When Yaakov Shenkman, a researcher of the battles of Safed in 1918, visited the military cemetery in the city, he saw a sight that does not receive media attention. He described the visit in his diary. Channel 7.
""During the liberation of Safed, on the first day of Iyar, I volunteer as a guide in the battle zones, and last Thursday, the first day of Iyar, I guided around the citadel and told about the battle that claimed the lives of 14 of the fighters. Afterwards, I went to the military cemetery to pay my respects to the fallen, and there I saw a sight that at first I couldn't believe what I was seeing. I saw a group of ultra-Orthodox young men dressed in black with long wigs cleaning the military plot with water hoses and then going down to the nearby plot of those killed in 1948, and those who fell on the first day of Iyar read verses of Psalms on the grave, light a memorial candle, and say Kaddish.".
Shankman approached the group, who told him they were students from one of the Breslov yeshivahs in the city. He asked to photograph them in order to bring information about the deed to the attention of the general public at a time when "the general media only shows bad things," as he put it.
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""Even without publicity, these guys deserve all the credit," says Shankman, noting that none of them did the deed for publicity purposes or bothered to publicize the matter, and if he himself had not happened to be passing by, the matter would not have become known. "Those who do these things do not do them for publicity, but out of a sense of mission. That is the best Jewish feeling there can be. The problem is that the media will always publicize bad deeds...""
Shanekman also notes that the winner of the work of the Breslav boys was actually a Chabad Hasid, so in fact the event also involved the joining of Hasidism with Hasidism for the benefit of the cause.
He then asked whether the private initiative of the yeshiva students did not indicate a malfunctioning of the authorities, which is their job. According to him, in this case everyone acted properly and the authorities, the municipality and the Ministry of Defense personnel clean and take good care of the cemetery, but the young men in question came for a final cleaning operation of the graves before Memorial Day.
Source: Channel 7
