Daniel Polisar, executive vice president of Shalem College in Jerusalem, has three sons serving Israel in the war Hamas initiated on October 7. Two are in infantry units and the third co-directs a medical team in Gaza, which lost one of its combat medics – Staff Sgt. Shlomo Gurtovnik, 21 – in a Hamas attack on Saturday, November 18.
On November 19, Shlomo Gurtovnik’s father, Alex Gurtovnik, delivered an extraordinarily moving eulogy for his son at the Military Cemetery in Modi’in. Polisar translated it into English as a service to the family and distributed it to friends and family.
Here is the eulogy, simultaneously heartbreaking and inspiring, posted with permission:
My dear son Shlomo:
Your great grandfather, who was named Shlomo Gurtovnik, fell in battle in the Second World War, fighting Nazis. Eighty years later, you fell in battle in Operation Swords of Iron, fighting Nazis.
I know that the Jewish rebels in the concentration camps would have been the happiest of men if they were given the opportunity to die with a weapon in their hands, fighting in one of Israel’s wars. We are no better than they were, but we have been granted a privilege.
There is no hatred in our hearts. We have only a home that is empty.
You learned about Plato in school. He was grateful to God that he was a Greek and not a barbarian, free and not a slave, a man and not a woman. I would like to say:
I am grateful that you were born to the Hebrew people, detested and pursued throughout the world.
I am grateful that our children were born in this tiny and courageous land, threatened on every front.
I am grateful that we served in a people's army that is the most principled and moral in all of history.
There is something that death cannot take away. When you knew that you were going South, to Gaza, you hugged us and you said that you love us. We love you more than anything. And that will always be true.
Forgive us that we were not able to protect you.
Farewell, my sweet son.
Photo credit: IDF, as published in the Times of Israel and Ha'aretz