. It was euphoria, but that day we ate it precisely because of complacency. We stood on the hill, enjoyed the success - and after half an hour they took down two tanks and killed two fighters. Later on, we were the battalion that surrounded the Third Army."
As a young soldier, was there no fear? Want to get back to normal?
"I would have been dying to get injured. Your whole soul asks, 'What do you even need these battles? Come home.' But you can't get away with that these are your friends. What keeps you in the inferno is mainly friendship, which dictates, 'I will die for you and you will die for me.' You can't use egoistic impulses, and I can't say what would have happened to me if I had been in a unit to which I was not emotionally committed.
"I'll tell you that all I wanted in those days was to walk barefoot on the beach in Tel Aviv. To this day, it's tattooed on me. Nothing but barefoot on a beach empty of people. Kind of freedom, half a movie."
Ezra Bar-Yosef: "During the war I met a body wrapped in a blanket and red shoes. When there is a dead person who has no face, you are constantly trying to paint a face that is far from reality. Today I can say about the guy who was an athlete, mathematician and musician, that he is a friend of mine."
Bar-Yosef, who in his civilian life was a senior executive at Bank Hapoalim and drove heavy businesses, admits that the war scarred him. In the years that passed, he also dealt quite a bit with the soul that returned unsettled from Sinai. "The return was complicated," he says, "a lot of friends I lost there. Lior, the son of the poet Nathan Yonatan, who was with me in the tank commanders course; Eli Keller, who was a soulmate; and Erez Levanon from Kibbutz Palmachim. Memorial Day arrives and you collapse. Not externally, more 'philosophical'. You get a lot of sadness about your life.
"After the war, I couldn't sit with the guys I grew up with. I just wanted to go back to the base and the army, and you'll understand that we grew up in Givat Shmuel as a tight-knit group. I remember sitting on the boulevard and I felt that these people were strangers to me. Returning to the army is a feeling that accompanies me to this day, and every Friday the guys from the battalion meet here, in coffee. We have a fixed table."
"Why dig?"
Sharir, 71, who for years also worked in banking and now exports to Uzbekistan, arrives weekly from Petah Tikva to the military parliament. "The war is in my head every day. So much," he admits. "Ask me about things that happened before, and I won't remember. Since Yom Kippur in October 1973, at 2 o'clock in the afternoon, I have not forgotten anything. The war left us with the mother of the scars, and every week when we meet we go back to those days and to the questions, 'Say you were with me, you were with him, you hurt, you ran away?' We unequivocally stayed there."
As part of the war talks in parliament, Bar-Yosef often returned to the same casualty he had evacuated on the tank at the beginning of the war. The hours they spent together left a significant mark on him, and he wanted to find out who this unknown person was.
"I told him, 'Forget it, why dig into what happened?'" says Sharir. "I was more comfortable that there was no character. I didn't see his face that night, and even when we dropped him off at the Brigade, it was a quick procedure. I didn't want to connect with it, so it wouldn't remain as a memory in my head."
Itzik Sharir: "As far as I'm concerned, Nadav belonged to another world. Now, when I stand in front of you, I imagine it among you, within the family. I'm sorry I didn't do this meeting earlier, but so called - better late than never. For me, it's really closure."
אבל בר־יוסף לא הרפה. עם השנים גילה שאותו הרוג היה חייל בנח"ל, וגם היה משוכנע שמדובר בבן קיבוץ רוחמה שבנגב הצפוני. על פי ממצאיו היה מדובר בחייל ממשפחה מאמצת, אבל לא היו לו הוכחות לכך, ולכן, כמוצא אחרון לפתרון התעלומה, פנה לסא"ל (מיל') אריק זטורסקי, שלא מפסיק לחקור את המלחמה.
זטורסקי (70) היה במלחמת יום כיפור מפקד מחלקה בגדוד 46 של חטיבה 401, שאליה השתייך גם גדוד 195 שממנו הגיע בר־יוסף.
"יש כאלה שיאמרו שמדובר בפוסט־טראומה, אז אני אומר שאצלי לפחות היא יוצאת לכיוון טוב, סוג של שריטה", הוא צוחק. "במשך שנים רשמתי פתקים והייתי סקרן לדעת כל פרט. בהתחלה התעסקתי רק בפלוגה שלי, אחרי זה בגדוד, וככל שעברו השנים כך התחלתי לבדוק דברים וגיליתי שבין הסיפורים שאנשים מפיצים לבין מה שקרה במציאות ההבדל גדול.
"כדי לדעת שמישהו טועה אתה חייב לקרוא יומני מבצעים ומפות, לשמוע הקלטות של רשת הקשר ועדויות של אנשים. כפנסיונר התחלתי לחקור יותר לעומק. כבר כעשור שאני עוסק בזה באופן אובססיבי, והיום אני אחד המומחים הגדולים בנושא השיבוצים של גדודי השריון הסדירים בדרום במלחמה. אמרו לי 'תכתוב ספרים' וזה לא מתאים לי, אבל אם מישהו צריך למצוא משהו או מישהו, בסוף עוף השמיים יוליך את השם שלי לאוזנו".
"עבודת נמלים"
את זטורסקי הכיר בר־יוסף עוד מהשירות הסדיר, כשהשניים העבירו קורס מפקדי טנקים. מאז נפגשו לא פעם, ובדרך כלל שיחותיהם התרכזו בנושא המלחמה ההיא.
"עזרא יודע שאני בקיא", מספר זטורסקי. "ערב אחד, לפני שלוש שנים, הוא אמר לי 'אתה חייב לעזור, יש משהו שיושב עלי'. אני שומע הרבה סיפורים כאלה ועוזר כשאני יכול. אני אמנם לא פסיכולוג, אבל היה ברור שלבן אדם יש בעיה. עזרא תיאר את מה שקרה, ונכון שלא היינו באותו גדוד, אבל ידעתי מי עשה שם מה ברמת הטנק הבודד כמעט. כשאומרים 'הייתי במוצב כזה וכזה' - אני יודע למצוא את התיק ואת עדות המפקדים, ואם עשו תחקיר אני מכיר כל מילה כתובה שנרשמה. זו עבודת נמלים, פאזל ענק".
זטורסקי מצא את התחקיר שבוצע במעוז "ניסן", או בשמו המוכר יותר "הכפר", מייד אחרי המלחמה. בתחקיר מופיעה עדותו של מפקד המעוז, סגן אלי יניב, שמספר כי "בהתקפה הראשונה שהיתה נהרג סמל המוצב נדב מקיבוץ דורות". הוא לא היה צריך יותר מקצה החוט הזה, כדי לספר לבר־יוסף שלחלל צה"ל שאותו הוא מחפש קוראים נדב כהן והוא מקיבוץ דורות.
"You have to know where to look," Zatorsky quips. "Some of the searches are done under the flashlight, so no results are reached. It's a matter of luck, and in this case I knew the event and the sector, so I had an advantage. Ezra was happy to know that the guy's name was Nadav and that he was from Kibbutz Dorot, and then asked if he had a family. I said that according to the dry data there is, but I can't say if they are all alive. He said, 'I don't care, I'm going to go there.'"
Ezra Bar-Yosef: "War is stripping, ripping out every possible feather. You are completely exposed in the most difficult moments of meeting death. You ask how I relate to someone I didn't even know, and it turns out there's something big that unites us."
That event took place just before Memorial Day in 2020, when the coronavirus hit full force and lockdowns tightened. Health Ministry officials and the prime minister asked citizens not to leave their homes and restricted road traffic, but Bar-Yosef did not give up and went to the Negev.
He arrived alone at the cemetery in Kibbutz Dorot, found Nadav's grave and was surprised to discover a well-kept grave even after almost 50 years. The tombstone was even slightly wet, as if someone had washed it that day. After a few minutes of meeting Nadav, whom he had not met since October 1973, he decided there was no way he was leaving the south like this.
Bar-Yosef searched Modi'in 144 for the Cohen family from Kibbutz Dorot, called the first phone number he found and heard a woman's voice. He introduced himself in a slightly awkward way, not knowing how to tell her about the type of contact in a short phone call. "She asked me, 'What about you and Lou?' and there were a few seconds of silence," he recalls.
The person who answered the phone was Rina Cohen, the wife of Yuval, Nadav's older brother and who until a year ago was in charge of the kibbutz cemetery. She invited Ezra to visit their home, and together with Yuval, the two completed the details for Bar-Yosef that he did not know. It turns out that Nadav was a prodigy on the kibbutz, an excellent student in mathematics and physics, a super-athlete in gymnastics and especially basketball, a piano player and a lover of classical music and quality literature.
"At first, they didn't understand that I had nothing to tell, that I wasn't a friend at all, and that I had just come to get information for myself," Bar-Yosef recalls. "I came to complete the character, because for me it was a kind of vacuum. All I encountered during the war was a body wrapped in a blanket and two red shoes sitting at right angles. When there is a dead person who has no face, you are constantly trying to draw a face, and the face you paint, it turns out, is far from reality. When you encounter the truth, you make a kind of connection without inhibitions. Today I can say about the guy who was an athlete, mathematician and musician, that he is a friend of mine."
Do you feel connected to it?
"When I read about him today, I realize that he must have had a higher intelligence than usual. I also started studying physics at Bar-Ilan University, but I was quickly thrown into economics. I rate Nadav at a much higher moral level than I do, and it has nothing to do with the fact that I didn't know him. A man who has a combination of such fields, at this age, I bet that statistically he also correlates with other values. Meeting his family closed corners for me. It wasn't what I had imagined, but it built a whole character for me, which oddly enough, is much more preoccupied with me now. Today I say what a shame I didn't talk to him. If we had sat together, I wonder what would have happened."
Yuval (80), the older brother, completes more details about Nadav and the impact his death had on the family. "We were four brothers, and Nadav, the youngest, was very talented and very modest," he says. "I was in reserve duty when the bloody war broke out and I learned that Nadav was killed immediately after his death. I remember for my parents it was the hardest blow possible. In fact, today I am the only one still living here. My parents passed away, and my two brothers live in the United States, leaving Israel after our brother's death."
"The hardest blow there can be." Nadav Cohen with his parents Rivka and Israel, photo: from the family album
When he went to Nadav's grave, Bar-Yosef initially did not want to meet his family. He also didn't tell his friends from the army about the upcoming visit, but things turned around and he stayed on the kibbutz for a few hours.
"He wanted to meet, to hear, he was very curious," says Rina, Yuval's wife. "I didn't meet Nadav either. I came to the kibbutz three years after his death, but I knew how important he was to his parents, who nurtured the grave over the years and also kept a room in his memory. They were broken because Nadav was from the top up. There are many of his classmates here who say he was a lovely guy. It's a shame I didn't get to know him."
"Seeing face and address"
When he returned to his home in Givat Shmuel, Bar-Yosef reported to his teammate, Itzik Sharir, about the exciting encounter at Kibbutz Dorot. "He told me, 'I know who the soldier is and I was at his house,'" Itzik recalls. "I told him, 'You're stupid, for two reasons. First, why not take me with you? And the second is that now that vague, imaginary figure that I have in my memory, is a kind of closed box that has been opened.' I go online, see my face and know the address and where the grave is. Suddenly everything is tangible. It changed my mind.
"After all, Nadav also employed me over the intervening years, but he was something unknown. A dead soldier I spent an entire night with, and I had nothing to add about him. Now I have to deal with a real character."
Sharir also doesn't stop thinking about that war. Just the week we spoke, he and Ezra went to inaugurate a memorial to the battalion's fallen, all of whom he remembers. "We don't miss ceremonies," he says. "This year, for example, on Memorial Day, I organized a pennant of the 195th Battalion to be placed on every grave. I was worried that contact glue would be glued tightly, and when I spoke to the bereaved families, they said they were moved by the gesture. I said that if so, I had done mine.
"On the other hand, we also have something like five percent of the people in our battalion who were so hurt by the war that when you try to bring them closer, they say a total 'no.' They don't want to hear, they don't want to remember."
"No more memory"
Sharir is married, has three children and eight grandchildren. Bar-Yosef remains single, says it wasn't because of that war, but admits that "if I had children, I probably wouldn't have been able to go through the experience of war. The war and the process you go through undress, ripping out every possible feather. You are completely exposed, because that is where you are in the most difficult moments of meeting death. Moments of anger alongside total joy. A special dynamic that is difficult to explain. You ask how I relate to someone I didn't even know, and it turns out that there's something very big that unites us."
Last week, the tank duo, who have not separated since their regular service, arrived at the cemetery in Kibbutz Dorot to meet Nadav and his family. Yuval, the brother, arrived accompanied by his wife Rinna and Adva Yiftach, two of their four children. For Bar-Yosef, it wasn't his first encounter, but for Sharir it was, and the signs of excitement were clearly visible on his face.
"We had 27 casualties in the battalion," Sharir told Nadav's family. "I came to all their families, I know them and their personal stories, and I saw their image before my eyes all the time, and when Ezra asked over the years, 'Who was the fatality we evacuated?' I said, 'Forget it, we have enough of our own.' As far as I was concerned, Nadav belonged to another world. Now, when I stand in front of you, I imagine it among you, within the family. I'm sorry I didn't do this session earlier, but the so-called better late than never. For me, it's really closure."
"As far as I was concerned, Nadav was no longer a memory," Bar-Yosef sighs. "The night we spent together, he died and I'm alive, was traumatizing for me. I remember waking up at night and talking to him. We've talked our whole lives."
"The meeting has cut corners." Bar-Yosef and Sharir with the Cohen family at Kibbutz Dorot, photo: Liron Moldovan
Rina and Yuval brought an album prepared by Israel, Nadav's father, with excerpts written by Rivka's mother alongside old photos and letters Nadav sent to his family, and there were many of them. The last letter he wrote to his family was on October 3, 1973, three days before the outbreak of the war. "Wednesday is already approaching and Sunday is approaching, but I am deeply bothered by the fact that there is no guarantee that I will be out this week," he wrote. "Things will go weary as usual. I take an important 'position' here and run things.
"I read quite a lot. The English book I took was bold, but quite boring in terms of plot. I'm looking forward to my finish here, but it's a little further away. Officially I have to finish around November 15, but from experience I see that the staff leave here at least two weeks late. I finish, be well. I've been 'choked' to arrive, but it's not safe. Yours, Nadav."
On the fourth he wrote the letter - on Saturday afternoon he was no longer alive.
The grandson who mentions
Even 50 years after Nadav Cohen's grave on the kibbutz, it remains well maintained and it seems that the vegetation around it is carefully cared for. At the end of the meeting at the cemetery, Rina and Yuval invite Ezra and Itzik to their home, which overlooks a spectacular southern landscape. They kept talking about the kibbutz, about life. Rina said that everyone who knew Nadav says that Idan, their grandson, really resembles him in appearance.
They drank cold lemonade, ate cake. The sun was slowly setting. It seemed as if there was a group sitting there that needed to fill in large gaps, 50 years old, in a story that began with death but lives on.
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