From Trauma to Triumph: The Lives and Legacies of my Uncle Moshe Gal and the painter Ori Reisman
“I long to paint portraits in complete silence, without the necessity of a storm of emotions.” – Ori Reisman
“Someone I once loved gave me a box full of darkness. It took me years to understand that this, too, was a gift.” – Mary Oliver
The Legacy of Uncle Moshe: Survival, Strength, and Silence
My uncle Moshe Gal holds an almost mythical presence within the fabric of my family’s history. His story is one of survival, resilience, and the quiet strength of a man who endured the unimaginable and yet, somehow, carved out a life of his own.
I often picture him as a ten-year-old boy, a child of war, walking through the gates of Kibbutz Kabri, delivered there by my mother—his older sister—who left him alone among strangers. He had already survived the Holocaust, spared by his mother’s resourcefulness, enduring sickness, hunger, and fear no child should ever know. Yet, as my mother retold the story over the years, I always detected a mix of agony and shame in her voice. Her decision to leave him there must have haunted her—a burden carried in silence, wrapped in the complexity of love and regret.
By eighteen, Moshe had forged himself into a warrior, joining Shayetet 13, Israel’s elite naval commando unit, the equivalent of the U.S. Navy SEALs. He never spoke of his operations, though I know he participated in many. I admired him deeply—his toughness, his discipline, his quiet intensity. I, too, aspired to join Shayetet 13 but did not pass the grueling physical and mental tests. Instead, I found my path in the paratroopers, carrying my version of that unspoken pursuit of courage.
Moshe and I never spoke about his early years in the kibbutz—he has always been a man of few words. But through my mother’s recollections, I sensed the unspoken weight of those experiences. She often spoke with hunger and cold during the war ordeals. She talked about arriving in Israel and being placed in a boarding schoolat a kibbutz, where she felt unwelcomed and an outsider. The trauma of those years left deep, invisible scars that never fully faded.
Food was a recurring theme in her stories—how she and other survivor children would steal and hoard food, despite the kibbutz having plenty. Their bodies may have been nourished, but their minds still lived in hunger, cold, and fear, shaped by a past that would not let go.
At that time, Israeli society did not know how to hold the weight of the Holocaust. Survivors were seen with suspicion, even shame—how could Jews allow themselves to be led to slaughter? It took years, perhaps decades, for the national psyche to shift. The Eichmann and Demjanjuk trials brought some empathy and acknowledgment. But the scars ran deep for those like Moshe and my mother, who had to forge their identities in a world that did not yet understand them. If you grow up as an outsider, that sense of displacement never fully leaves—it lingers in the spaces between belonging and exile.
Despite this, Moshe built a full and rich life. He married multiple times, raised four children, and became a devoted horseman, riding through the northern Galilee mountains that surrounded him. Today, in his late seventies, he still lives within walking distance of his eldest daughter at Kibbutz Kabri, in a picturesque home perched on a hill with views of the Mediterranean Sea and the endless green of the Galilee. Though his health has declined, he still enjoys his dark, potent home-brewed beer, a small rebellion against time itself.
More about dealing with Traume and healing in this fictional conversation with Viktor Frankl