Nostalgia Sunday – Avraham Dubno

April 18, 2010 - 11:04 PM by · 10 Comments
Filed under: General, History and Culture, Holidays, Israeliness, Life, Nostalgia Sunday, Profiles, War 

My mother’s brother, Avraham Dubno, was killed in Israel’s 1948 War of Independence at the age of 22. It’s hard for me to think of this phantom person as my uncle; he died long before I was born and even though his short life and death informed my very existence, my mother barely ever spoke of him. In fact, with true Palmachnik stoicism, she barely mentioned any of the tragic circumstances that blew her once-solid family apart as surely as if a bomb had fallen on 47 Melchett Street in Tel Aviv. Instead, she took pride in the fact that she didn’t dwell on the past and never, ever cried.

Here are the things I do know from my mother. Avraham was born in Jerusalem to parents of Polish origin, grew up in Tel Aviv, had a younger sister and brother, was an outstanding student at the legendary Gymnasia Herzliya, a member of the Palmach and completing his studies in architecture at the Technion when he was killed. I know that he was good looking, popular with friends and family, and played the violin. And although she never said so, I know that his sister never, ever recovered from his death.

My mother, Shulamith, died of cancer when I was 14, stoic, angry and desperately sad till the end. And so, it was only after I made aliya in the mid-80s that I began to talk to relatives and fill in some of the gaps in her history, which is my history and that of my sisters.

I didn’t know about their childhood, for example, which seems to have been relatively happy. Avraham’s closest childhood friend was the late writer Amos Kenan, and he is mentioned at several points in Kenan’s biography; “And perhaps this is one of the reasons that Amos likes to visit Dubno. There, in the afternoon, mother serves hot meat and cabbage soup, and the sound of Shlomit’s (sic) piano flows in from the other room. And sometimes, Dubno’s father comes over and asks what happened in school and in the evenings he sits before them and conducts a conversation with them both, something that… Amos’ father has never done.”

Kenan also wrote about Avraham in his book, “Escape To Prison”. But although Avraham seems to have played a large part in Kenan’s internal life, Kenan didn’t seem particularly moved when we met. Even though, by eerie coincidence, I had purchased an apartment in the very same building where Kenan had grown up, and where he and Avraham had spent many hours together.

One person who was excited was the late Elisha Gat, who was both Avraham’s neighborhood buddy and Technion roommate. He heard from someone that I had moved to the Sheinkin neighborhood and left a scrawled note in my mailbox telling me to find him at Cafe Tamar, my local hangout. It turned out that Gat was a fixture there; I’d actually seen him for the better part of a year already without realizing who he was. Once an architect and man about town, a car accident and year-long coma in the 1970s had left Gat physically disabled and brain damaged. He wanted to talk to me about Avraham, he said, but I should be prepared for the fact that when he spoke about these things, he might experience emotions as if they were happening in the here and now.

What I remember from that conversation — aside from the fact that I did end up feeling uncomfortable — are tidbits: how he and Avraham shared a room as lodgers with a family in Haifa, how he always liked my mother but that she was “ambitious” (this was apparently not a good thing), something about a mix-up with the mail which delayed the notice that Avraham was missing in action.

Here is what Private Avraham Dubno’s official Ministry of Defense biography says: “The eldest child of Rachel and Jacob was born on June 1, 1926 in Jerusalem. He began his education in Jerusalem, after which he moved with his parents to Tel Aviv where he completed the Ahad Haam Elementary School. He was a motivated, talented student and won a stipend to the Herzliya Gymnasium where he had a deep affinity and understanding for art and music. Avraham was loved and accepted by friends and acquaintances, a noble soul who exuded good-heartedness. He devoted himself to the development of a Hebrew air force and was an active member of the Herzliya Gymnasium auxiliary flight club, and after a time, joined the Eretz Yisrael Flight Club where he was a gliding instructor. After completing his studies, he served for a year as a guard at Kibbutz Tel Amal and Kibbutz Messilot. After completing his service, he began studying architecture at the Technion in Haifa. His comprehension and talent immediately made him one of the outstanding students in his department. Avraham had even finished his third year.

“With the outbreak of the War of Independence, he was taken from his studies and sent to a course for support weapons instructors. He served in the Carmeli division and participated in the conquest of Haifa, retaliatory actions against riots in the village of Balad-a-Sheikh, was among the conquerors of Acco (Acre), and participated in the battles at Jenin. However, he hoped to be transferred to the air force — his heart’s desire. On July 16, 1948, during the Brosh campaign, an attempt to rout the Syrians from the Mishmar Yarden region, he was at the observation point at Pardes Houry. Armed Syrian forces attacked the lookout. Avraham ordered his men to retreat while he stayed on to treat a wounded comrade. During this battle, he was struck by Syrian tank fire and fell. Avraham was buried at the cemetery in Rosh Pina.

“On December 7, 1950, [his body] was transferred for eternal rest at the Nahalat Yitzhak Military Cemetery.”

No mention here of the two bodies that stayed for a week on the Mishmar Hayarden battlefield because it was too dangerous to go in, the body Elisha Gat told me he was called on to identify, (he said it looked “charred”). Or the fact that Avraham was first reported missing in action and that his father, my grandfather Yaakov, died that week without knowing if his son was alive or dead.

Kenan writes in “Escape To Prison”, “I bid farewell to his corpse, which lay rotting for seven days on the battlefield of Mishmar Hayarden during the great war for Israel’s independence, and was returned after his father was buried for several days and one body did not know of the other’s existence, although it too was a rotting corpse.”

“Now, I am bidding farewell to the deaths of Avraham Dubno, his father, his sister, his brother and his mother. I bid farewell to the death of what was in life a family and became in death, a dead family.”

My mother’s cousin Bruria called the Dubnos “An Accursed Family”, in a loving if inaccurate account in her lively self-published autobiography, “Caspit”. That feels very odd. I’m sure my mother did believe she was cursed. But I would also like to believe that, if there is a curse, it has been lifted. A more likely explanation is that shit happens — bad things happen to good, decent people too. Tomorrow’s memorial ceremonies are proof of that.

I would also like to believe that Israel’s 62nd celebration of independence and the fact that I am here writing about it would please Avraham, who wrote, “I am a very simple man and want to build something here in my country, want to give in simplicity all that is in my ability to give, so that things one day will be good for those who come after me.”

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Day of Remembrance

April 28, 2009 - 3:25 PM by · Leave a Comment
Filed under: History and Culture, Holidays, Life, War 

A soldier's funeralRemembrance day. Oddly enough, this is the one “holiday” that I always feel thoroughly connected to. Not sure why. I’m just not really a spiritual fellow. Ever since I was a little boy I had dreams of serving in the IDF. For years it was just fantasy and of course the first time I ever fired a gun as a soldier the reality of what being a soldier really meant sunk in.

I was lucky enough to serve in the IDF during a “quiet” time – relatively. It was before Israel pulled out of Lebanon and a few years before the second intifada started. I knew some guys who were seriously wounded in Lebanon, one guy in my unit killed himself during basic training (at home on a weekend off) but other than those instances, I didn’t personally know any soldiers who died.

So what do I usually think about during the sirens? I think about my friend who lost five of his former soldiers in a horrible brush fire in Lebanon during a firefight with Hezbollah, just a week after he was discharged (I’d met one of the guys the week before at my friend’s army release party). I went with him to two of the funerals. I think about the father of an old roommate who was killed by a sniper as he got out of his tank during the Yom Kippur War just hours after the ceasefire was declared. My roommate was 11 months old at the time. And I think about the history of my unit, the Seventh Brigade, and the sacrifices they made as they fought to protect our borders from our enemies in every single one of Israel’s wars. Victims of terror is another story all together. Some good friends have narrowly escaped with their lives (but with both physical and psychological scars), others I’ve known did not.

Photo courtesy of kodak agfa from Flickr under a Creative Commons license.

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