Every year between Holocaust Remembrance Day and Memorial Day, 84-year-old Yosef Ben-Yitzchak finds himself hospitalized. He needs the assistance to get through the difficult days, never recovering from the traumas he has endured. These are difficult days for him, a Holocaust survivor who lost his entire family, then moving to Eretz Yisrael and rebuilding his life. During the 1973 Yom Kippur War, his son fell in the line of duty.

Speaking with the daily Haaretz, Yosef admits “I ask others why do I deserve so much pain and sadly, the do not know how to respond”.

Last week the Ben-Yitzchak family marked Holocaust Remembrance Day as they do annually, reflecting back to his experiences in five different concentration camps including his brush with the Angel of Death of Auschwitz, Mengele. In 1945 he arrived on the shores of Palestine and was sent to a British detention camp. He was adopted by a family in Moshav Be’er Tuvia and this is where his new life began.

Yosef met Esther in 1950, today 80, and they were married. They bought a piece of land and set up their new life in the moshav and they have three children, Moti, Avihu and Meira.

Moti, the eldest, enlisted into the IDF, into the elite Shayetet naval commando unit but as a result of injuries he was transferred to the intelligence corps to a unit focusing on Egyptian intelligence.

In the Yom Kippur War Moti was stationed at a post that gathered information on the Egyptians. He detected the Egyptians were rapidly advancing and notified his commander. Moti and his fellow soldiers were taken prisoner by the Egyptians.

At the same time, when the war broke out, Yosef was in shul davening and his wife Esther was on her way when suddenly someone shouted “War has broken out”. Esther recalls seeing many military vehicles moving about, a strange site on Yom Kippur.

Yossi and Esther remained in the dark regarding their son and the other captives. They explain “we were told many different stories but we realized someone was not telling us the real deal”. A year later the knock on the door came. It was the IDF District Officer who informed them their beloved son was buried in a cemetery in the Beersheva area. Apparently, he was buried for a year and no one identified the body.

Moti was reinterred in a military cemetery in an official levaya on the moshav after the body was positively identified. Through others taken captive the bereaved parents learned that their son was interrogated by the Egyptians but he never gave them information. “They explained to us they heard him scream but he never gave information”.

These days, from Holocaust Remembrance Day through Memorial Day have remained painful to the point of hospitalization for Yossi and the family is doing the best it can.

(YWN – Israel Desk, Jerusalem)