Tonight begins Yom Yerushalayim, the anniversary on the Jewish calendar of the liberation of the Old City of Jerusalem during the Six-Day War. On that day in 1967, an IDF commander selected a young soldier named Dov Gruner to be the first to reach the Western Wall. He did so in recognition of another man with the same name, who had died for the Zionist cause after serving in the British army during World War II. Meir Soloveichik reflects on the legacy of the two Dov Gruners:
Captured during an Irgun raid on a Ramat Gan police station, [the first] Gruner was sentenced to death. Given his wartime service, an international campaign sought the commutation of Gruner’s sentence. But the British, in an act that horrified even Menachem Begin’s opponents in the Zionist movement, hanged Dov Gruner in the middle of the night in the Acre prison, denying him the right to see a rabbi before his execution.
It has been noted by scholars such as the historian Yosef Hayyim Yerushalmi and Rabbi Jonathan Sacks that while others speak of their connection to the past as “history,” Jews instead tend to speak of “memory.” The difference between the two terms is profound. History rightly records the great figures who oversaw the events that changed the world. Jewish memory insists on the debt we owe to all those who sacrificed in the past, and our obligation to remember them.
This month, after celebrating Israel’s 75th anniversary, the Jewish world will mark Jerusalem Day, remembering one of the most miraculous moments in Jewish history. Jews will remember, and rightly so, the commanders who helped bring about this remarkable achievement. But it is right to remember the men who captured a mount and touched the stones of the ancient wall, men who remembered Dov Gruner, expressing thereby what it means to be part of a people who refuse to forget.
Read more on Commentary: https://www.commentary.org/articles/meir-soloveichik/remembering-dov-gruner-zionism-israel/