Family asks Central for help in memorializing fallen son

by Gil Hoffman
NJJN Israel Correspondent

ARAD, Israel — The family of Lt. Hanan Barak, who was killed last month by Palestinian gunmen who infiltrated from the Gaza Strip, have asked members of the Central NJ Jewish community to help memorialize their fallen son.

Stanley Stone, executive director of the Jewish Federation of Central New Jersey, and former federation president Gerry Cantor paid a shiva call to Barak’s family at their modest sixth-floor apartment in Arad, the Partnership 2000 sister community of the New Jersey-Delaware cluster that includes Central New Jersey.

The apartment was crowded with Barak’s friends and family, who spilled out into the hallway and stairs.

Barak’s sister Atara told Stone stories about her brother’s heroism and showed him his charcoal drawings. She also told him of the family’s wishes to create some sort of memorial to honor his memory in Arad. Stone replied that he would be glad to help.

“We will certainly do what has to be done to make it happen,” Stone said. “He was a young man with talent and a zest for life. He unfortunately joined a list of people who were killed out of pure hatred.”

Barak and a second soldier, from Dimona, were killed when Palestinian infiltrators attacked their military post and kidnapped Cpl. Gilad Shalit. Shalit’s abduction was the precipitating event in Israel’s decision to launch an air and ground offensive in Gaza last week.

Arad Mayor Moti Brill said that Barak was the 41st soldier from Arad to be killed and that the city’s memorial room has become overcrowded. Brill thanked the people of New Jersey for their support and condolences and said it was too soon to discuss what form a memorial to Barak would take.

The NJ cluster previously dedicated a park in honor of Danny Darai, who was killed in 2001 by a sniper when he was on duty outside Bethlehem. A youth club was dedicated in honor of Sharon Touboul, who was killed in 2002 by a suicide bomber when she was on a bus en route to Arad for her sister’s wedding.

“Unfortunately, we have a partnership of blood,” Brill said. “New Jersey has been with us in our times of tragedy, and we were there for them after Sept. 11, 2001. It is very unfortunate but this is an element in a partnership in the Jewish community.”

“You are in the hearts of the people of New Jersey,” Stone told Barak’s father, David.

David Barak said that his son loved serving in the IDF’s armored corps and that he was a wonderful tank commander. He said that Hanan took after his grandfather (David’s father), who was an avid Zionist in Europe and went by the nickname “Moshe Palestina.”

In photographs that Atara showed Stone, Hanan Barak is always smiling, especially in one depicting his receipt of an award from the IDF for being the top soldier in his troop. In another photograph, a 14-year-old Hanan shaved his head to show respect to his brother, who was undergoing cancer treatments at the time.

At the same time that Stone and Cantor came to the Barak home, the IDF’s commander of ground forces, General Benny Ganz, paid a condolence call and told the family that Hanan Barak had been in line for a promotion to commander of a unit in northern Israel.

“Any loss of life is painful, but it’s worse when it is a young man just getting his start in life who had so much to give,” Stone said.

Cantor, who lives in Westfield, said he felt that Arad had become part of his own community and that he cared about the fate of the people in the Negev desert town.

“I can’t imagine the loss that the mother and father are feeling right now,” Cantor said. “It’s absolutely heartbreaking. We weren’t expecting everything in Arad to be happy. But we definitely were not expecting this.”