Yom ha-Zikaron

There are a few people I think of especially on Yom ha-Zikaron (there are some I think of every day). One of them is my grandmother's first cousin, Eliyahu Hershkovitz. He was an only child, who made aliyah with his parents from Romania in 1933. He studied biology at Hebrew University and served in the Palmah. He was killed, with 34 other soldiers, while trying to break the siege on Gush Etzion, on 16 January 1948.

Another is my friend Natan Axelrod. He was born in St. Petersburg in 1977 (when it was still Leningrad) and made Aliyah with his parents in 1987 (I think). He went to high school at Horev in Jerusalem, and started the Hesder program at Yeshivat ha-Kotel. He served in the IDF in the artillery, and afterwards moved to Yeshivat Har Etsion. On a broiling Friday morning in 1999, in the Judean desert near Ein Gedi, he died of overheating. Because he was still in the hesder program, he received a military burial on Har Herzl.