Peres begins series of condolence calls

President visits families who lost loved ones in Carmel fires; says: ""In the name of the nation I salute your sons and daughters."

By GREER FAY CASHMAN
Peres head 311 (photo credit: Ariel Jerozolimski)
Peres head 311
(photo credit: Ariel Jerozolimski)
President Shimon Peres on Thursday began a series of condolence calls, visiting three of the 42 families whose loved ones were lost in the fires that blazed across Mount Carmel last week.
The president met with the families of Topaz Even Hen Klein, 287, in Rehovot and Hen Kfir, 35, and Maor Ganon, 27, in Gan Yavne and learned from their closest relatives about the lives, characters and dreams of the deceased.
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He looked through photo albums, hugged parents, widows, children and siblings.
“In the name of the nation, I salute your sons and daughters. Their loss is not only yours but that of the entire nation,” the president said.
Sivan Ganon, the widow of Maor Ganon who served in the Nachshon unit – the Prisons Service’s main intervention and conveyance unit – and who like her late husband also works for the Service, said that she wants to thank everyone in the country who demonstrated so much solidarity, especially the Prisons Service, which she described as a large extended family “that enveloped us with warmth and love during this horrific period that we have endured.”
Ganon said she was proud to belong to the Prisons Service.
“My husband served the state honorably, and there is no end to [family] tradition,” she said.
Embracing Sivan Ganon and her parents-in-law, Peres told them that Maor belonged to that wonderful young generation of Israel that doesn’t talk much but does a lot and is quick to volunteer.