Families and dear friends of those killed by violence, or in the throes of wartime, or in acts of terrorism feel the pain of those tragic deaths every day. We may sympathetically mouth terms like “closure,” but for most who mourn in those circumstances, there is no closure.
Growing up, I can still remember the story of the couple who lived not far from our house — on a quiet, residential street in a small town in New Jersey, along the Delaware River. I don’t remember their names, and I never saw them, not in all the years I lived there. They never left the house, at least I never saw that they did. Nor did I see anyone visit. On evenings when my father would drive us home from an evening out, that house was dark, no lights turned on. But we all knew the story, I and my friends in the neighborhood identified the house that way. “See that house,” we’d say. “They had a son. He was killed in the war.”
Day after day, I would ride my bicycle slowly past the house and stare at the gold star nailed to the door jamb. Death lived in that house, never closure. But even as a neighborhood kid, I was drawn to the house, my imaginings pulling me closer to the two sad people who lived there.
I had similar feelings when I read recently in The New York Times that thousands had attended the funeral on Nov. 7 of slain American-Israeli soldier Omer Neutra, whose body had been returned to Israel from Gaza a few days before. Neutra, a 21-year-old lone soldier from Plainview, New York, was a tank commander in the IDF, leading a four-man crew in the 77th Battalion of the 7th Brigade near the Gaza border — killed on Oct. 7. Finally, after 738 days as a hostage, he was returned home — dead, yet held hostage, his body finally released for burial by his family.
I wondered about Omer Neutra’s family. Would they isolate themselves in their house, sit evenings in the dark like the neighbors who lived on my childhood street? Omer’s parents were Israeli, his grandparents Holocaust survivors. Ever since I read about them in the newspaper, I think about them, just as I still think about the man and woman who lived in that house with the gold star on the door jamb — separated by expansive properties, isolated by circumstances.
A statement by Linda Sussman, a leader and consultant for United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism’s Metropolitan District of New York, touched me, her words so poignant, so true.
“Nothing can ease the pain for Orna and Ronen Neutra and their family,” she wrote. “Yet we pray that laying Omer to rest and honoring his life among his people will bring a measure of comfort. Omer’s connection to Israel was enriched through USY, Camp Ramah, the Schechter School of Long Island, and the Midway Jewish Center — communities that instilled in him the values that guided his life. We continue to pray for the return of all remaining hostages, and for a day when all who live in the region may know security, dignity and peace.”
I never met Omer Neutra. I don’t know his family. And yet, for me, he represents the totality — the suffering, anguish, death, the heroism — of this war between Israel and Hamas. How can any of us relate to hundreds or thousands of bodies dead? Or six million dead? The numbers are fathomless.
But, like Anne Frank, one among six million, we can identify with her, see her as a universal symbol of youthful hope vs. Nazi evil, just as Omer Neutra is, for me, the tragic symbol of yet another meaningless war, one casualty among thousands. One soldier, who lived near me here on Long Island.
Also in The Times recently was the obit of a Dutch resistance fighter named Selma van de Perre. Her story, one of undercover campaigns and narrow escapes from Nazi occupiers, reads like a tense, espionage novel. And yet, all true. In the face of grievous losses — her father, mother, sister, grandmother, aunt, uncle and two cousins murdered by the Nazis — she noted that people who might have lived commonplace, unremarkable yet happy lives ended up memorialized on lists and monuments. “We were ordinary people plunged into extraordinary circumstances,” she said.
Like Anne Frank. Like Omer Neutra.

—Sara Bloom