Lee Saucy recounts the October 7th Hamas massacre at the Nova Peace Festival, where she hid in a bomb shelter with her uncle Avi and friend Alex. After grenades killed her uncle instantly, Saucy survived by crawling under corpses to shield herself from RPGs and smoke bombs during eight hours of relentless attacks. She witnessed beheaded bodies and burnt cars on the road to rescue, while her pregnant cousin Nitsan and boyfriend Lidor were murdered in a separate shelter. Despite viral videos proving the horror, Saucy emphasizes relying on eyewitness testimony over misinformation, framing her survival as divine intervention and her uncle's death as a sacrificial act for her life. [Automatically generated summary]
On October 7th, Hamas terrorists attacked Israel, massacring over 1,200 people and abducting 240 more.
The stories that are coming out from October 7th are astonishing.
People were butchered in their homes, raped in the streets, beheaded, burned alive.
It's evil like I have not seen before on display.
But just hours before the attack, there were people dancing until sunrise at the Supernova Music Festival.
They could never have imagined what would happen to them after sunrise.
They could have never imagined that nearly one-third of the total deaths that day would come from those they were dancing with.
Today's podcast, we have a survivor from the Supernova Music Festival.
We have with us today a 25-year-old American woman who was there at the Supernova Music Festival, saw the horror of Hamas up close.
She survived by hiding under dead bodies.
She shared her phone footage with us from that day.
Be warned, it's very graphic.
This is the festival prior to the attack.
You can see everyone dancing and enjoying themselves.
This is her view from inside the bomb shelter where she hid from Hamas.
You can see how many people have already been murdered by Hamas's guns and grenades.
One more view.
This one's right outside of the shelter.
You can see the dead bodies spilling out of the shelter.
It is only by the grace of God that this young woman made it out alive.
She is here to tell her story.
Today, on the Glenbeck podcast, we welcome Lee Saucy.
Teenagers, Smells, and Emergency Prep00:03:19
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Thank you for coming.
Thank you for being here.
Thank you for having me.
I appreciate it.
We were talking before the recording about I don't want to re-traumatize or anything else.
And you said actually talking about it helps you.
Arriving at the Nature Party00:14:56
How or why?
I think after what I've been through, you know, seeing, you know, us getting killed, seeing people getting killed in front of my eyes, you know, I feel like it's really important that as long as I'm alive, to bring awareness to what happened and not to let this happen again, because a lot of people say that it's lies, but it's, it's not lies.
It's real life.
And a lot of people are suffering a lot of trauma from this.
So before we get into the story, I want to know who you were because I imagine you're quite different today than you were on the 6th of October.
Oh yeah, definitely.
So tell me about you.
Who were you?
Before I was, you know, just a simple person.
I still love, I still like to travel and be with family.
You're 25?
I'm 25 years old.
Where did you grow up?
Yes, I'm 25 years old.
I grew up in Los Angeles my whole life.
Relatively normal, easy life?
Yeah, I had a normal life, an easy life.
You know, I went to public school.
You know, I grew up with all sorts of types of, different types of people.
You know, I had a diverse background with friends.
Did you ever encounter real anti-Semitism?
Not after October 7th.
You mean not before?
Sorry, pardon me.
Not before October 7th.
Yeah, pardon me.
Okay, so you never had that?
No, no.
And it was hard to believe in a way.
I believed it.
I knew that the Holocaust happened.
But I didn't think that something like this would happen again in my lifetime.
Nor to you.
Nor to me, exactly.
So why were you over in Israel?
Is this your first time over in Israel?
No, I've been to Israel many times.
My father, he's Israeli.
He was born and raised in Israel.
And I have a boyfriend, a fiancé now, actually.
He's from Israel as well.
And we had planned to go to Israel to meet his family, for me to meet his family and to meet his mother and to spend the holidays with his family.
So you were engaged before?
No.
No, so you wanted to meet the family?
Yeah, we went to meet the family.
He wanted me to meet the family.
And we went together as boyfriend and girlfriend.
And on the second day, when we arrived to Israel, he proposed to me in the Jerusalem at the Khotel, the Western Wall.
Wow.
Yeah, it was really special.
And what day was that?
I think that was like two days before Rosh Hashanah, which is the Jewish New Year.
I think it was September 13th.
Okay.
September 13th.
So then, did you plan on going to the concert?
I did plan to go because my cousin, he was a big organizer for the event.
What was it?
Because it seemed like, I mean, no offense, you're from California, so you'll understand I'm from the West Coast too.
It seemed very hippie, very just like, right?
It's very hippie.
This location where they did the party, it's a known location for nature parties.
What's a nature party?
A nature party is, that's a good question.
This is what they call it in Israel.
They call it the nature parties.
It's their type of raves.
You know, for us, we call raves raves there.
They call their raves nature party.
But it's basically a music festival with different DJs with genre of trance, mainly trance and techno.
And it's in the outdoorsy and it's very, you know, normally it's small groups, a small capacity.
Normally there's like 400 or 500 people at these events.
How many were at this?
This event was a big event for Israel, and it was around 4,000 people.
And was the, I mean, because it was the point peace and we should all get along?
Yes, it was a Nova.
I think it was called Nova Peace Festival.
It was a peace festival for people that love music and love to dance.
My cousin, he was a big organizer for this event, so I knew about it weeks in advance.
In fact, when I found out that my flight was, I was supposed to leave Israel on October 3rd, and I decided to extend my stay in Israel so I could go to this event.
I was determined to go to this event.
So excited for it.
Who'd you go with?
So I had gone, I had planned to go with my uncle Avi, my uncle Avi, his daughter Danielle, Danielle's husband, Maor, our good friend, Alex, and we planned to meet up at the event with my other cousins, Nitsa and Elidor, and my cousin Omri, who was planning the event.
I originally wanted to go with my fiancé.
I had begged him all week, all weeks, the weeks that I had known about this event, I was begging him to join me.
And he didn't want to come because at first he said he was going to come.
And then he found out that the event was on a Friday evening, which is Shabbat.
And not only Shabbat, it was the holiday of Simcha Torah.
Which is.
Which is a holiday.
It's a Jewish holiday where after Sukkot, after Sukkot, the holiday, they open the Torah and they dance with the Torah.
It's like the beginning of the Torah, you know, because I'm getting goosebumps.
It's like the beginning.
It's the new chapter when they finished reading the whole book.
And Sukkot is where you live out in it.
10.
Yeah, Sukkot is a holiday.
I'll be quite honest.
I need to know more about my Jewish heritage and my backgrounds.
And I'm working on it.
But Sukkot is a different Jewish holiday where they build walls out of five walls.
I'll be honest with you.
I don't want to say the wrong information.
No, no, I understand.
Because I'm not so religious.
My goal is to be more closer to God and to know all of this stuff.
I bet it means a lot to you now.
It does.
It does.
So this festival is happening out in an open field?
Yes, in the middle of nowhere.
It's in the open field.
In fact, it's by the Gaza Strip.
I didn't even realize that it was that close until we arrived towards the area of the party.
But to get to this party, it's in the middle of nowhere.
You have to drive on a road that goes down for miles on end.
You have to drive 30 minutes to reach this party on this one-way road.
It's like in the middle of nowhere.
And when you get to this party, all the kibbutz, which is where the terrorists had taken people from their homes, was all in this area.
It was all very close to each other.
When you got there, you didn't think anything.
You know, I didn't think about, I didn't think that this would happen, but I think our bodies, we all have instincts, you know, our intuition.
It was weird because when we were on the way to the party, my uncle, Avi, he was freaking out that we were so close to the border.
He's like, oh my gosh, there's the border.
Here, you know, we're so close.
And he started, he was getting paranoid.
In fact, when we stopped to put gas in the car to go to the party and we were by the border, he was like, I need everyone to stand next to me outside.
Like, I'm scared.
Like, always looking over his shoulder.
So we were paranoid that we were so close to the border.
We didn't realize how close we were until we got there.
So the party starts.
What time are you there?
We arrived to the party at around 2.30 in the morning.
It took us about an hour to get to the party and we got there on 2.30.
We arrived with a lot of people.
There was a lot of people that had arrived at the same time.
What time did these things start?
How old?
It's okay.
This party, I think it started at like 8 p.m. in the evening and it goes all the way till the following day at 3 p.m.
So it's like a long day party.
It's like a full over 24 hours, like a little bit less than 24 hours, I would say.
But it's a full night today.
So you get there?
So we got to the party.
We entered.
It's not, it's a big party for Israel, but for me as an American, this is small.
It was very, you wouldn't remember where you're walking.
You remember the stages and the location.
So we were walking through the area just to get like a scope of where everything is.
And we walked through the campgrounds and it was nice.
A lot of people were coming up to us and speaking to us.
In fact, this one stranger just came up to my uncle and he's like, hey, you, you look like you make the best steaks in the world.
And we all looked at this man in shock because my uncle was, in fact, one of the best barbers.
He made the best steaks in the world, like the best and the best.
And we were in shock that this stranger just came up to him and said that.
It was like, are you psychic?
Are you an angel?
Where did you come from?
It was really weird.
And then this guy was speaking to us for 10 minutes and he left.
And then after this guy left, another guy came up to my uncle and he's like, hey, you, how old are you?
You look like you're 25.
And my uncle is 65.
And my uncle's a very young soul.
It was just like a lot of people were going up to him.
And it was, I just remembered that, those good times, you know, that was a good memory of mine from this evening.
And we had a beautiful night.
Everyone was in such good vibes.
Everyone was happy.
Everyone had different outfits on.
They all looked hippie.
You know, this is a hippie party.
People dress themselves, dress as themselves, excuse me.
And we were at this one stage and we were dancing until sunrise.
It was a beautiful night.
And then we got tired.
We decided that we wanted to sit down and relax before we were going to head home.
And we were sitting in this tent area where there wasn't any music.
There was couches and whatnot.
So we were sitting there just vibing.
And I was sitting with my uncle.
And he was going through his phone, showing me pictures that he has on this phone, like things that he made, the foods that he's cooked, and like pictures of him and his nephew, Amit, which he loved very dearly.
Just going through photos, showing me photos, which I always look at signs, me personally.
And now I think back, I'm like, that's strange that he was showing me all these photos.
It was like as if he knew in his soul that it was about to be his ending.
It was very interesting.
And then the sunrise came up and he's like, let's go dance one last time before we head home.
So we went and we were dancing for about 30 minutes.
And my uncle never tells me, never takes pictures with me.
And we were dancing by the tent and you could see the sunrise.
It was gorgeous.
I was taking videos.
My uncle's like, let's take some photos, Lee.
This is a perfect time.
I'm like, you're right.
Let's do that.
So I took up my phone and I started taking selfies with him.
And we were dancing and it was beautiful.
Everyone was just in such a good mood.
And then you see what looked like fireworks coming into the sky.
And I thought to myself, this couldn't be fireworks.
It's morning.
You know, fireworks is in the nighttime.
And then it clicked in my brain that this isn't fireworks.
This is rockets, missiling into Israel from Gaza.
Was it coming towards the, are you okay?
Yeah.
Yeah, I'm okay.
You know, I found out that sighing is very good for me.
It releases serious stress.
Don't worry.
Good.
Okay.
So the rockets were coming.
Were they shelling or looking like they were attempting to hit the music festival?
It was just shooting into the air.
It was more farther out.
It was going not towards our area, but you could still see them.
Yeah.
And there was a lot of them coming.
And they were coming from all areas.
You know, some were coming towards us, but thank God for the drone.
I'm sorry, there's an iron dome, the iron dome that protects us from those missiles.
So in this area where the party is located, there isn't any sirens because no one lives in this area.
It's like an open field.
So there wasn't any sirens to alert us.
So the people that actually saw the rockets notified everyone around.
And then after five minutes of the rockets missiling, they had shut off the music and they were telling everyone to evacuate the party.
At this point, we were walking towards the car and everyone was walking, leaving the event area.
And I remember a lot of the people that were with us, not with us, a lot of people that were at the party, they were saying, it's okay, don't worry, this is normal.
Rockets are being thrown into Israel all the time.
This is a normal protocol for them.
And they didn't look scared.
Not a lot.
Some looked scared and most didn't really, it was normal to them.
So I was telling to myself, okay, everything's okay.
This is normal.
We just have to find shelter.
That's our priority at this moment.
So the first time I was in Israel, I was really spooked.
It was right after 9-11.
I was really spooked.
Because when you see Israel, you're always like, it's always on fire.
There's always people killing people.
And it's not like that.
No.
And I was in, I can't remember, a border town, and they fired a rocket and it landed by us, but I wasn't freaked out by it.
It's a different vibe.
It's different.
Yeah.
You know that you're going to be safe.
Why?
Because when there's rockets being flown into Israel, there's bomb shelters in every home.
Mostly every home.
90% of the homes have bomb shelters.
Not only do the homes have bomb shelters, but there's actually bomb shelters on roads next to bus stops.
Sorry.
Next to boss.
I'm sorry.
No, no, no.
So that's what I was going to get at.
You're in the middle of a field.
I remember bomb shelters being everywhere.
So there's normally bomb shelters everywhere in Israel.
And where we were located, there was bomb shelters at every bus stop.
And I had recalled seeing a bomb shelter on the way to the event.
I have a good memory.
I remember things without realizing it until I need to use it.
So when we had evacuated the party and went into the car, our priority was to find shelter.
Bedouin Man Warns of Grenade Attack00:15:59
So my uncle was like, we need to find shelter.
We need to find a bomb shelter.
And I said to him, I remembered where the bomb shelter is.
Let's get onto the main road.
I'll direct you to it.
Because there's not many roads.
There's only one road out of this event.
And you're 30 minutes on the road.
You're 30 minutes, exactly.
So I told him, we got out the event.
We made a left-hand turn on this main road.
And we drove about eight minutes down this road until we came across the bus stop on the left-hand side.
When we had, I forgot to mention, when I was at the event, at the event, I had met up with my cousin, Nit San and Lido, but they came in a separate car.
So when we got into the cars, we went separate ways because we were in separate cars.
So my cousin went into a different bomb shelter than us, but I went into the car with my uncle, his daughter.
The people that I went to the event, I went with them back into the car.
And we got seven of them.
There were seven of us, exactly.
So five of us got into the car.
went towards the bomb shelter and we parked on the side of the road and we entered the bomb shelter.
Describe the bomb shelter.
Sure, of course.
This bomb shelter is a five by eight feet made out of concrete.
Most of it is, there's a lot of, a lot of the space from this eight by five, five by eight is a lot of concrete.
So when you go inside, it's even smaller than the actual size of it outside.
I have pictures.
I think I sent it.
So we entered this bomb shelter and there was about 15 of us inside, mainly girls.
A lot of them were screaming and crying, panicking.
And in my mind, I'm thinking, okay, we're in a safe place.
We're in a bomb shelter.
What could happen?
What worse could happen if a rocket falls on us or next to us?
We're going to be safe because we're inside of a bomb shelter.
So in my mind, I was trying to calm myself down and trying to stay positive on the fact that I'm in a safe place.
And I started making phone calls.
I called my mom.
I had let her know what was going on.
I told her I'm in a bomb shelter.
Everything's okay.
Because in this point, everything was okay.
This is different than the last call you made to your mom.
That's correct.
Okay.
Yes, make sure the time lapsed.
Yes, that's correct.
That was in the beginning, right when we entered the bomb shelter.
And you were fairly positive.
Yeah, I was fairly positive.
I was good.
And mind you, my Hebrew isn't so well, especially when I'm stressed or I'm going through panic.
I don't listen.
The words don't register through my brain because I'm not focusing.
So a lot of people were making conversation, speaking really fast, and I couldn't understand.
I couldn't tell what they were saying.
And after 20 minutes of sitting inside this small bomb shelter, it got really hot inside.
And I decided, I'm going to go outside and take a deep breath and some fresh air.
And I went outside the bomb shelter and my uncle Avi was speaking with a brave Bedouin man, a friendly Bedouin man that was working the festival grounds.
He was also hiding inside the bomb shelter from the rockets.
And he came to my uncle and he was speaking to him.
And I went up to my uncle and I said, Avi, what is he saying?
What is he saying?
And my uncle's not answering me.
He didn't want to tell me.
He said, just go inside the bomb shelter.
Later on, after October 7th, I found out that this, my cousin told me, Avi's daughter, who was with us in the bomb shelter, she told me that this Bedouin man had notified Avi that there was going to be a terrorist attack because he received notice from his family.
So this Bedouin man was letting my uncle know what was going to happen.
So for people who don't know, Bedouin is a nomadic tribe, Arab.
Exactly.
Not necessarily pro-Palestinian or anti-Israel or any of them.
Not necessarily.
Yeah, there's a lot of, we live with Bedouin, a lot of Bedouins in Israel.
We work with them.
So they're part of Israel.
They're the citizens of Israel as well.
So he was working in the festival grounds and he was with us.
And why would his family know about the attack?
I'm not sure.
They got notice.
I think maybe someone found out.
Also, when he hadn't told, when he had let my uncle know, this was already after an hour of the rockets being thrown in.
And I know that Hamas was posting videos as early as 6.45 in the morning.
So maybe someone saw it on Telegram.
Maybe someone saw it on the news.
When it went out, I'm not sure, to be honest, but he got notified and he had let my uncle know.
And I was there with my uncle when he was speaking to him, but I didn't understand what was going on.
And my uncle was just saying, go inside, go inside the bomb shelter, which I'm really grateful he didn't tell me because I think I would have panicked if he had told me that there was going to be a terrorist attack.
So in my mind, I had no idea that there was going to be a terrorist attack, but everybody else with me inside this bomb shelter, they all knew that there was going to be a terrorist attack.
And everyone was screaming and crying and more people started showing up.
And at this point, we're about 40 people in this bomb shelter.
In a five by eight.
In a five by eight foot concrete box, which is actually smaller than five by eight because more of the space is concrete.
Have you ever been to Auschwitz?
I know, Michael.
I would love to go.
I want to go one day.
It is extraordinarily difficult when you get into the actual chamber, gas chamber.
But that sounds very much like a chamberguard.
To be honest, I thought I was the Holocaust in the moment.
I even, there's text messages of me sending to my family saying, can't believe I'm in this.
I can't believe it.
I feel like I'm in the Holocaust.
It's like history repeats itself.
It does.
Okay, so you're in everybody's panicked.
Everyone's panicked.
And at this point, when I had entered this bomb shelter, it was already 90% full.
So I was in the entryway of this bomb shelter.
Oh, my gosh.
So I didn't have enough space in towards.
And I was with my uncle.
So we were trying to get our way.
We weren't pushing our way in, but every time that there was an inch of space, we would try to move towards in just because everyone was screaming.
We didn't understand what was going on.
We just wanted to stay inside just in case there was going to be a rocket that hits by the bomb shelter.
And you don't want to be at the doorway.
And don't want to be at the doorway, especially where I was, where we were.
It was a horrible spot.
So more people started showing up.
And then where we were, it was packed until the entryway of the actual bomb shelter.
So the hallway, before you enter the box, was full of people.
So we were packed.
And you hear this Bedouin man that was speaking to my uncle.
After 10 minutes, 10 minutes later, you hear the same Bedouin man screaming at the top of his lungs.
He's saying, I don't know what he was saying because he was speaking Arabic, but it sounded like he was saying, I'm Arab, I'm Arab.
And after he started screaming those words, what sounded like a thousand bullets were going towards, were going off towards the hallway of the bomb shelter.
And machine gun on Automat, yeah.
And who everyone that was standing in the hallway of the bomb shelter, including our friend Alex, who was guarding the bomb shelter, they all died instantly.
And I think there was about five to eight of them standing in the hallway.
It was a very small hallway, so it couldn't fit much people, but there was a lot of people.
Well, eight people is a lot, you know.
And your friend Alex was one of them.
Alex was one of them.
I think he was one of the first because he told us from the beginning that he's going to guard this ball hall.
He said that he's going to guard this bomb shelter and he's not going to let nobody pass.
And he did just that, to be honest.
One guardian.
He was a big guardian.
In fact, the videos that were released of people like other civilians that were in the bomb shelter, there's videos of Alex outside the bomb shelter.
And you see him guarding the bomb shelter just with no fear.
Like he had no fear, even from the moment that the rockets were going off.
He had no fear.
I applause him.
He's a hero.
He's a big hero.
So when the terrorists started shooting off towards the hallway, everyone who was in the hallway died instantly.
Fell on the floor and the terrorist walked into the bomb shelter, walked in towards the hallway of the bomb shelter, got towards the doorway of the bomb shelter where me and my uncle were standing.
We were standing, but there was some people in front of us.
And the terrorist aimed the gun inside, the automatic gun inside the shelter and started shooting on automatic for 20 seconds, going like this, trying to kill as many of us as possible.
And then after they started shooting, they threw two grenades back to back inside the bomb shelter.
It's five by eight.
It's a five by eight, yeah.
But this grenade isn't like the, I don't know the difference.
I've never seen explosions of grenades, but it was, I think it's a handmade grenade or it's made from, I don't know, to be honest.
I don't want to say the wrong information, but what happens when this grenade explodes?
Particles explodes with it.
And this particles, it like can take your hand off.
It can take your foot off.
It flies everywhere.
And it's hot too.
It's like hot metal.
So the grenades exploded and everyone who was around, like standing around this grenade, all got killed instantly.
And the second grenade that had exploded, a big piece of it exploded on my uncle's chest.
And he had died instantly while he was standing next to me side by side.
And this was just the beginning.
That was just 7.45 in the morning.
They threw in this glass.
It was a glass bottle full of fluids with a piece of leather on it.
Not leather, like a piece of a t-shirt or something.
And they light it.
Yeah, a Molotov.
A Molotov.
And they throw it inside.
When the glass shatters, it will light on fire.
So they threw two bottles of this inside the shelter.
And it didn't explode because there were so many bodies inside the shelter that it didn't shatter the glass.
Thank God.
But it didn't shatter, but it did explode.
There was like a smoke bomb that had entered the bomb shelter from this bottle.
And the smoke bomb, it chokes you.
I was about to run out.
I was thinking to myself, okay, I'm going to run out.
I need to breathe.
I'm going to die.
I'm going to die.
And something in me told me, no, Lee, you need to stay in here.
You need to find strategies to stay alive.
And I was looking on the floor for something.
I don't know what I was looking for.
But I was choking from air and I wanted to cover my face.
And I had a jacket that was sitting around my waist that I was in fact debating to bring to the event.
I took it off my waist.
I put it over my head and I had crawled to the floor into a ball.
And I started breathing really slowly and focusing on my breathing.
And that's when I realized that my uncle had just got hit by the grenade.
It was like all of this happened back to back.
Like there was no time to even focus, to acknowledge, to even process what just had happened.
And I'm sitting there and I see my uncle next to me.
And I see people in front of me all dead.
I see a girl that her face was blown off from the gunshots.
A girl that her back had, her back got exploded from the grenade.
And she was screaming, screaming.
And we were asking her to be quiet.
We understood that she was in so much pain.
But every time that she was screaming, the terrorist would enter again and throw more grenades and would try to eliminate us.
And at this point, we're like maybe 15 of us alive inside this bomb shelter.
Out of the 40.
Out of the 40 in this moment, but this is still the morning.
And this group of terrorists would leave.
And then you would hear another group of terrorists coming with in the different forms of transportation.
They would come on motorcycles, on trucks, on cars.
You would hear them always in a different style of transportation.
And I could hear it because I was so focusing on the sounds because that's all I could do in this moment because I was closing my eyes.
And in this moment, I would hear the terrorists come back again and I would pick up all the bodies that had just died and I would put them over me to shield myself from any of the explosions that they would throw into the bomb shelter.
What was that like?
It was, it was.
I can't even explain to you what we've been, what I've been through, what we've been through.
And I don't know how I had the energy or the power, but I, during this moment, these moments that we're being terrorized by these terrorists, I took my phone out and I started contacting my fiancé.
I started calling my mom.
I started right when my uncle died, I called my mom to tell her what happened and she couldn't understand me because there was no service.
She's like, what?
Hello?
Hello?
I can't hear you.
And so I hung up and I sent her a voice message.
And that's the voice message that you heard.
It was right in the moment.
You can hear the terror in my voice.
Not only my voice, but the people around me in the background.
Like, it was so traumatizing.
And every 30 minutes, new terrorists would attack us.
And they would throw hand grenades.
And there was this one time that they threw an RPG at the bomb shelter.
And when they threw this RPG, it was like the bit, like all of the blasts are loud to begin with.
But this explosion, I'll never forget it.
It was like our whole bodies, whoever was dead and alive, we all like, like our bodies went up into the air and like fell back down just from the blast of the explosion.
And every time that they attacked us, you would hear the excitement and the joy in their voices.
They would scream, alakbal.
And they would, you, you hear them screaming of laughter, of joy.
Like this is like this turns them on.
Like that's exactly. how I felt.
Like it was horrible.
It was it was horrible.
We were in this bomb shelter for eight hours.
Eight.
Eight hours.
And every 30 minutes.
And every 30 minutes, the terrorists, new terrorists would attack us.
There was a point that I had like three bodies on me.
Oh my gosh.
Like I wanted them.
Every time that someone would die, unfortunately, I would pick them up and I would put them with me or I would pick them up and I'd put them in the entrance, like in the doorway to block us, like to shield us from the grenades.
The Relief Factor That Saved Me00:04:03
So were they walking on the bodies in the hallway to get to or were they just doing everything from the hallway, the entrance?
So in the beginning, when they first attacked us, when they killed Alex in the hallway and everyone in the beginning, they had walked, the terrorists had walked into the bomb shelter and attacked inside.
But after that one time, they just kept throwing grenades and would shoot from the hallway.
So where are you in a square if the hallway is in the front?
This is a question.
So I'm like right by the entryway of the door.
But you're off.
Like there was like a little wall that saved me.
But this little wall, there was a wall and then there was like the entry doorway, but there was no door.
So it was like a doorless way, right?
So I was right by the front.
In fact, when we got rescued, I was the first person outside the shelter.
That's how close I was.
I was the first person.
Alive.
Not alive, but I was the first person like in front.
Like it was a line of people.
Wow.
I was the first in the bomb shelter by the entry door.
You have the final part of the story here in just a second.
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It's unimaginable being under dead people.
It is uh, was.
Was there any thought, or was that just a natural instinct?
It's a thank you for asking this because you know, even for myself, if I, if you asked me this before, i'd be like what I was under dead bodies.
That's insane.
Never, I never felt more safe being under the dead bodies, like I felt the safest with them on me rather than being without them, with like on top of my body, like it was a.
Survival Mode Under Dead Bodies00:08:51
It was a survival mode instinct.
It was definitely survival mode.
If I was in survival mode, I was looking.
I was thinking about strategies to survive, like in the moments when they were attacking me.
I was thinking about how am I going to survive this?
I was.
I remember my uncle had died.
I was like okay, he has a, he has a pair of keys in his wall in his pocket and he has a phone.
My phone has 20.
So I was thinking about like what what's?
What's going to happen later on this day?
You know what I mean, because I had 20 on my phone and I was.
I was trying to grab my uncle's phone so that way I could have a second backup phone and I was trying to grab his car key so that way, when the terrorist would leave, I could get into his car and drive off, which at the end I wasn't able to get his car keys, which I'm glad I didn't.
I think it would have saved my, it saved my life.
I would have been shot.
You met them on the road.
Yeah, I would have met them on the road.
But I was trying to stay positive and trying to help others around me.
I was putting bodies on them.
I was trying to help this girl that was in front of me.
I don't know how she stayed.
I don't know how she's alive.
Like it was a miracle that she stayed alive because she was in front, but she had gotten shot and she was right where the grenades were exploding.
Oh my gosh.
I mean, I was also there, but she was even closer.
Did you guys talk in those 30 minutes or what was it?
In the eight hours?
Yeah.
In the moment, in the beginning, we were all in shock.
Even myself, I didn't cry.
I didn't speak.
I only spoke to my family on the phone because I wanted to get us help.
But I didn't speak with anyone around me for the first two hours.
We were all like in shock.
We were all kind of dozed off, disassociated with the world.
Like I was aware and a focus of everything, but I was like staring into the wall.
And they say your life flashes before your eyes.
Like my life really flashed.
Like I started daydreaming about my life growing up when I was a kid.
Like all of this, it was crazy.
It was insane.
But after a few hours, we did start talking.
We were trying to help each other.
We were looking for waters inside the shelter.
I mean, there was this one water bottle that we found.
It had this much water and we were like eight, nine people at this point.
Oh, my.
Nine of us, each of us took sips and we were all passing it to one another.
We were all trying to help each other.
Like we weren't selfish.
Everyone was very altruistic.
Very looking for each other.
Everyone was looking out for each other.
No one left anyone behind.
We all, we were keeping each other, staying, we were talking to each other and staying positive, making conversation.
In fact, I was speaking to everyone.
I was saying to them, what are you going to do when you get out?
What are you going to eat?
How universal.
What's the first thing you're going to eat?
What are you going to do when you get out?
And they were looking at me like you're crazy.
Like, we're not going to get out of this.
But I'm like, trying to stay positive, trying to stay positive.
I was screaming to God.
I was praying to God.
I was screaming.
I was telling everybody, because I have a grandpa who was a big, big rabbi in my ancestry.
And I was telling them, don't worry, my grandpa's protecting us.
Screaming his name, like being like a crazy lady, you know?
It's funny because you are the, you are maybe the poster child for there are no atheists in the foxhole.
You didn't go in an atheist, but you didn't, you weren't a big God person.
I wasn't a big God person.
And I mean, I've always felt God around.
But growing up, I never was taught.
My religion as much as I wanted to now as a person.
And I feel very close to God.
I feel like God gave me a second chance in life.
And I feel like I owe it to God to be closer to my religion and to my roots so I can pass this down to my children.
Like it's very important to me, especially after what happened on October 7th.
So there's two ways to go from that.
So let me first stop here.
Did you bargain with God?
You did.
I would have too.
I bargained with God.
I said to him two things.
I said, if I'm going to die, just let me die without suffering.
Because there was a lot of people that suffered in front of me.
And it was horrifying to see that.
And I said, the second thing is, if I get out of this alive, I will do everything I can in my power to be closer to you every week, every month, you know, just to be closer and to do my duties, you know, as a Jewish person and respect.
Go to Shabbat.
Keep Shabbat.
Which, I'll be honest, it's not easy to keep Shabbat, especially when you come from a home where you never kept Shabbat.
Oh, my God, I know.
You know, it's baby steps.
The Jewish life is not easy.
It's not easy.
It's not easy.
It's not easy, but I do believe in baby steps.
I feel like when I do baby steps and I take small, every week I do something more.
It makes it easier for me to move to that side, to be more closer and to start keeping Shabbat fully.
I'll be honest, I kept since October 7th, I've kept Shabbat four times fully.
But it's been a little bit hard, but every week I'm getting better.
And when I don't do it fully, I feel guilt within me and I feel it.
Like I feel like I'm doing something bad, which at least if I feel that guilt, I have it gets better.
You know what I mean?
Hopefully it will turn in because I was the same way when I first realized and bargained with God.
And the first part was I made this promise and I would feel guilty.
And then it turns into, I don't want to do anything other than this.
This is so good.
It is good.
Yes.
And it's rewarding.
Yeah.
And when I do it, I feel closer to God even more.
Like I feel the presence.
I feel the rewardness.
I feel like good things happen.
Good people come around me.
You know, you are who you hang out with.
Yeah.
It's a big thing.
So, which is a good thing on your fiancé.
Yes.
Yeah.
And he's very close to God.
So, I mean, it's.
That saved his life.
It did save his life.
And even for him, he went through different trauma.
But because of this whole thing, him not coming to the event and him standing with his grounds on not coming, I think that opened his eyes even more on being closer to God on his end as well.
So the other way to look at this is not just you spiritually, but there have been 19 Holocausts.
19.
This keeps happening over and over again.
And I know because I've worried about the cycle repeating for the last 20 years.
I've been talking about we're planting all the wrong seeds.
And a lot of Jewish people didn't see it coming, didn't recognize the seeds that are always planted before.
And those who went through the Holocaust never again, and they taught it.
And I think some went one way where they said, I don't want to be with God.
Okay, if this God lets this happen, I don't.
Others were connected to their Jewishness, if you will, and to their God.
And it carries with it, I imagine, responsibility, a deeper, a need almost to know your roots, know why you're Jewish, know why the world is doing this.
Knowing Why You're Jewish00:08:37
Am I right or wrong?
I agree.
It's important.
It's important for the Jewish people to know where they came from and to know their ancestries and their history.
Because if we don't know what happened in the past, then history is going to repeat itself and it's going to fall off.
And not just with history, but with our religion, you know.
Yeah.
It's unbelievable.
So you're now, what time do we go to?
You're in the shelter.
You're starting to talk to one another.
People are still coming in.
What time does this change?
Around 2 o'clock, long hours, around 2 p.m., a car rolled up and we heard a man speaking in Hebrew.
And at first, we were all very scared, you know, because we were terrified that this was a terrorist, you know, pretending to speak Hebrew.
So we didn't answer this man.
And the voice came closer, and he started entering the bomb shelter.
And he said, Nitsan, it's Zeaba, which means Nitsan It's Abba.
The Nitsan is a girl that was with us in the shelter.
It's dad.
It's dad.
And my cousin's husband, who was sitting next to me, Ma'o, he said, they're here to save us.
Get up, get up.
And I was the first person.
I got up so fast.
I had ran over the bodies to the car.
And when I had got into the car, I was by myself outside.
And I got so scared because I saw a car coming.
I didn't know if this is a terrorist or if this is backup or whatever the case.
So I had ran back into the bomb shelter, running over the bodies.
And the father looked at me.
He's like, what are you doing here?
Go back to the car.
And I got so scared.
So I went back to the car.
Like I was so, like, I didn't know what to do.
I was just so comfortable.
It was just weird.
It was so strange.
So we ended up all getting into the car after five minutes.
We were nine of us in the car.
How many out of the original seven that came with you?
From the seven, so because we entered this bomb shelter, only five of us from the seven.
So from the five of us that entered this bomb shelter, only three of us survived.
So my uncle Avi and our friend Alex died in this bomb shelter.
Right away.
Right.
Yeah, in the beginning.
Alex died.
He was in the hallway.
And then Avi was with next to me when they threw the first grenades into the shelter in the beginning.
They both died in the beginning, in the morning.
But we got into the car and Nitsan's father said to us, don't look outside the window, put your head down.
And we couldn't listen.
We didn't listen to him.
We had to do just that.
We had to look outside the window.
And the drive back to safety was a war zone.
There was a one-way road, this road that I was telling you earlier.
It's very small.
It's like one car in each lane.
Like there's one lane this way and one lane that way.
It's one lane per car, one car per lane.
And the lane was full of dead bodies that we couldn't even drive on the road.
We had to drive on the dirt path where the field is to get to get to like an open space road without bodies and cars burnt to death.
It was horrible.
When we drove on the dirt path, it was where they do all the farming.
You see all the dead people on the ground, like they were running for their lives and they got shot.
He saw people with their heads chopped off, people burnt, cars that were burnt.
It was worse than a scene of The Walking Dead.
I don't know if you've seen that show before.
It's even worse than that.
Worse than that.
The things that we saw was inhumane.
Not even animals do that to their own prey.
You know?
It was horrible.
Terrible.
What do you want people to take away from our time together?
It's important for people to know what's really happening and to actually do their history, look up their history and to know actual facts instead of reading fake news and on social media.
Because right now I feel like a lot of people are being fed misled information.
And that's causing a lot of issues for us on our end.
And it's horrible.
Usually what happens.
I mean, I'm so struck by the repeat of history here where, you know, we didn't have videos, but we had eyewitnesses and the world didn't listen.
The world didn't listen.
And it's not, I used to think it was because it's so horrible.
Why would you believe that?
You couldn't believe that.
But now there's video.
Now we know it.
We've seen it.
We've heard it.
And for some reason.
They still don't believe us.
Still they don't believe it.
No, even with video, they say it's AI, huh?
What the AI can do something like this?
You know, my cousin Nitsan and her boyfriend Lidor, when they had gone separate ways, they went in their car.
We turned left.
They had turned right on this main road, unfortunately.
And they entered this bomb shelter, a different bomb shelter than us.
And in this bomb shelter, the terrorists, in fact, they murdered my cousin and her boyfriend.
And there was a video of my cousin's boyfriend running outside the bomb shelter as the terrorists are shooting him to death.
It went viral.
I'm sure you've seen it.
And then this specific bomb shelter, they kidnapped people.
I mean, Hirsch.
I don't know about Hirsch's story.
Hirsch was in this bomb shelter with my cousin Nitsan and Lido.
I hope they bring Hirsch home.
Sorry, I just had to say that.
It's really important.
But my cousin Nitsan, she was four months pregnant when they murdered her.
Four months pregnant.
It was so sad.
It was so sad to coming home after being saved, having to go to my cousin's funeral and my uncle's funeral and my cousin's boyfriend's funeral.
It was just like just to see them being buried when I was just with them a few days ago, you know?
Somebody told me recently, what, how would your life change if you would start to view things as things aren't happening to you, but they're happening for you.
And it's hard on something like this to look at it that way.
But I think you are.
I think you're taking it and finding the good to come from it.
And I can't thank you enough for being with me.
And I can't thank you for sharing this.
Thank you, Glenn.
God bless you.
God bless you too.
Thank you.
Thank you for noticing that.
I'm trying to look at the positive.
I'm a positive person.
That's my nature.
I don't think that'll ever change.
I mean, there's going to be days where I feel bad, negative.
I mean, who doesn't?
But I try to look at the positive.
I say that I feel like my uncle died to save us, to save me, his daughter, and his son-in-law, and along with others that had survived with me inside this bomb shelter, because there's no way that we survived.
It was a miracle.
It was an absolute miracle.
Especially after seeing my uncle die in front of me.
And it's not like he was sitting like where you are.
He was next to me, like he guarded me.
He shielded me.
It was like God knew everything.
Like we don't see the whole picture, you know, we just see this, but God knows, has the whole picture.