![\"image](\"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/oct-24-cov.24.OJC-Oct-11-exihibit1.jpg\")
<\/a>On the Saturday evening, the guest speaker, Nitzan, shared her story of Oct. 7 to a room filled to capacity.<\/p>\n
Nitzan, who preferred to go by her first name for this article, grew up in a small northern town in Israel, where having to take refuge in a shelter wasn\u2019t necessarily a scary experience.<\/p>\n
\u201cBack then, we didn\u2019t have Iron Dome, we didn\u2019t have an alarm system,\u201d she said. \u201cWe heard the whistle and then the boom.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs we grew older, my sister moved to the south of Israel, where she fell in love and built her life in Kibbutz Be\u2019eri, an amazing peaceful, community. Be\u2019eri made the desert bloom.\u201d<\/p>\n
On Oct. 7, Nitzan\u2019s sister sent a photo of her and her family in their safe room. \u201cI called her, asking why they were in the safe room, what\u2019s happening. She said the amount of rockets is insane. We\u2019re in the safe room, but I\u2019m not sure what\u2019s going to happen to the people partying at the music fest \u2013 they have nowhere to go.\u201d<\/p>\n
A few minutes later, \u201cShe was outside with the kids and, on a video call, I said to her, what if they come?\u201d<\/p>\n
The family returned to their safe room, said Nitzan. But the doors to safe rooms don\u2019t lock. \u201cYou have to hold the handle up,\u201d she explained.<\/p>\n
Fifteen minutes later, texts started flooding in \u2013 attackers were in the kibbutz, they were breaking into people\u2019s homes.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs the night went on,\u201d said Nitzan, \u201cthey, Hamas, were burning the houses, smoking people out of their homes, shooting, killing, murdering whoever they could. They broke into my sister\u2019s house five times. She and her husband held onto the door, not letting go, not letting them in.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs the night went on, her texts were begging for help, saying goodbye, not thinking they were going to make it through the night.<\/p>\n
\u201cHer husband\u2019s family all live in the kibbutz \u2013 his two sisters and his mom. His mom was hosting her sister, her husband and son. They didn\u2019t make it,\u201d said Nitzan. His mom, Pessi, her sister Hanna, husband Zizi and son Tal were all killed.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/span>\u201cMy friend Abouya answered my texts, saying he\u2019s holding onto the door and then he stopped reading my messages. They had shot him in the stomach, and he died at home. He was a close family friend\u2026. His grandkids,\u00a0 <\/span>two 12-year-old-year-olds, a boy and girl, Ynai and Liel, were being held in Pessi\u2019s house. They were murdered with her. The terrorists gathered 15 neighbours, murdering 12 of them.\u201d<\/p>\n Nitzan knew many others who were killed.<\/p>\n \u201cI ended up in an emergency room,\u201d she shared. \u201cI couldn\u2019t bear the horror. I was throwing up, sweating, shaking. When I got to emerg, the doctor told me he had to give me something to calm me down. I said, I can\u2019t take it. If I need to make the decision to go home, I need to be able to make it. He looked at me and understood. When I saw him a few months after, he asked me, how are you doing? Did your family survive?<\/p>\n \u201cThey did, and I am so grateful for that.\u201d<\/p>\n Nitzan spoke about the rising amount of antisemitism in Canada and around the world.<\/p>\n \u201cWe have to stick together, we have to find each other, support each other and find why,\u201d she said, mentioning former hostage Eli Sharabi\u2019s book, Hostage<\/i>, in which he describes meeting Hersh Goldberg-Polin, another hostage, who was murdered in the tunnels of Gaza with five others in August 2024. Goldberg-Polin told Sharabi, \u201cIf you have the why, you\u2019ll find the how\u201d to survive. Sharabi talks about how this idea, also expressed by Friedrich Nietzsche (\u201che who has a why to live for can bear almost anything\u201d) helped him survive 491 days in captivity.<\/p>\n<\/a>