Postmortem Sperm Retrieval Is Turning Dead Men Into Fathers

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Postmortem Sperm Retrieval Is Turning Dead Men Into Fathers

In Israel, parents of slain soldiers are pushing for their right to
be future grandparents. Critics call it planned orphanhood.

The Memorial Day gathering in Kiryat Shmona, like countless others
across Israel in early May, begins in the morning at the local
military cemetery. Everyone stands in silence as a siren blasts for
two minutes. Wreaths are laid, speeches are made, and tears are
shed.

Later, about 20 people, young and old, sit around the table in the
main room of a public housing apartment in this city near the
Lebanese border. They help themselves to pasta, shawarma, cakes,
and coffee, and they remember German Rozhkov.

Rozhkov, a Ukrainian immigrant turned soldier, was killed 20 years
ago, when he was 25. According to Israeli military authorities and
press accounts, he tried to stop two gunmen shooting at motorists
at the height of the second Palestinian uprising. Disguised in
Israeli army uniforms, the shooters penetrated from Lebanon and
opened fire on a main road. Rozhkov, passing by, engaged them in a
30-minute battle. Five Israeli civilians and Rozhkov were slain
before the gunmen were killed, too. (The Palestinian Authority
hasn’t publicly challenged this account and didn’t respond to
multiple requests for comment.)

The paraphernalia from Rozhkov’s service forms a shrine in the
apartment. His M16 rifle is framed on a wall with pictures of him
wearing his green beret. On a desk sit military medals and
trophies. Many of the mourners—now leafing through photos, gently
mocking their younger selves—knew Rozhkov. They served with him and
were his neighbors. His mother, Ludmila, a former teacher in Crimea
who lives alone in the apartment, tells the group that their
presence is comforting. “An apartment should be filled with
children and light,” she says in heavily Russian-accented Hebrew.
“Thank you for bringing them.”

One of the children darting among the mourners—sitting on laps and
nodding shyly—is 5-year-old Veronica. She never met Rozhkov, of
course, but she’s his daughter. Thirty hours after he was killed,
his sperm was extracted, preserved in liquid nitrogen, and, 14
years later, used to fertilize the eggs of Irena Akselrod. She
didn’t know Rozhkov, but she volunteered to bear and raise his
child after meeting Ludmila. “I was moved by her story,” Akselrod
says. “She’s alone in Israel, she lost her only son, and had no
grandchild.”


Persuading a judge to grant Ludmila Rozhkov and Akselrod the right
to German’s sperm included testimony about his desire for children.
But there was no case law covering when a dead man’s sperm could be
used to produce offspring. In his ruling, the family court judge
wrote: “When the law doesn’t provide an answer, the court must turn
to the principles of Jewish heritage. ‘Give me children, or I shall
die,’ our mother Rachel cried out. This logic reflects man’s desire
to continue through his offspring the physical and spiritual
existence of himself, his family, and people. We are told, ‘Be
fruitful and multiply.’ ”

When she gave birth to Veronica, the Russian-born Akselrod was 42
and divorced with a teenage son. She doesn’t consider herself
German’s widow, only the mother of his child. But she makes a point
of honoring him, taking her daughter to the monument the city
recently constructed in his memory. She and Veronica, who starts
first grade in September, live in public housing near Ludmila
Rozhkov. When Akselrod is at her factory job, Rozhkov picks up
Veronica from school. One room in her apartment is filled with
toys. At the front door, there’s a crayon drawing by Veronica of a
smiling man, woman, and child. She labeled it in Hebrew: “Daddy,
Mommy, and Veronica.”

Being an active grandmother is something Rozhkov feared she’d never
get to experience on that day in March 2002 when officers came to
visit her with the unbearable news. When she saw them, she blocked
the door in an attempt to avoid hearing the truth. Later, in grief,
she shouted out in Russian, “We must get his sperm!” No one,
including those who spoke Russian, knew what she was talking
about.

Rozhkov isn’t sure herself where the thought came from. The
procedure had never been done in the Israeli military. But German’s
best friend, who was with her, contacted the army. The call was
taken by Yaffa Mor, the chief casualty officer of German’s brigade,
whose job is to help families of the dead and wounded. “It sounded
bizarre and honestly insane,” says Mor, now a civilian.

It turned out, though, that the procedure existed. After a man
dies, his sperm cells live up to 72 hours and can be retrieved with
an incision to the testicle, then frozen. “We checked with legal
and medical authorities and went ahead,” Mor says. “Today it is
becoming routine.”