Widow’s Gaza Junction “Warm Corner” Becomes a Lifelong Memorial Project

Ruti Gillis of Karmey Tzur recounts, in a project documenting settlement founders and veterans, the day she told her five children their father, Dr. Shmuel Gillis, had been killed in a shooting attack on his way home. The interview is part of “Documentation of Settlement Veterans and Founders,” an initiative of the Ministry of Heritage and the Israel Heritage Sites Council, which has produced hundreds of interviews to preserve the history of settlement across different regions for future generations.

Gillis says she never doubted how she would memorialize her husband. She chose to create the “warm corner” for soldiers at the Gush Etzion Junction, imagining a small booth near the site where he was murdered, where she and the children would come every day at 5 p.m. to serve coffee and cake and tell soldiers, “We love you very much and you need to make sure we get home safely.”

What began as a modest idea quickly grew into a permanent fixture. Gillis recalls that at the time Gush Etzion Junction was dark, deserted, and narrow, with an old water pool nearby and a container installed by the council. After she came out of shiva, the council head told her, “Please, this is the warm corner.” The family initially planned to open it for two hours a day, but within days the staff said it needed to operate all day.

The schedule was expanded to 8:30 a.m. to 9 p.m. in six shifts, and later it opened at 7 a.m. with the first coffee and homemade cakes. Gillis, who later remarried Dr. Moshe Arnoweld and coauthored the book “A Warm Corner by the Road,” says the site became an institution, and today she sees “warm corner” signs all over the country wherever people want to support soldiers.