By Pauline von Pezold
Nir (35) and Adele (68) were there when Hamas’ terror began in Israel on October 7th – both survived. Friends and relatives, however, were less fortunate and were murdered or are still being held hostage in Gaza.
BZ met the two Israelis in Berlin. They tell how they experienced the darkest day in Israel’s history.
October 7th in Kibbutz Nirim
Adele (68) has lived in Kibbutz Nirim on the border with Gaza since 1975. On the morning of October 7th, she had planned to drive to a wildflower field to photograph the sunrise. “Luckily I was too lazy that morning – otherwise I wouldn’t be sitting here,” she says.
She spent the weekend with her son, who was visiting from Tel Aviv. When she heard the missile alarm in the morning, she ran to her guest room where her son was sleeping. Every house in this area must have a safe room, which is a small bedroom with reinforced walls, a metal guard over the windows and a heavy metal door – Adele’s safe room is her guest room.
Adele in Kibbutz Nirim the night after the attack Photo: Private
You usually cannot lock a safe room. It is designed to be safe from missiles, not intruders. If you lock a safe room, the helper teams would no longer be able to get to you later, which is why they often remain unlocked.
Adele received news that Hamas was in Israel, so she locked the rest of her house and lay flat on the floor with her son. “At the beginning I thought they probably wouldn’t get through to us, we have such a good military that protects us,” says Adele.
Then more and more news came. “I read that everyone wrote, ‘Now they’re with us’, ‘They burned down our house’ or ‘We hear the terrorists outside’. “I knew where everyone lived, so I could track where they were based on the news,” she says – then she realized how serious the situation was.
Adele and her son told each other how much they loved each other, “we just waited our turn,” she remembers. They heard men talking to each other right outside their house – in Arabic. They were right in front of the house. Adele’s son understands a little Arabic, he understood someone saying ‘come here’” – they would only find out later what that meant.
“This is a dog tag that many of us wear. In Hebrew it says ‘My heart is a hostage in Gaza’, the date and ‘Bring them back now’, on the other side it says,” then her voice begins to break, “the name of my best friends who are from a neighboring town Kibbutz is coming, she and her husband are also being held captive in Gaza.” Photo: Ufuk Ucta
Late in the evening, Adele was in pain and had not been to the toilet for hours. So she got reckless and left the safe room. “I put us in danger,” she says.
She saw that all the shutters were broken. “Then I understood what had happened before: a terrorist had just tried to break into our house, and another terrorist called him to him with the ‘come here’ – I don’t know whether it was luck or whether it was my late husband looked out for us, but it saved our lives,” she says.
Five people were kidnapped from Adele’s kibbutz that day. “I have friends in Gaza, I know that not everyone in Gaza is bad. But on the seventh of October something changed. “The people who came to our kibbutz after the attacks to wreak havoc and celebrate evil were ordinary citizens of Gaza, it wasn’t just Hamas,” she says.
“We don’t know what happened to them, how they are doing. Channa is 79 years old, her son Nadav is 51. They both have diabetes. They need medicine,” says Adele Photo: Ufuk Ucta
October 7th at Kibbutz Nir Oz
Kibbutz Nir Oz is located just a few kilometers from the border with Gaza. Nir (35) also lives in the 400-person community. Nir is divorced and has two small daughters, four and five years old. They were supposed to spend the weekend of October 7th with him.
In the early hours of the morning the rocket alarm began in the small kibbutz. Nir and his daughters went into the safe room and waited there. Nir found out via WhatsApp that terrorists were in the kibbutz. “We didn’t have any water or food or anything with us, we thought it couldn’t take that long, the military would protect us. I thought the weekend could continue as normal in two hours at the latest,” he says.
But then the terrible news started in the groups: people announced that the terrorists were at their houses, shooting, gassing the houses, raping them, that someone had to urgently call the IDF. Every minute there were more messages like this. All the news came at the same time, so it started to become clear how many terrorists there must be. “There are 400 people living in my kibbutz, and at the same time there were 400 to 500 terrorists there. I was scared to death,” says Nir.
Nir tells how he experienced the seventh of October – his brother and his grandmother have been held hostage by Hamas ever since Photo: Ufuk Ukta
The most important thing for him at this moment: protecting his daughters. “But not just them, but also their souls. I didn’t want them to be completely devastated if we survived, so I made up a story,” he says. There were endless shots fired in the kibbutz, screams could be heard, his daughters were confused, but they didn’t really know what was happening, so he told you they were all part of a military exercise.
A few hours later, the terrorists also broke into Nir’s house. He held the safe room door closed with all his strength – then they shot at the door about ten times. But the door held up. The terrorists tried to open the door by hand, but Nir held it so tightly that they couldn’t. “So I was standing there, telling my girls to be very quiet, holding the door with all my strength and only about 20 centimeters away from me was a group of terrorists who wanted to kill us. I held the door so tightly that at some point they probably thought it was locked,” he remembers. At some point they left. But Nir kept the door like that for another six hours, hearing terrorists coming and going in and out of his house the whole time. “I heard them shooting, laughing, celebrating,” he says.
You could now see in the media what happened in the kibbutz. “My ex-wife called me and begged to talk to our children one last time – but I said no. “I continued on my mission to make it as normal as possible for my children,” he explains his decision.
The terrorists wreaked havoc on the kibbutz for six hours until the Israeli army finally liberated it. When Nir came outside, he saw that there was almost nothing left of his kibbutz. His brother’s house, who lives directly opposite, was also no longer standing. “There was a huge cloud of smoke hovering over the kibbutz and it smelled like gunpowder,” he says.
They were taken to a bunker. “On the way we saw all the wounded people – from that moment on I could no longer protect the souls of my children,” says Nir. When he arrived at the bunker, he met his brother’s wife and their two children. She asked if he knew where his brother was. They later found out that he had been kidnapped.
“My brother and my grandmother are being held captive in Gaza. My grandmother is 85, she needs medicine,” says Nir desperately. 400 people live in his kibbutz – 130 of whom were murdered or kidnapped. Everyone in the community has lost at least one loved one. Nobody knows how the hostages are doing.
“We were evacuated to Eilat, in the south of Israel – we have been refugees ever since, we could never have imagined it,” says Nir.