Oct. 8, 1973. On Tel Saki, a lofty hill in the southern Golan Heights, a handful of Israeli soldiers are busy counting the bodies of their fallen comrades. Of the 32 fatalities from the armor and Nahal units, Dan Almagor recognized more than 20 of them.

Almagor was a 20-year-old paratrooper at the time, born in Romania and raised in the Tel Aviv suburban city of Giv'atayim. He was given the task of identifying his dead friends and inserting little notes with their names on them into their shirt pockets. Since Almagor had specialized in explosives, he was also asked to make sure that the bodies were not booby-trapped. Syrian forces were camped a few hundred meters away, as the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) continued to push them off the Golan. Smoke clouds still rose from the hill.

Almagor first approached the body of Lt. Beni Hanani of Jerusalem. “Next to his head was the white skullcap, with blue stripes. It was clean, even though everything all around was full of black dust, powder,” Almagor told Al-Monitor from his home in Florida.

At that moment, Almagor resolved to establish a monument to his friend in his heart. The days and years passed without his finding a suitable way to do so. “Over the years, I was afraid that I would forget the promise,” he said. “At first I thought that I would wear a skullcap. I bought one like Beni had, but I didn’t feel comfortable with it. Then I decided that when I set up my own household, I would keep kosher in the house. And that’s what I did. In this way, I remember Beni and the friends who fell.”