{"id":7340,"date":"2024-05-05T11:07:59","date_gmt":"2024-05-05T11:07:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/internationalpulse.net\/?p=7340"},"modified":"2024-05-05T11:07:59","modified_gmt":"2024-05-05T11:07:59","slug":"hamas-killing-spree-haunts-holocaust-survivors-in-march-of-the-living","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/internationalpulse.net\/?p=7340","title":{"rendered":"Hamas killing spree haunts Holocaust survivors in ‘March of the Living’"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\nJerusalem \u2014\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n
Israel’s Holocaust commemorations this year have a searing significance for six elderly survivors now deeply scarred by the Hamas attacks of Oct. 7 that sparked the ongoing Gaza war.<\/p>\n
The killing and kidnapping spree by Palestinian infiltrators on a Jewish holiday morning shook the sense of security of Israelis – not least, those who had witnessed the state emerge as a safe haven after the Nazi genocide.<\/p>\n
For Bellha Haim, 86, the upheaval is especially profound.<\/p>\n
Her grandson Yotam \u2014 like her, a resident of a village near the Gaza border \u2014 was taken hostage by Hamas and managed to escape, only to be accidentally shot dead by Israeli soldiers.<\/p>\n
The trauma drove Haim to return to her native Poland, which she had fled with her family as a child during World War II, and where she will on Monday take part of the “March of the Living” at the site of the Auschwitz death camp.<\/p>\n
The annual ceremony is timed to coincide with Israel’s Holocaust memorial day.<\/p>\n
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\n<\/div>\nVisitors tour an exhibition, ahead of Israel’s national Holocaust memorial day at Yad Vashem, the World Holocaust Remembrance Center, in Jerusalem, May 5, 2024.<\/span> \n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n
“I never went back, and I wasn’t convinced to go back,” she said during a meeting with other survivors ahead of the trip.<\/p>\n
“But this time, when they told me that they were connecting the Holocaust and what I call the ‘Holocaust of October 7’ \u2014 because then in the Holocaust we [Jews] were not a united people, we didn’t have a country, and suddenly this pride of mine that has been broken, my pride in my people and my country that was shattered in front of my eyes \u2014 I said, ‘This time I will break my oath and I will go out.'”<\/p>\n
As a teenager, Yotam had taken part in the annual Auschwitz vigil and Haim said she saw the event as a chance for communion with him and other victims of the Hamas attack.<\/p>\n
“I will go out in the name of Yotam, who marched there when he was in high school, and I will go out there to shout out the cry of the slain, of the babies, of all my good friends that I will never meet again,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Arabic yelling and gunfire<\/strong><\/p>\n
Among those joining her will be 90-year-old Daniel Louz, whose hometown Kibbutz Beeri lost a tenth of its residents to the Palestinian attackers.<\/p>\n
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\n<\/div>\nHolocaust survivor, Daniel Louz, 90, from Kibbutz Beeri, who also survived the deadly October 7 attack by the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas, speaks during an interview with Reuters in Herzliya, Israel, May 1, 2024.<\/span> \n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n
In some ways, he said, that ordeal was worse for him than the European war, when he escaped Nazi roundups in his native France although half his family perished in Poland.<\/p>\n
After he awoke to the sound of Arabic yelling and gunfire, “I was constantly busy with surviving and figuring out what to do,” Louz said. “In France, as a child, I suffered all kinds of post-traumas that I\u2019ve learned to cope with. But in Beeri, it was the first time that I felt the fear of death.”<\/p>\n
A neighboring house was riddled with bullets. Louz’s was untouched. He says he imagined the souls of the 6 million Holocaust victims steering Hamas away from him. “They probably wanted me to be here to tell this story,” he said, weeping.<\/p>\n
Other Holocaust survivors participating in the March of the Living include Smil Bercu Sacagiu, 87, whose home was hit by a rocket from Gaza, and Jacqueline Gliksman, 81, whose home was torched by a Palestinian infiltrator.<\/p>\n
“What was left, and luckily the terrorist didn\u2019t see it, is my grandchildren,” she said, referring to gold figurines on a necklace she was wearing. “That’s the only thing I have left.”<\/p>\n
Before he was seized, Haim’s grandson left a text message: “They\u2019re burning down my house. I smell gas. I’m scared.”<\/p>\n
She said that reminded her of a Holocaust-era song in Yiddish, invoking centuries of pogroms, with the refrain “fire, Jews, fire.” A veteran campaigner for peace with the Palestinians, Haim said she would no longer pursue that activism.<\/p>\n
“I’m not able to,” she said. “Now what interests me is only my people.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
![\"Visitors](\"https:\/\/gdb.voanews.com\/01000000-0aff-0242-bdf6-08dc6cf17cef_w250_r0_s.jpg\"\/)
\n<\/div>\n![\"Holocaust](\"https:\/\/gdb.voanews.com\/01000000-0aff-0242-7760-08dc6cf10e18_w250_r0_s.jpg\"\/)
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