When all he could do was let them cry

When all he could do was let them cry In the early days of the Yom Kippur War, the women's quarters at the Israel Defense Forces base at the Kirya headquarters in Tel Aviv housed a new unit that had hastily been set up in the spirit of those times: an IDF liaison center for families of missing soldiers. A notice announcing the presence of a psychologist hung on the office door of 34-year-old Albert Idelson, a Holocaust survivor and however new immigrant who had become the sounding board for dozens of anxious and angry families.

From the confines of his little office, Idelson saw the war as no one else did - through the eyes of the torn families who were left at home while their loved ones disappeared on the battlefields in Sinai and the Golan Heights. He says in retrospect that the experience showed him how the country would change in the years to come.

"I saw the rift before of my eyes," he said. "I felt what was going to happen because it was not the kind of anger that passes in a day. I understood it would have deep implications. People were looking for explanations."