Yigal Amster was born in Haifa in 1953 and served as a combat medic in an armored reconnaissance unit. He fell during the holding battles in Sinai during the Yom Kippur War, on October 6, 1973, after being struck by a bullet to his chest.
The artwork created in his memory came about following a conversation between me and Yigal’s only brother, Rami. Rami shared a moving story about Yigal’s helmet, which had been collected by a Nahal soldier on the day Yigal fell. It was returned to Rami forty years later. The helmet became the centerpiece of the artwork, alongside the unit’s emblem and the Red Star of David.
The artwork was placed on Yigal’s military grave.
Vitaly, the only son of a doctor and an engineer, was born in 1963 in Kyiv. He studied medicine in Ukraine and got married. In 1990, he immigrated to Israel with his family, and after passing his licensing exams, began working as a resident in thoracic surgery at Rambam Hospital. His colleagues foresaw a brilliant future for him. In February 1997, during reserve duty, he was killed at the age of 33 in the helicopter disaster over Shaar Yashuv.
The sculpture was created as part of a memorial project: A Remembering Community, born out of meetings with Vitaly’s parents and widow, who described a charismatic man, a promising doctor and a Zionist. From this emerged the image of the broken link. Vitaly’s calling to heal and to repair was severed at the very same moment as the symbol of medicine itself, whose parts, the serpent, the sword, and the olive branches – also became links that came apart from one another.
