Uri was born on 27.8.1985 in Jerusalem, the second son of Michal and David, a younger brother to Yonatan, and a brother to Ruthi. If his mother, Michal, in his circumcision ceremony, the song of the poet Rachel, “barren.” And Uri, like his name, brought light to his rotations: a slender baby with a mane of blonde hair, with a clever, mature, curious gaze in his gray-blue eyes. “Uri was not only my brother,” Yonatan told him, “he was also the best friend, and he was the best friend, And the most precious person in me “When Ruthie joined the family, he revealed to her the concern and tenderness of a big brother, who was always very gentle towards little children, and compassion for those who were weak, and was always attentive to the feelings of those who were with him and tried to do them good. (Little memory: We once went to bring Uri from Meid to the Cherion in Latrun, and on the way he instructed us, on the phone, how to get to him, and in the background we heard a group of soldiers singing some crude song. To the soldiers, and we heard him say to them, “Guys, that’s not right, there’s a group of religious girls here, you can not sing like that to Yadan,” and the soldiers’ singing fell silent, A stranger to talk to us, as if nothing had happened.) When he was two, his family moved from Jerusalem, Mevasseret Zion, where he grew Uri. At the fig garden he spent three years, one of the happiest in his life. A very sociable boy who worked with his friends in building airplanes from planks, and for a whole year he came to the kindergarten wearing a cowboy, taking care of everything from the hat and gun to the bandana and lasso, and from an early age developed a unique style. The dream of the cowboy was replaced by the dream of being a pilot who was betrayed when he received his first glasses at age five and a half after his visual impairment was discovered. (By the way, when he was eight years old, we took him for an eye exam, and Yonatan asked him where he was going, and Uri replied, “To the place where they will prove to me that the person is coming out of the bat.”) And anyway he was so funny When he once read in the paper that scientists discovered that a worm was genetically related to a human being, he said, “We are probably the black sheep of the family. From kindergarten until graduation, Uri studied at the Experimental School in Jerusalem. He loved the atmosphere of freedom and openness of the school, and enjoyed the educational approach that enabled him to speak “at eye level” with teachers and principals. It suited him to appreciate others, and to be valued, not by virtue of age or by the authority that accompanies the official position, but by virtue of propriety and action. In adolescence, in the summer of one, the lean thin boy became a solid, broad-shouldered boy. His voice changed overnight and turned into a low bass. He started training and also studied yoga and Tai Chi. Then his girlfriend, Ayelet, joined him. “I think,” Ayelet told him, “that you could not be your friend, Uri, without feeling that there was something unique here that could not be reconstructed, special, and different from anything I would ever know. With you and enjoy your love, and the warmth you give to close people. ” In high school, he joined the theater trend and discovered his great talent – acting. Anyone who saw Uri playing the character of Solomon Grip in Hanoch Levin’s play will not forget it: The character he designed was both funny and ridiculous, but always touching and pathetic. Uri’s empathy, maturity and depth in which he understood people and situations, mothsThey fired his game, so that for a few moments it was possible to forget that he was just a boy. When Uri was about to enlist, Uri dreamed of becoming a fighter and commander in the Armored Corps, like his brother Yonatan before him, who also served as a tank commander in Battalion 46 in the 401st Brigade. How proud he was to be a gunner in a Merkava Mark 4, between the first rounds that operated this tank. After the training program, Uri served hard service, mostly in the territories, standing strenuously at checkpoints and on patrols along the separation fence. “Uri was always a true leftist, a humanist,” said his brother Yonatan, “a man of peace who opposed violence and maintained these opinions throughout a difficult and difficult combat service in the territories, and at the same time Uri was a fighter, a brave and tough fighter who always insisted on being on the front, Who was willing to give anything for the country. ” Uri was looking for a way to act humanely even in his role at the checkpoints. When he went to check a Palestinian car he did everything to make the forced and unpleasant encounter pass tolerably. If there were children in the car, try very hard not to frighten them or hurt their parents. He was proud when Machsom Watch women visited his watch and praised the soldiers under his command for their human functioning. “Even when you have an enemy,” Uri wrote, “it is better not to dream of destroying and humiliating it, but how to live with it together, in a situation that will benefit both of you. , And therefore I believe wholeheartedly in the path of peace and generosity – even toward our enemies. ” Again and again he was disappointed by Uri’s desire to be a tank commander, but he knew his abilities, did not give up, and fought for his right to go to the commanders’ course. In his determined struggle he reached the rank of Chief Armored Corps officer, and eventually, when he was a Paznik, he went to the course and succeeded in it very well.I wanted to return as a commander to the company where he served as a soldier, “Uri was well known for his values and determination, his wit and mannerisms,” his commander, Lt. Col. Elad Rassabi, the commander of the IDF, “In a short period of time, Uri became an outstanding commander and one of the leading commanders in the battalion. “In July 2006, four months before he was about to be released, Uri was supposed to go with his family on a trip to Guatemala and meet his brother Yonatan, who was already at the end of his” big trip “in South America. But then the Second Lebanon War broke out, and Uri went with the battalion north to the Golan Heights, and on July 30, 2006, his tank entered Lebanon for the first time, and for two weeks the crew worked in Lebanon. During the last days of the war, when the operation was carried out in Khirbet Ksif in the eastern sector, the tank was hit by an anti-tank missile fired by Hizbullah, and all its members were killed: On October 11, 2007, about a year after his fall, Uri, together with his fellow tank members, received a medal from the OC Central Command on their activities during the course of the war. The war. “When the ‘Shelah’ battalion joined the war in Lebanon, a ‘construction force’ was established, commanded by Maj. Benya Rein z” l. The battalion had a pair of tanks whose main task was to rescue fighters and tools that had been damaged in the fighting. Sgt. Uri insisted on staying in the tank he commanded, even though he transferred the command to Major Benya, and took part in several rescue operations, providing for and evacuating the wounded under fire … Sergeant Uri Grossman was Ehud’s commanderAnd is highly appreciated by his commanders and commanders as well. “Staff Sergeant Uri participated in their rescue testified to his courage, dedication and strong desire to help and help. Staff Sergeant Uri Grossman demonstrated throughout the fighting a spirit of fighting, initiative, exceptional determination and a spirit of volunteerism. ” “I am trying to learn from you and instill in me your tolerance, in which you were able to accept people and situations that I had no patience with anymore,” said Michal, Uri’s mother, on the 30th anniversary of his downfall. You did not feel like a victim of the circumstances, you did not feel a sucker, as soon as you understood the logic of things, you just got them. “And when it seemed that the army would not allow you to go to Guatemala , You said: ‘Go without me, Jonathan and Ruthie will be so disappointed if you do not go.’ How generous she was here, how thinking about the others, about your brothers and about us. What can you give up what you too longed for, and that you needed more than any of us. And this is the sentence I now feel as a guide, not to mention a will: Stay alive. Even if I can not be with you, do not stop living. In the deepest sense of the word. “And his sister, Ruthie, said:” How can you begin to go to ninth grade without knowing about it, without getting a phone call from you that reminds you of you, and thinks about me. Without holding you tight when you come back, and without telling anyone I know my brother is a tank commander. “There’s no longer so much that you’ve had for me.” His father, David, eulogized Uri at the funeral: “There will not be this boy again, with the ironic look and the crazy sense of humor. The young man would not be with the much deeper wisdom of his years. There would be no warm smile and healthy appetites, no rare combination of determination and gentleness, would not be his common sense and wisdom. There will be no longer the endless kneeling of Uri, and not the quiet in which he stabilizes every storm. And we will not see the Simpsons and Seinfeld together again, and we will not hear Johnny Cash with you, and we will not feel your strong and stabilizing embrace … “Uri was a very Israeli boy, he was the essence of Israeliness as I would like to see her. And with full responsibility for everything that is happening around him, Uri who was always a “great head” who could be relied on in the context of Uri, with a deep sensitivity to all suffering, injustice and compassion. Situation, and find his exact voice in everything he said and did. ” And his older brother, Yonatan, said: “Uri was a wonderful person, with a pure heart, always surrounded by friends, he loved Maccabi Haifa and Manchester United, and he loved to eat hummus – the first thing he did when he came home from the army was to go to Abu -Gosh, wipe hummus with Abu-Shukri … and no one has ever managed to make me laugh like him with our private mad humor, which no one will understand anymore. ” His friend, Ram Geffen, said, “You were a friend, a confidant, a cultural enriching, and an uncompromising wise man.” I had the honor to talk to you, to laugh with you, to serve with you. Uri’s friends who set up in his memory – and the memory of his friend Kirill Golenshin, who fell in the Gaza Strip in November 2006 – the spring of Ein Nekufa, near Mevasseret Zion, and turned it into a corner. The experimental school where he studied each year held a theater evening in his memory, in which the students of the theater track raise their theater productions, and in his memory the “Uri Program – A Journey to Acquaintance with Israeli Society” was established. The different faces of Israeli society, which they do not usually meet, a program that sought to perpetuate Uri’s curiosity, the concept of the complexMoral dilemmas and tolerance to the other, and his deep connection to the land. Uri’s light, the light of a layer star, continues and accompanies us.
