The sun began to set on the cemetery of Kibbutz Revivim in the Negev. It is a small kibbutz cemetery, hidden to the vessels, which within a few days grew in 29 fresh graves of members of Kibbutz Be'eri, who were murdered on Black Saturday. Rows and rows of new concrete castings with graves and tombstones that have just been laid, and when the day comes, when Kibbutz Be'eri is rehabilitated, will return to their land – "temporary burial" is the professional definition.
"A man of voice, joy and taste, of experiences, laughter and travel," reads the headstone of David Carroll, 72, who was murdered that terrible morning. Nearby are the four graves of the Even family: Chen Sr., Rinat Hamm and their two children, Alon and Ido. "An amazing father with a huge heart," reads the grave of the father of the family.
There is no blood connection between the two kibbutzim, which are separated by a 40-minute drive, but there is the pioneering, settlement connection of people who came to make the wilderness bloom. In good and bad, their fate is tied to the land of the Negev. This is where they grew up and here they will be buried. "I call it a genetic connection," says Raviv Gadish, a resident of Revivim who lost his sister Rotem Calderon, who was buried in the cemetery near his home in the disaster. "Revivim and Barry ideologically and morally are the same, very similar."
Kingfisher forces at Kibbutz Be'eri and rescue of kibbutz residents // Photo: IDF Spokesperson
"Hole" on Route 222
Kibbutz Revivim is what is called in the language of the people of the center "Hur". It is located on Route 222, between Be'er Sheva and Mitzpe Ramon, a fifteen minute drive from Kibbutz Tze'elim and very close to the Bedouin community of Bir Hadaj, whose name has come up more than once in recent years, and not necessarily for the better. The noises of war did not reach his surroundings at all, certainly not the sirens that have sent millions to the protected areas in recent months.
"It's unpleasant to say, but I woke up that Saturday at ten o'clock after my daughter Shai called, because the army commander was interested in her well-being," says Tomer Friel, who was born and raised in Revivim. "I had no idea because we are the safest community in the country. We have no dangers, neither from the south nor from the north. Therefore, there is also no operational logic in firing into the area. If you can get to Revivim with a missile, you can get to Beersheba. And if you shoot in our direction, you're more likely to hit the nearby Bir Hadaj."
So that morning they set up the alert squad as a practice and asked the members not to walk around too much on the lawns outside the house, and had already prepared themselves to receive evacuees from the envelope, usually residents of Kibbutz Nir Yitzhak who come when the area warms up, and Bnei Revivim is always pleasant and a little detached.
But it quickly became clear that this time it wasn't just another round of fighting. A few days later, when the extent of the horror became clear, it was the people of Bari who woke up from the fatal blow they had suffered and were interested in David Ben-Lulu, the center of the Revivim farm, if their dead could be buried in the kibbutz, at least temporarily. They talked to him about close to a hundred graves.
"At first, the Ministry of Religious Affairs wanted Bari's murdered to be buried in the Yarkon cemetery in the center, but they refused," Ben-Lulu says. "It was important to them that it be a kibbutz, secular burial, as they are used to. They also wanted it to be as close to them as possible, and we're relatively close."
Ben-Lulu could not give an answer on his own, after all, this is one of the last cooperative kibbutzim in Israel, so he raised the request to the higher echelons. "Anyone who has sat at this table knows that there are things that are not questioned, and in this situation there is also no time to ask and operate the complex decision-making systems," says Friel, who previously served as Revivim's secretary. "It was received really Chick-Check. Sure they can."
David Ben-Lulu, Revivim Farm Center: "The Ministry of Religious Affairs wanted the murdered Be'eri to be buried in the Yarkonim cemetery in the center, but the people of Bari refused. It was important to them that it be a collective and secular burial. They also wanted it to be as close to them as possible, and we're relatively close."
This is a small cemetery. And when a bag of dozens of new graves is dropped on it, there's not so much room. The kibbutz knew that there was a future plan in the drawer to expand the cemetery. Then, in a quick procedure, in cooperation with the Ramat Hanegev Regional Council, they opened the perimeter fence, brought in the Ministry of Religious Affairs to approve the compound, and heavy machinery worked day and night digging graves.
Is there room for humor?
But a kibbutz that is accustomed to occasionally burying one of the veterans now faces the drama of mass burial. Seven funerals were planned for the first day. "I lived in Bari for four years," says Hezi Lachman, community manager at Kibbutz Revivim. "I know quite a few people there and also some of the murdered. Chen Even, for example, worked for us in field crops. But as the person who managed the burial, I realized that I had to cut myself off, so we quickly learned the concept of temporary burial. According to the regulations, nylon is placed around the coffin to protect it, and the removal ropes must be left inside the grave, so that when the time comes, it can be removed and transferred to a permanent place. On burial days, I would receive from the people of Bari the list of names the night before, and coordinate with them locations, and whether or not reserved places were needed. The conduct was completely technical."
At Kibbutz Revivim, the funeral staff was immediately called to prepare themselves for the arduous work. Although these days there is no room for humor, certainly in tragic situations such as mass slaughter, remember Sergio Carpenter from the movie "Operation Grandma"? That cheerful South American from a juicy kibbutz who made the coffins, including the colorful coffin of a living grandmother? So Barbivim makes the coffins and the undertaker is Alejandro Sinelewicz, who immigrated to Israel from Buenos Aires.
Alejandro was also a carpenter in Argentina, but alongside the artist's work he never thought there would also be a funerary work. "I've been doing this for 25 years," he says. "I know Eli's ambulance, the one that transports the dead to the surrounding kibbutzim, and sometimes I see it in Beersheba, when I'm on my way to eat, and then my appetite immediately passes," he laughs and immediately becomes serious. "I usually get the body from him and identify it, because I know the whole kibbutz. Look, over the years I've put family members, employees, children in my closets. I believe that if you want to live in a quality community, you need to do two things: the first is to work in what you love and the second is to do what others don't want.
"I always say how fun it was to have someone who worked in kindergarten and raised my children, because I couldn't. And when everyone is talking about the kibbutzim now, I say that it is lucky, so to speak, that it happened to the communities and not to the individuals, because look what the individuals did? They were looking for a community, a family to be with."
The undertaker and carpenter Sinelewicz. "Happy to live here, but I thought it would be possible to build a better society in the country," Photo: Efrat Eshel
How did you deal with the tragedy?
"These are always the same people who do the burial work with us. I already know that the 80-year-old will probably get confused and take the coffin to the other side, and I also know how the others will function, but in the end it honors the deceased. You are the last one to see the dead.
"A month ago, one of our kibbutz veterans, Oded Barzilai, who was 93 years old, passed away. An amazing man, a friend who raised me professionally. I went to his house to say goodbye, and he said, 'I don't want to live anymore.' Maybe he's glad that I'm the last one to break up with him and not someone he doesn't know. So what protects you these days is mostly the black humor, but in what we experienced in October there was not a drop of humor. The burial of the Eban family, four people, I will never forget in my life. We put two cupboards on a black scooter and two more on the other and everyone around was crying. A terrible sight."
Alejandro Sinelewicz, Revivim's carpenter and undertaker: "I've been doing this for 25 years. I know Eli's ambulance, the one that transports the dead to the surrounding kibbutzim, and sometimes I see him in Beersheba, when I'm on my way to eat, and then my appetite passes."
On the first day of the funerals, not everything worked as planned by Lachman, the community manager at Revivim, who wanted to time the funeral procession on the minute, due to the rush. Because of the pressure, some of the cupboards arrived open and some were noticeably late.
"They messed up twice on arrival times," Lachman says. "I told the people of Barry, 'Give them a heads-up. It can't be that we schedule seven funerals like a Swiss clock, and in the Chevra Kadisha they stick us.' It has indeed been resolved. From the second day, Chevra Kadisha worked directly with me, with all the transportation and ambulance coordinators. It allowed us to do the work and for the people of Bari to concentrate on their grief."
Barbivim expected crowds at those funerals, especially when Be'eri was considered one of the largest and most established kibbutzim in the Negev. "I kept thinking there would be crowds because it was Beeri," says Limor Avivi-Cohen, secretary of Kibbutz Revivim. "Suddenly, when the event began, there was a feeling that there were too few. They explained that it was because there were many funerals at the same time, and not all the friends were in a mental state that allowed them to come, so we immediately issued a message on WhatsApp that whoever could would come. They came from the nearby settlement of Retamim and from the rest of the council settlements. It ran like wildfire. In the end, crowds came."
Hezi Lachman, community manager at Revivim: "We quickly learned the concept of 'temporary burial.' According to the procedures, nylon is placed around the coffin to protect it, and the removal ropes must be left inside the grave so that when the time comes, it can be removed and transferred to a permanent place."
Revivim's commemoration team arrived at the cemetery in an expanded ensemble. Hospitality tents, canopies and cold drinks had to be arranged. During the funerals, they made sure to hide the graves dug with tarpaulin in order to minimize the magnitude of the horror, and the neighboring kibbutz was already broken.
"We felt like stage workers"
"Day after day, funeral after funeral, we carry the coffins in silence, place them respectfully and carefully in their place and wait for the signal to bury the coffin in the ground and cover it with the soil of our Negev," wrote Tomer Friel, one of Revivim's funeral staff, in the kibbutz newsletter. "Funeral after funeral we sweat, fill with dust, shed an unruly tear and continue our holy work. Funeral after funeral We stand on the sidelines, listening in silence to the eulogies. Eulogies for people we didn't know, but seemed to have always known.
"We listen to the life stories of the people of Bari. Stories about family, about work, about hobbies. Stories of lives cut short by terrible cruelty. We listen in silence, and thoughts wander unwittingly to us, to our personal lives. The stories are so similar. Every kibbutz has this grandmother, and this boy and this family. And even though everyone is unique and special, there is a thread of experience and way of life that connects us all. One human tissue."
Tomer Friel and Limor Avivi-Cohen. Tomer: "Kibbutz Be'eri's request was answered Chick-Check", Photo: Efrat Eshel
"We felt like stage workers, just like that," Friel said when we met. "That day you're working very technically. You have to bury and you have the shovel by hand and sand around. Later, when you go home, close your eyes and see rows of graves in front of you and you digest the stories of people you didn't know, but know people just like that from here, it becomes difficult."
Tomer, an intelligent and articulate guy, is engaged in education. It is difficult to associate it with black cemetery work. "When I was secretary of the kibbutz, the team that dealt with the burial consisted of maintenance personnel," he said, explaining how he ended up there. "Most of them were salaried employees and felt uncomfortable. Still, a builder, a plumber or a painter don't come to bury people. At some point, the manager of the maintenance branch came up to me and said, 'This is heavy on us.' So I said that we would recruit a team of people from the kibbutz, and in order to encourage them, I, as secretary, would join. That's how I got in. I am able to cope emotionally with work. It's hard and painful and when it's mass and one after the other, you do it as a mission."
Tomer Friel, who was born and raised in Revivim: "We are the safest community in the country. We have no dangers, neither from the south nor from the north. There is also no operational logic in firing into the area. Because if you can reach Revivim with missiles, you can also reach Beersheba."
Burial in the kibbutz is secular. Therefore, these are not the familiar rules of the ceremony and there were not always bodies placed in the coffin, depending on what was left. "We've dealt with different situations now, you immediately feel whether there's weight to the closet or not," Alejandro, the carpenter-undertaker, says of his experience. "I picked up one of the cupboards and almost fell because it was light. Or there was a separation from a child, which I will not forget. The family had special requests from us, but I won't tell."
Alejandro is referring to a ceremony held by the family of 12-year-old Liel Hetzroni from Kibbutz Be'eri, who decided on a burial ceremony even though Liel's body had not yet been identified. It was reported that the closet included creative materials and a garment that Liel loved. "There was someone who asked them to cremate the body," Alejandro says of another case. "They were afraid that the urn with the ashes would fall, so a guy came with a stainless steel box and I built a special device in the middle of the closet, all according to the family's instructions."
The grave of 12-year-old Liel Hetzroni from Bari, photo: Efrat Eshel
In those days, while the entire kibbutz was concentrated in the small cemetery, 69-year-old Raviv Gadish sat in his home in Revivim, waiting for news about the fate of his little sister, Rotem Calderon, a resident of Be'eri. Gadish, who has already published three books of poetry, grew up in Bari and came to Revivim 28 years ago.
"I texted Rotem that morning," he says. "At nine o'clock she replied that she was not doing well and that was it. There was a rumor that she had been murdered, but they couldn't find her. The person in charge of records in Bari told us, 'Rotem is on the list of those out of touch.' Missing. They started saying that maybe she had been kidnapped, and since she had a British passport, the British would take care of her. We waited for a week, a period of uncertainty in which time stopped."
Raviv Gadish. "Revivim and Bari, ideologically and morally, are one and the same", Photo: Efrat Eshel
Rotem Calderon was widowed 18 years ago by Moshe, who was killed in a motorcycle accident. After days of being considered missing, she was pronounced dead and buried on 23 October. She left behind three children. "Alone in the safe room, bleeding, clutching the door handle, stop the predators. In vain," Raviv eulogized his sister. "Rest in peace, Rotem. You may be gone, beloved sister, but in my memory and imagination you are my 'is'. In the midst of the enormous absence."
"She was the one I would talk to," Raviv says sadly. "Whatever happened to me, I would tell her and she knew how to listen. For a while she left Bari, so one of the friends there said, 'Don't worry, Barry isn't leaving so soon,' and she did. After it turned out that she had been murdered, I told the kibbutz to write in the obituary, 'Avoid condolence visits,' because I'm not built for this, certainly not mentally, but at the funeral I won't forget the local gesture. During the ceremony, the people of Revivim stood along the cemetery and honored not only her, but also the other murdered. It's greatness."
Raviv Gadish, a resident of Revivim, whose younger sister Rotem was murdered in Bari: "At nine o'clock she replied that her condition was not good, and that was it. They couldn't find her. The person in charge of records in Bari told us, 'Rotem is on the list of those out of touch.' We waited a week. A time when time has stopped."
It was Uri Hoter Yishai, a member of Kibbutz Be'eri, who wrote on his Facebook page: "The community of Revivim has gathered the community of Be'eri into its embrace. The sandy soil of Revivim received the dead of Kibbutz Be'eri, dead who were to be buried in many years in loess soil under the shade of pine trees in the cemetery on the low hill north of Bari. Dead people who had many more plans, and us for them, but then came October 7. Pre-prepared plot modular.
"I know from rumors that dozens of graves have been prepared, but a fence covered with green sheeting hides most of them and reveals only a few. Yesterday, I attended only two funerals out of seven. The heartbreaking farewell of the Suchman family and the Bermak clan to the wonderful Tammy, and the last and somewhat restrained path of Ran Sheffer, whose restraint was not the main asset in his life – is all blazing love, sparkling eyes and a wide smile."
Friends who know what pain is
"I've heard people ask, 'Where does the mental resilience of the elderly people on the kibbutzim come from?'" Alejandro asks and immediately answers. "They built a kibbutz in the middle of the desert, some of them survived the inferno of the Holocaust, lost friends, participated in Israel's wars. You can't say they don't know what pain is. We have a woman here, Zehava Davidovitch, who was on the immigration ship Exodus. Can someone teach her about suffering? What kind of people are here."
The civilian cemetery in Revivim is adjacent to the military cemetery, one of the smallest military cemeteries in Israel. Among other things, one can find there the grave of Sergeant Yoav Sand, son of Alexander and Yonath, one of the kibbutz's founders, who was a soldier in a paratrooper reconnaissance unit and participated in Operation Youth Spring on April 9, 1973, when IDF forces assassinated senior Fatah figures in Beirut. About two weeks later, the members of the Sayeret went out to mark the event with a party on the Sea of Galilee, Yoav jumped into the water, his head hit a rock and he was killed.
There is also a tombstone commemorating the death of Corporal Oded Shani Sheinuk, z"l, whose reserve unit entered Khan Yunis on the first day of the Six-Day War, June 1967. The jeep he was riding in separated from the main force and entered a side road, where a burst hit him and killed him. In 1990, Meravim's coffin was transferred to the cemetery in Yavne'el, where he was born.
"Oded died on the spot," says Yigal Tzachor, 78, a veteran of Revivim. "They buried him by the side of the road and couldn't find the place. During the fighting, someone from the Shin Bet located an Arab from Khan Yunis who said he knew where the body was. The Shin Bet asked that the brother of the deceased come accompanied by a friend from the rabbis. We went into Khan Yunis, took the same Arab, drove until he asked us to stop. We dug into the ground and removed the body. We identified her by the number on her shirt. In Revivim's laundry, every member had a number."
Yigal has already published ten books, some of which explored the settlements of the Negev and local history. "Most people in this country don't know where we are," he smiled bitterly. "What boys are studying history in school today? They don't travel either. The only travelers here are kippah-wearers and immigrants from Russia. A boy who grew up in Gush Dan doesn't know, it's doubtful his father does."
Yigal Tzahor. "Most people in the country don't know where we are located," Photo: Efrat Eshel
Kibbutz Revivim, despite its modesty, has a serious role in the history of the State of Israel. When the British issued the White Paper in 1939 it contained restrictions on the purchase and settlement of land in Palestine by Jews, so the Jewish National Fund purchased land and established three observatories, one of which was Revivim, which in 1943 was designated as an agricultural experiment station and was the southernmost settlement point.
The trained settlement core was then based in Rishon LeZion, and every two weeks, on duty, 12 members would come down to man the isolated place. Before the establishment of the State of Israel and during the War of Independence, the small community suffered from clashes with the Arabs of the area and from bombings by the Egyptian Air Force from the beginning of the war. A Nabataean cave, which is still in the area, was then used as a protected space for settlers.
In the small cemetery there are also dozens of graves of fighters who lost their lives in battles fought in the area during the War of Independence. Among them are cousins Israel and Mordechai Halimi, who immigrated from Algiers in the summer of 1948 and joined a French-speaking unit called the "French Commando" led by Theda Dupret, a French Catholic volunteer who loves Israel, who organized about a hundred fighters around him.
In Operation Horev, in December 1948, the French commando unit took part in the battles to take over the posts on the Beersheba-Nitzana road. During the heavy fighting, seven fighters were wounded and hid under a railway bridge, in the area where the community of Ashalim is located today. The Egyptians discovered the wounded and murdered them. Members of nearby Kibbutz Revivim collected the bodies and they were buried in the military cemetery.
My cousins Halimi were killed that day, 26 December 12. For decades, Israel's relatives, the youngest in a family of ten children, did not know where he was buried. It was not until April 48 that his sister went to his grave for the first time.
"Every year, on Memorial Day, we hold a state ceremony," Tzachor says. "Families come, and those who were once children now come with their grandchildren. A government representative speaks, and from there we move on to host them at the club and they ask someone to tell them a little about Kibbutz Revivim."
Revivim has a glorious history: when the British issued the White Paper in 1939, it contained restrictions on the purchase and settlement of land in Palestine by Jews. So the Jewish National Fund purchased land and built three observatories. One of them was Revivim
"Don't trust others anymore"
This is the story of a small cemetery on a kibbutz somewhere far away, completely unidentified with death or danger. It is simply history that created this bloody knot that lasted from the place of the country until October 2023.
"I've always felt safe here," says Alejandro, the carpenter. "The only thing that scared me were earthquakes, even though one in our area can't have that much of an impact, because of the type of construction and the open space. That's why I never had a sense of fear. I felt guarded. Now I've got a gun license, because I don't trust others anymore. I won't be caught with my pants down and there's no way I won't be able to protect my family.
"I, as a Jew, will defend myself, and I never thought this would happen to me, a peace-loving person like me. But that's it, there is a limit. I'm in charge."
Are you sorry you chose to live here?
"There's a song in Uruguay that says, 'If you go, you're stupid. And if you stay, you're also stupid.' I came from an ideology, I've always been a Zionist and I'm happy to live here, but I thought it would be possible to build a better society in the country."
shishabat@israelhayom.co.il
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