| Israeli Astronaut Ilan Ramon Loses Life on Space Shuttle | |
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| Moon
Landscape, drawn by a boy who was killed in Auschwitz, was taken into space by
Ilan Ramon. | ||||||
I do not know how to break the news of Ilan Ramon's death and the Space Shuttle crash to my five-year-old son Gilad. Like all Israeli school children, Ilan had become his hero.
Sixteen
days ago, Gilad came home with the number 5:40 written on his hand. When I asked
him what it was, he said his kindergarten teacher had written it on all the children's
hands to remind them of the time when Ilan would be taking-off in the Space Shuttle
that day. He explained to me how he was supposed to count (in English with his
Israeli accent) "10, 9, 8, ... lift-off" so Ilan would know that all
the Israeli children were with him in spirit as he left the earth. Throughout
the sixteen days of Ilan's tour in space, he regularly cut out articles and pictures
of Ilan from the newspaper. He had no trouble finding material because Israeli
newspapers covered the details of the Shuttle Columbia in great depth. Just yesterday,
on our way to kindergarten, Gilad told me that if he worked really hard in school,
then he could become an astronaut like Ilan.
The entire Israeli public
felt great excitement and pride as Ilan took-off into space. My older son skipped
his sports class, my older daughter skipped her drama class, and my husband came
home early from work in order to watch the take-off of Shuttle Columbia on the
television. Shuttle Columbia's launch was covered live by all Israeli television
stations and made headlines on all Israeli newspapers.
Ramon
was an Israeli hero. A colonel and former fighter pilot in the Israeli air force,
he saw combat experience in the Yom Kippur War in 1973 and the Lebanon War in
1982. Ramon was also one of the pilots that bombed the Iraqi nuclear reactor in
1981.
Ramon, 48, was the son of a Holocaust survivor. He took a special
drawing, from Israel's Holocaust Museum Yad VaShem, with him into space. The drawing
was created by a 14-year-old boy named Petr Ginz, who draw and wrote a good deal
about science, while he was in a Nazi work camp and before he was killed in Auschwitz
in 1944. The pencil drawing, entitled Moon Landscape, shows a view of the earth
from the surface of the moon, as imagined by the boy. Given the tragic end to
Columbia, the haunting words of one of Petr's unfinished short stories comes to
mind. In "Crazy August" Petr wrote: "The compartment was illuminated
with great brilliance, and in the flame of the great explosion Petr saw a trace
of the great merger."
While Ramon was not a religious Jew, he asked for kosher food aboard the shuttle and he observed the Jewish Sabbath, day of rest, in space. Ramon represented to the Israeli public just how far the Jewish people have come in two generations - from the depths of the Nazi gas chambers to the heights of space.
Israel is a depressed country these days. The 2.5 year long conflict with the Palestinians has included more than 80 suicide bombings that have injured thousands and killed over 700 (the equivalent in percentage terms of losing more than 35,000 Americans). The country is suffering from a socio-economic crisis, partly due to the world-wide hi-tech crash and partly due to the conflict with the Palestinians. And Israelis are anxiously waiting for the possible outbreak of a war with Iraq; the last such conflict had Israelis putting gas masks on their children and sleeping in bomb shelters. In this sea of bad news, Ilan Ramon's lift-off into space was a morale boost. Now that ship has sunken, and the mood in Israel is once again somber.
This
morning, the morning after the tragedy, I awoke to Memorial Day songs on the radio.
In between the songs, the radio host instructed parents on how to break the news
of Ilan's death to their children. We should show them the pictures in the newspaper,
explain to them exactly what happened to the space shuttle, and tell them that
sometimes accidents like this do happen. We should have them make pictures and
write letters to Ilan's family. And we should tell the children that Ilan was
able to achieve his lifetime dream of traveling to the stars.
~
Lisa Katz
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