By Hannah Taylor
“There are two types of people who go to Mt. Herzl. Those who tour, and those who
visit” Aviv Vishkovsky, our tour guide for the day, said to us upon entering Har Herzl, Israel’s military cemetery. “People who tour are not from Israel, they come to learn Israel’s history, they don’t know anyone buried here. The people who visit come to see family members, sisters, friends, who they buried following wars.” Aviv told us his story started when he was visiting the
graves of his friends who were buried on the mountain. As he mourned them he saw a tour group passing by. He asked to tell them the story of his friends, how they died in battle. The tour guide looked at his watch and told him they did not have time. This repeated itself with several tour groups until one tour leader took him aside and told him that he was asking the groups at the wrong time, that in order to tell their stories he needed to come at the beginning of tours. So he stuck around the cemetery, hearing the stories of other family members who came as visitors. And he started running his own tours.
The tour he lead for us was the same that he now gives to Israeli army commanding officers. He wanted us to become visitors by the end of our journey. Any Jew can come to Israel and hear the stories of a few soldiers that their guide picks. Aviv focused on the stories that the
guides don’t normally tell. He told us the story of a family. Their first son died in battle and the
soldiers came to tell the parents, but only the father was there, for the mother was in the hospital dying. The family agreed not to tell the mother as she only had three weeks to live, and they buried their son without her. But she miraculously got better and was able to return to her home a month later. The family helped her recovery, but realized that as she became healthier, they needed to tell her about the death of her son. The night that they sat down to tell her, they
received another knock, telling them that their second son had died. When the family went to the second son’s funeral, the mother saw the grave of the first son next to the new plot dug for that day’s funeral. At first she did not understand, she thought that it was a cousin of her husband, but when she realized, she was overcome with grief.
This family is not alone in their story, their are several sets of siblings buried on Har Herzl as well as married couples, and also individuals, not with their loved ones. Each person’s story is unique. Aviv stressed to us that we could hear the stories of each person buried on the
mountain, that each person died a hero. The legacy that each person has cannot be told to every group that comes through, but by each person remembering one of those stories, we can honor the people who lost their lives in the fight for Israel, and when we do so, we become visitors, paying our respects to those who came before us.
