Resilience & Meaning For Soldiers And Their Families with Guest Akiva Harrow

August 6, 2024

How do soldiers find the resilience to enter war and how can society support them when they return or their families when they do not? Host Gil Troy and IDF Bereavement Officer & Clinical Advisor Akiva Harrow discuss how the Israeli Defense Forces supports families who have lost loved ones in service and how October 7th changed the debriefing process for combat soldiers who have returned from the warfront. 

This episode explores questions of individual and collective meaning, resilience, bereavement, and psychological health during wars, pasts and present.

Akiva Harrow

You know, when you mentioned fear and I’ve asked people, weren’t you scared, you know, or people will reference that and some of them say, no, you’re just so focused on the battlefield, you’re not thinking at all about the fear. And some said, yeah, I’m terrified.

 INTRO + LETTERS (0:24)

Gil Troy

I’m Gil Troy, and welcome to the Human Side of History podcast, where we discuss how history helps us understand our current moment. 

In this initial series, we’re going to use history and historical documents from the Shapell Collection to explore some of the most compelling questions raised at this very difficult historical moment, especially since Hamas’s horrific invasion of Israel on October 7th.  

Today we’re focusing on the individual experiences of soldiers during wartime. Wondering what’s particular in their experience, and what’s more kind of universal and timeless. Our guest today will be a therapist who has been working intensely with Israeli soldiers and bereaved families, helping them process what they’ve been through. His name is Akiva Harrow. 

So in this, our third episode, we begin with two basic questions. What motivates soldiers to risk their lives, their limbs, their sanity sometimes, for their country? What helps them move on? How do they put all that death and destruction and loss and fear behind them so they can embrace life?

 We’ll get to a Civil War document from the Shapell Collection but we’re going to start with a document ripped from today’s headlines, a moving letter written since October 7th by an Israeli soldier. On October 7th amidst all the chaos, amidst all the horror, there also were amazing moments of heroism. The terrorists breached the Gaza border and many of them focused on the Nova concert festival.

 Over 4000 people were dancing, Jews and non-Jews, celebrating loving life. In the end, over 360 would be slaughtered, making just that one event the worst terrorist attack in Israeli history and one of the worst terrorist attacks ever. There were two friends there. One Aner Shapira who was just on leave for a few days from his elite combat unit in the Army, and his lifelong friend, Hersh Goldberg-Polin.

 As the sirens were going off, they saw a concrete shelter and they ran into the concrete shelter. About 20, 25 people there. And the terrorists followed them, and they started throwing grenades in. Aner Shapira, like so many Israelis that day, clicked into training, clicked into combat mode. He told everybody to crouch down and to huddle and use their bodies to protect one another. And he stood up and the terrorist threw grenades and one after the other, after the other seven times, Aner either caught the grenade or scrambled and took it and threw it back. An eighth grenade exploded and killed Aner Shapiro instantly. 19 were killed along with Aner. Seven people survived because they hid under the bodies. And four of them, including his best friend, Hersh Goldberg Polin, were taken hostage.

 A third friend of theirs and schoolmate Ben Zussman, wasn’t there but heard and soon voluntarily joined a reserve unit in combat engineering. And before entering Gaza, he wrote to his parents. 

I’m writing this letter to you as I’m heading to the base. If you’re reading this, something must have happened to me. You know me. No one could be happier than me right now. It was no coincidence that I was on the verge of fulfilling my dream. I am happy and grateful for the privilege that I have to defend our beautiful land and Am Israel. The Jewish people. In case something happens to me, I do not allow you to sulk in sorrow. I had the privilege of fulfilling my dream and destiny. If, God forbid, I fall into captivity, dead or alive, I will not allow a single soldier or citizen to be harmed because of some bargaining made for my release. I forbid you to conduct a campaign or fight or anything of the sort. I am not willing to have terrorists released for me in any way, shape or form. Don’t misconstrue my words, please. I left the house without even being called up formally to reserve duty. I am filled with pride and a sense of purpose, and I always said that if I had to die, I wish it would be in defense of others and the state. 

Ben Zussman was 22 years old. He died in the northern Gaza Strip on December 4th, 2023.

 Obviously, this letter pulses with the details of the moment, with the challenges of October 7th, with the questions of the hostages and the fear of what Hamas will do if unleashed, because we saw what happened on October 7th. But it also is in very many ways a universal statement by a soldier saying, I have the privilege to defend my home, my homeland, my people.

And today we’re going to be thinking about war in the most personal terms, but also in these very universal terms. And to broaden our perspective, let’s go back in time to 1864, to the American Civil War, where over 850,000 American soldiers, North and South, fell. One of the worst battles was the Battle of Cold Harbor, where the Union, the North, absorbed 18,000 casualties, it was a Union disaster. The Union was close to Richmond, Virginia, which was the capital of the Confederacy, and they felt with one big push they could end the war. It would take longer. A young private, Myer Sam Levy of Philadelphia, watches it all confidently from outside his tent at Bermuda Hundred 

My dear brother, 

your most welcome and affectionate letter of the 26th ultimately came duly to hand, but this is the first opportunity I’ve had to write. On the 30th there was very heavy firing cannonading from our breastworks and fortifications behind which we lay. Yesterday morning, about 2:15 a.m., I was awakened from my sleep by heavy cannonading, being a simultaneous attack of the rebels along all our lines. And it was a beautiful but awful spectacle. The shells flying through the air and bursting continually making a whistle like a locomotive letting off steam. One fell right behind where our company were laying, but luckily did not burst, and another, a solid ball falling in the yard of the house where our general has his headquarters.

Every day, two or three times the batteries are opened, and the other day on our left, some of our troops made a charge on a rebel battery and took four pieces. This morning on our right, they charged on a fort of ours, and the shelling and the musketry was awful. Our troops falling back to the breastworks after every charge which the rebels made with a yell. But our boys drove them back every time, they making eight charges, the shells flying all the time.

I want for nothing, having good health and being in first rate spirits on accounts of the cheering news from our armies, we receiving one day’s papers, on the evening of the following day. Give my love to all the folks. It’s dark and the wind is blowing too hard to keep the candle lit. So God bless you all… Myer Sam Levy.

 What’s interesting to me about the pairing of the letters is that, first of all, Ben Zussman talks about kind of the higher purpose, the greater cause of war. And then, his predecessor from 1864 tells the story of what it’s really like, the chaos, the noise, the charges, the failures. Every successful battle had a series of failures until you succeeded. Every successful war had a series of failures until you succeeded. And so the two together give us two sides of the equation. Why you’re doing this insane thing, for a higher purpose? And how darn difficult it is, both moment to moment, and even when you’re one of the lucky ones and return.

 INTERVIEW (9:32)

 Gil Troy

To understand this very difficult, complicated dance between the horrors of war and the honor of war, we’re not going to go to a historian. We’re going to turn to someone who’s actually part of history today.

Akiva Harrow is a clinical social worker born in Los Angeles and raised in Israel. He has extensive experience working with youth at risk and young adults. Akiva started at Kav Lanoar, a center for emotional health, ten years ago as an individual and family therapist. Today, he is clinical supervisor of programming there. He is also a clinical supervisor at Ma’agaleh Nefesh, the center for Mental Health Community and Jewish Law, also serving as a clinical supervisor. Since the October 7th massacre, Akiva has been serving in the IDF as a bereavement officer, supporting grieving families of soldiers in his spare time, he’s been facilitating workshops for soldiers returning home from the battlefield. Welcome, Akiva, and I honor the work you’ve been doing.

 Akiva Harrow

Thank you. Thank you, Gil. Thank you for having me.

 Gil Troy

So October 7th. It’s a holiday. You wake up in the morning. What’s going on in your head? And how does your life change?

 Akiva Harrow

My morning starts, a little bit before the 6:30 sirens. And I was taking my dog for a walk. And, as I’d walk out, I’d hear these booms and I started noticing something’s a little off. Something’s a little weird. I thought it was construction, but it didn’t make sense it was a holiday, and I just kept hearing it, and it took me a while to realize that I just didn’t want to believe what was inevitably the case was these were shell attacks on Rishon L’Tzion and Ramle and Nes Tsiona –

 Gil Troy

The center of the country.

 Akiva Harrow

Yeah, the center of the country. That’s just, just a few miles east of Tel Aviv. And, then when I got back, it’s a holiday, I went to synagogue, and they announced that something’s going on. There’s there’s a war. And there have been skirmishes over the years. That’s what I pictured. I pictured, you know, something like that. And about 10:30, after the prayers, I was on my way home, and I see one of my neighbors. And I know that his son, among others, were, were called up to to hurry up to the army and join the forces. And I said to him, okay, you know, don’t worry about your son. Just another one of those, you know, skirmishes again and it’s going to be fine. And he says to me, you don’t know what you’re talking about. He said, they’re like 100 terrorists that entered Israel.

 Gil Troy

100.

 Gil Troy

And I was in shock for the rest of the day because I keep Sabbath and I don’t check the news. And I didn’t know what was happening till about, it must have been about 6 p.m., I thought we were talking about 100 terrorists and dozens of killed. And when I checked the news and we’re talking about a thousand and, you know, 1500 terrorists, maybe more. I just I couldn’t comprehend it. I just couldn’t comprehend it. That was my first day.

 Gil Troy

And then you got recruited to work with bereaved families. In what context?

 Akiva Harrow

Yeah. So for the last 12 years, I’ve been part of this unit. And, we’ve been visiting families before the holidays. Which is amazing that the IDF does this. They, I’m visiting families that lost their children in the Yom Kippur war.

 Gil Troy

In 1973.

 Akiva Harrow

Yeah, yeah.

 Gil Troy

So over 50 years ago, you your job is to and in normal times, visit, touch base.

 Akiva Harrow

Yeah, it’s the army’s way to say we will never forget your child. We’ll never forget your, you know, your family member that that served for us and sacrificed for us. That was what I did till October 7th. October 7th was, was so severe that as a as a massacre. And there so many soldiers that my lieutenant in the army couldn’t do it herself. She’s the one that usually goes into a family and, and supports them. So we don’t go into the family and notify the family but our official job description starts, a week later when the notifier steps out and we step in to support the family.

 Gil Troy

And how do you support them? What is it? Emotional support. Is it bureaucratic support…

 Akiva Harrow

So officially, we’re like the middleman between the army and the family. The army is is not, is not used to and not meant to deal with regular society. You know, whenever they have a soldier that needs to do something, you have a sergeant that’s going to tell him what to do. Suddenly there’s a family in the picture because he’s, you know, these are the parents of that soldier. How do we work with that family? How do we support them? So, if they want to give something to the family, or they want to notify the family of some new information, they’re always going to have that person who represents the army, who’s kind and compassionate and caring and sensitive, but who’s still a soldier. So they feel that the Army’s the one that came and not just some random social worker that’s, you know, not part of the system. And for the family too if they have a request, you know, and very quickly you start building a bond with the family.

 Gil Troy

So presumably you also talk personal.

 Akiva Harrow

100%. Yeah.

 Gil Troy

And how did they navigate. We’re looking at these two letters, right. One letter is very, very personal but also ideological, right? Ben Sussman says I’m a patriot. I’m I’m willing to sacrifice my life for the for my country. And I can take a certain joy in that amid the pain. And then we read a Civil War soldier’s letter who’s basically saying, there’s the chaos. And, you know, people call it the fog of war, but there’s also the fear of war. When you find when you’re talking to people, are they is it comfortable for them to go to that “it’s good to die for our country place?” Or is it hard for them? And I’m sure everybody’s different, but…

 Akiva Harrow

Yeah. So, you know, I’m not speaking directly to those that have sacrificed. I’m speaking to the parents. Well, they sacrificed plenty. But when it comes to the choice, you could see, you could see that the parents, that they’re all very proud of their children, but some are having a harder time accepting that pride, because it means accepting that their son was in an elite unit, I’m accompanying a unit, I’m working within a specific unit, and it’s an elite unit. And those soldiers chose to be in the frontline. They chose to be in the most dangerous situations. They they went into, armed bases and, and relieved the, the hostages there and killed the terrorist within different, towns and settlements, and bases. So this is an elite unit, and there’s one specific mother I’m thinking about that says, I told him he didn’t have to choose this type of position. Why couldn’t he get into intelligence? Why couldn’t he? So that’s definitely the son that says, well, if I’m not going to do it, who’s going to do it? Right? So that bravery. 

And interestingly enough, that same son was the kind of soldier, now that I’m getting to know him through the stories, where he he was really tough on his and his and his, lieutenants and officers and sergeants, where he didn’t want to go to war and experience chaos. So he would catch them when they weren’t, when they were being hypocritical or if they were, and which is really rude, you don’t do that as a soldier, but one of the unique things about that, that I saw that and he said that to one of his friends. He says, I’m not sure I want to go to battle with that specific person. You know, like when when something like that’s said, that means that I’m afraid to trust to, you know, to trust my, this specific person, let’s say, in a war, because of the chaos, because it’s dangerous.

Gil Troy

So you talking about fear, you’re talking about trust. You know a a sense of purpose and a higher sense of purpose.

 Akiva Harrow

Definitely a higher sense of purpose. Yeah, that that’s one thing. You know, when you mentioned fear and I’ve asked people, weren’t you scared, you know, or people will reference that and some of them say, no, you’re just so focused on the battlefield, you’re not thinking at all about about the fear. And some said, yeah, I’m terrified. I have a client that called me, I was at a funeral, Har Herzl. I was like…

 Gil Troy

Mount Herzl, the national military cemetery.

Akiva Harrow

Thank you. And he calls me devastated. Devastated by what’s going on and that he’s going to be called up. He knows that any moment now, he’s going to be called up, and he’s going to have to fight in a war. And, I wanted to, I realized that as a therapist, I’m not equipped for this conversation. We’re not trained to prepare someone for battle. That’s not something a therapist does. A therapist, when they come back from battle, we know what to do with you. But. But before the battle… And then I realized at that moment that he doesn’t need a therapist now. He needs either a general that will inspire, you know, and instill confidence and that this is for a just cause, or a spiritual leader, of some sort. And I said to him that when there’s purpose, the trauma is much weaker. And that’s 100% true. That’s not something, you know, that I just wanted to encourage him. When there’s purpose, then you’re going into something feeling that this this is important to me. I think that helped a bit, I hope. My sense is that it’s not so easy to tell someone they should have purpose. They have to, they have to really want it or experience or feel it.

 Gil Troy

Now, you’re also looking at the other side of the story because you run workshops for soldiers returning home from the battlefield. 

Akiva Harrow

You know, if it’s those that have lost friends, those that have seen the battlefield, and I’m not going to share any gruesome, you know, examples but they’re coming home with that. Something they’d rather not. And, that’s something, you know, when, when they write home and they think about, you know, what they’re going into or what they’re leaving, it’s not easy.

The workshops were very focused on helping them return to a normal environment. Any one of us, when we spend a week in one place doing something different, then when we leave that environment, it’s not easy to adjust. But when you spend four six months, you know, and if we’re talking about wars 100 years ago or 150 years ago, those wars are going to be years sometimes.

Gil Troy

Civil War was 4 or 5 years, and and they kept I think it was finishing and it wasn’t.

 Akiva Harrow

You can’t you can’t go home and be a regular person again. Everything you built before, I mean, I could even explain this neurologically why the brain is not wired anymore to do the things it did before. It’s wired for war now. And that’s where the trauma kind of comes in. Right? Because if your brain’s creating this new wiring, which helps protect it, and then suddenly you feel this extreme danger, an existential danger, it doesn’t have to be life threatening, but it’s an existential danger. Then the wiring is going to try to get into a loop and heal you from that. That’s the more extreme and the more simple explanation would be, and this is true for all of us, it’s just that the wiring, if you’re you’re very, very focused on your auditory senses because you want to hear any movements. That’s any soldier has to do that, right? If you go to sleep you’re half sleeping. Then you come back to real life you don’t have to have half sleep anymore. You don’t have to stay half awake. You could just ignore the the side noises and focus on on a nice podcast and a nice conversation. And they can’t do it. They can’t do it. And this is people who aren’t traumatized.

 Gil Troy

So tell me about the workshops. How many people are in the workshops? How do they find you, and what are some of the coping skills that you’re giving them to help frame their experience? And what are the challenges? What are the successes? What are the failures?

 Akiva Harrow

The brigade that called the, the organizations that have the facilitators, the therapist, you know, the people that can come in and work with the soldiers, they, they had I think it was a few thousand soldiers that they wanted to offer services for. And the service was just to sit with them for two days and you start off by creating trust, because why would a soldier, they’re all macho, they don’t want to talk about some experience they had and feel weak and vulnerable. They’re not going there. So you want to start first with creating an environment that feels safe. Let’s get to know each other. We literally played games for the first hour, getting to know each other, names, hobbies, things you like to do. What did do you do before? What do you, you know, going back to now, that was just the beginning. And then after that, once they’ve warmed up a little bit and we explained some psychoeducation explaining why this is valuable. After we explain why this is valuable and what might be relevant for some people. And like I said before, it’s not necessarily PTSD. Even the smallest things like waking up at night, you know, and, your daily function, many of the soldiers might be feeling it and not thinking anything of it. And that’s true. You don’t need to worry. 90 something percent of soldiers will go back and feel fine. Even the ones with symptoms will, most of them will be fine. It will, it will bother them for a few days, a few weeks, maybe a few months, and slowly subside, or it will accompany them possibly for the rest of their lives. But but it won’t affect their lives, you know. So someone’s a lighter sleeper. It’s not something you want, but it’s something that’s okay. So that’s how we start.

 And another thing we felt is really important is creating a narrative of what happened. And it’s fascinating because we’re talking about four months at the time that I did it. Four months, we created like a line where each soldier had to remind their team, about 20 guys, exactly what happened at each stage. So what happened? You know, October 7th. How did you get that phone call? What did you know? Okay. What happened that day? Then the next day you got or that night you got to your unit. What happened there? Then the next day and you go through the whole four months and we spent a few hours on this, and then we talk about what were the each individual’s, what was their traumatic moment, their hard moments, their breaking moments, and what were their meaningful moments. And then you see, everyone had a different experience. So they’re gathering a story, they’re putting it in order, and you’ll see a lot of them forgot, a lot of them thought that a specific event was just a day or two, and it was two weeks, or the other way around. It creates a certain order in their mind that they can now reference when they think of the war, it feels more collected, feels more organized. That’s one piece. 

The other piece is the normalizing of, of what the what the what they’re dealing with. But an example of something that happened with a soldier who, who’s a sniper, and he was asked by his sergeant to to shoot someone who he thought might be considered innocent. And it was gray. Clearly these these people were in an area that they shouldn’t be. And anyone in that area gets shot. It’s an area that no innocent people are going to. But it was far enough that the soldier felt that it was unnecessary to shoot at them. But but it’s just a matter of time until they come closer. So he didn’t want to shoot, but a sergeant wanted him to shoot, and he felt tremendous pressure that he has to take a life against his own moral values. And that’s that’s, that’s that’s a moral trauma. That’s something that can that can literally really traumatize him for the rest of his life if he actually took that life. And it’s about the story you tell yourself, right? Because if he didn’t think that way of that moment, if he felt that shooting, that person was shooting an enemy and a terrorist, and therefore the people with him are safer and his country is safer then he, you know, it might not be pleasant, but you justify it. You feel morally okay. There isn’t a moral dissonance between, you know, protecting your your family or your comrades and, and killing someone. So that was really hard. And it developed a whole complex discussion where they were arguing, we told you not to push him. And another person saying, but they were these were enemies, you know, in the battlefield. We have to take them out. What if they kill someone later? You know? And these are all really good questions. I don’t think anyone.

 Gil Troy

No easy answers, right?

Akiva Harrow

No one can claim they have the right answer. But the sergeant was smart. He knew that he couldn’t press and he let go. He let up. Because he knew that if it was someone else, he would press a little more that they shoot. But but this specific soldier and it wasn’t a must. It wasn’t a dangerous situation, he let it go. For for the sake of that soldier not to have to carry that burden. That that was something we worked through. And it was helpful where the sergeant can apologize for putting him in that position, for him to be able to speak up to his sergeant and say, you know, I didn’t think that was necessary.  And for him to feel like that, that that freedom to to take care of himself in a war and, and the sergeant to say, you know, I pushed you, but I wasn’t trying to hurt you. And this isn’t even such a dramatic, right? This is a relatively easy story.

 Gil Troy

Well it’s fascinating. You know, we historians always say, well, to be a really good historian you need keen psychological insight. Because you have to, if you’re writing a biography, if you’re understanding dynamics.  To be a therapist, I guess you have to be a good historian because you have to be a good storyteller, and you have to help people put the narrative together.

Akiva Harrow

100%.

 Gil Troy

One of the questions is how much is this story about Israel and October 7th, and how much is the story about the Civil War and about Vietnam War veterans coming home and the Afghanistan and Iraqi war veterans now in the United States of America, who in some ways also lost that sense of purpose when America left Afghanistan in chaos.

 Akiva Harrow

Yeah. 

Gil Troy

But there’s also a certain thing of we’re obviously now in the middle, but it helps when you win, in in terms of creating a different kind of story.

 Akiva Harrow

I don’t know if this is the direction you want to go in, but when I think of war, and I think of the Western countries, the more liberal democratic countries. War for, for us is a terrible, terrible thing because individuals matter and their suffering matters. So we don’t we don’t want to go to war, ever. 

Gil Troy

It’s about the individual in the collective, but it’s also that there’s this kind of universal sense of war for democracies being something that they’re reluctant. Right. And so the cliche the historians translation of that is the cliche that democracy is usually reluctant to enter war, the North was reluctant to enter the war, the Civil War. The United States was reluctant to enter World War I and then World War II. But once they enter, boom. They mobilize fully and they see it as a war for civilization. I think we’re seeing that also in Israel on October 7th.

 Akiva Harrow

I think, you know, the whole conception of 6th of October, everyone likes talking about that. 100%. We are a Western country that doesn’t want to go to war, and we’ll do anything to avoid another battle. And then on October 7th, we we were taught that we don’t have a choice. We have to fight for our freedom. We have to fight for our security. And then now everyone’s supporting the soldiers going into war. And we’re willing to fight. We’re willing to sacrifice lives now because we know that we have to fight for for our freedom and our safety.

 Gil Troy

And you need that clarity. That’s what we hear in the in Ben’s letter. 

Akiva Harrow

Yeah, yeah. 

Gil Troy

Just to finish up, I have an amazing letter from the Shapell Collection from August 11th, 1943. 

Dear Mrs. McMahon, 

This is just a short note to tell you that your husband, though bothered by a hand injury, is alive and well. It’s impossible to say now exactly what has happened. But you can have the satisfaction of knowing that through an extremely hard and trying period, your husband acted in a way that has brought him an official commendation and the respect and affection of the officers and men with whom he served. He will be able to shortly write to you himself. 

With sincere regards. 

John F Kennedy. 

John F Kennedy was the boat captain, and he says, I’m the boat captain of the boat in which your husband rode his engineer. This is John Kennedy, who went on to become president, of course, but he was famous as the hero of PT 109, where the Japanese sank the boat. And then he swam to safety. And he pulled somebody, from the lifejacket with his with his he put the the cords of the lifejacket in his, in his mouth, and he swam him to safety. And he had a bad back for the rest of his life. And many people call him a hero. He would say, “I’m not a hero. The Japs sank my boat!” And, I’m just curious, as you hear that note, give it an A give it a B give it a C? Is it the kind of words that a family would want to hear?

 Akiva Harrow

It’s so tricky. I always, I always feel that way about – how do you phrase… Some people seem to have this strong emotional intelligence, and they seem to always know how to say the right thing. And JFK was one of those people, actually. But, but how do you know what the person needs to hear on the other side? I don’t know what they’re thinking. So, you know, you’re hearing of a soldier who was injured, but it’s just a hand, so it’s reassuring a little bit. It’s not too severe. You’re hearing that there’s a person here who was highly respected, you know, by his colleagues, by the comrades. And it sounds sounds like something a parent would want to hear when their son’s coming back from war. It sounds good to me.

 Gil Troy

So what you’re adding is the collective dimension, which is very important, right? That sense of war, you know, you’re talking about how difficult it is for individuals in a democratic society, in a modern society, to go to war. But you do it not alone. You do it with a group. Right? And so much of training, of basic training, is just giving up on yourself and being a part of the whole. But then in wartime, I think, the self has to emerge as the individual hero, right? Is it…?

 Akiva Harrow

Interesting. Interesting you say that because a lot of heroes don’t see themselves as heroes like you, like you quoted it JFK because you’re really just you’re part of a team. I really do think the self is, is really neglected by soldiers. What I’m hearing, mostly in my private practice when I work with soldiers, I’m hearing them talk about the most meaningful relationships they have. And the harder the service was, whether it’s a war or whether it was just an elite unit, the more complex and adverse the service was, the more meaningful the relationships are. And those and those units, their relationships, 20 or 30, 50 years later, they’re still in touch. 

So so that’s just one part. And one comes to the, the hero part, I think I think there’s something I’m thinking about how everyone I’m thinking of myself when I was 16, thinking about going into a combat unit. And yeah, I want to be a hero, you know, I want to go in there and I want to fight, and I want to protect my country, and I wanted to I wanted to feel like I’m doing something meaningful. It was about my meaning. It wasn’t about us as a team. But, once you’re there and you’re in the action, you’re very, very collective oriented. You’re very focused on the objective and the people that are with you, and you’re willing to sacrifice your life for the others.

 Gil Troy

And you hear in the two letters, right. The Civil War soldier, Myer Levy is basically talking about the fact that he’s feeling good because his team is winning, even though it was actually a complicated battle that day. But he’s seeing success. And Ben Zussman is saying we’re doing the right thing and don’t just mourn me because I’ve done something greater.

Well, thank you very much. I think you’ve done a great job of really helping us understand both the intense personal trauma, but also kind of the universal experience on the battlefield. I feel like we could have had this conversation about almost any war, in almost any battlefield, certainly in the democratic context. And I think you’re absolutely right that the dictator functions in a different way and the dictatorship functions in a different way. But the challenge of being a a democratic soldier, a soldier fighting for a noble cause, but also where ultimately you just want to go home and live your life, is not easy.

 Akiva Harrow

Yeah, yeah. Well, it was it was an honor for me.I really enjoy this. I didn’t know about the Shapell Foundation and and everything, and, I’ve gotten really, really curious. I want to I want to read more. I want I want to learn more. Thank you.

 Gil Troy

Thanks very much.

Akiva Harrow

Pleasure.

 SUMMARY (31:44)

 Gil Troy

I always say that historians have to be really focused on the details. You have to collect all the stories as they’ve done at the Shapell Foundation Manuscript Collection. And as Akiva Harrow did in having his soldiers tell their stories. But you also have to pull back and think big and tell a broader story, and also realize, as we see from the Civil War letter and as we see from the October 7th war letter, that as detailed as the story is, as detailed as your experiences as a soldier, it’s also part of a broader universal series of challenges. And it’s very interesting because we’re ultimately talking about what it is to be a soldier, but also what it is to be a soldier in a democracy fighting for your life, for your family, for your homeland, for your people, and for Western civilization, for liberal democratic ideals.  

So I want to thank all of you for joining us in this difficult discussion about personal sacrifice and courage. As an added bonus for today we’ve listed Akiva Harrow’s five favorite books in the Show Notes. And if you want to know more about the Shapell Manuscript Foundation and go on an amazing website and just explore so many details, so many letters, there are many, many manuscripts you can view on www.shapell.org that’s 1 P 2 L’s. Also, feel free to visit the Show Notes for more about the manuscripts, about the events we’ve discussed and everything else we’ve talked about today. And don’t forget to subscribe, to rate, and to review this podcast. History can’t determine our future, but it can help us better understand the present and make a better future. This is Gil Troy, betting on better days.

To read the texts and learn more about the manuscripts discussed in this episode, visit:

Letter From Sgt. First Class Ben Zussman To His Parents, On His Way To War, In The Event Of His Death Published December 11, 2023

US Civil War Soldier Describes The Chaos Of War During The Bermuda Hundred Campaign June 2, 1864

Bonus Content:

Check out Akiva Harrow’s 5 favorite books:

1. Man in Search of Meaning by Viktor Frankel.
2. Growth Mindset by Carol Dweck
3. ⁠The Righteous Mind by Jonathan Haidt
4. ⁠Homo Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harrari.
5. ⁠Benjamin Franklin autobiography

Stay connected with us on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn and by signing up for our newsletter at shapell.org/contact. For more information about this podcast, visit The Human Side of History.

Comments & Corrections:

–

Production by docyourstory

 Music by Adam Weingrod

The show is produced by The Shapell Manuscript Foundation. To learn more about the foundation and discover the manuscript collection visit: www.shapell.org