Nir Oz teacher, and Bibas family friend, speaks of their ‘Gan Eden’

The Friday before 7 October 2023, Nir Oz kindergarten teacher Roxana Salimson told the children in the class to have a good Shabbat and Simchat Torah, but had no inkling that so many of her pupils would never return to the classroom.

She spoke to the SA Jewish Report in Johannesburg last Friday, 31 January, the same week her dear friend, Yarden Bibas, returned home without his wife, Shiri, and their two toddlers, Ariel and Kfir, after 483 days of captivity as hostages in Gaza. One of the children she sent off that fateful Friday was Ariel, 5, whom she described as “The sun. He is smiling all the time, and playing all the time.”

Roxana and her husband, Tato, who survived 7 October at Nir Oz, were in South Africa to visit Tato’s relatives and to have a surgical procedure. They intended to stay for only a week, yet stayed for a month because of Tato’s recovery. The couple, who returned to Israel this week, had been on Nir Oz for decades, ever since they made aliya from Argentina.

Roxana said so many of those she taught in her 37 years as the kibbutz kindergarten teacher had been impacted on that terrible day when their “Gan Eden [Garden of Eden]” was targeted by Hamas terrorists. She spoke of how four-year-old Omer, and his six-year-old sister, Arbel Siman Tov, were in her class the day before they and their entire family were murdered.

“We have had such a close relationship with the Bibas family, not only because I’m Ariel’s teacher, but because we live so close to Yossi and Margit Silberman, Shiri’s parents. They would come and say hello all the time,” said Roxana. “Our son also shared his Barmitzvah with Shiri. I hate to think about what happened to them that day, and what they have gone through since then.”

The Salimson couple had been anonymous in Johannesburg until they bumped into Liat Malek Alhadeff, a specialist radiologist walking through the halls of the Linksfield Hospital and hearing them speaking Hebrew.

She told the SA Jewish Report that she stopped to chat to them, telling them she was wearing orange, like so many in Israel and the rest of the Jewish world, as a reminder that Shiri and her two children were still captives. Malek Alhadeff was speechless when she found out that the Salimsons were from the same kibbutz and were close to the Bibas family.

“I had been speaking to my colleagues the whole day about the Bibas family, and when I entered that cafeteria, which is something I never do, and I met the Salimsons, I knew there was something else at play here,” she said.

Malek Alhadeff took them back to her practice, and they shared their story. “There wasn’t a dry eye in that practice,” she said.

Roxana said life on Nir Oz was 90% Garden of Eden and the rest of the time, not that at all. So, when they were woken at 06:30 on the morning of 7 October 2023 to the red alert and sirens, they weren’t too alarmed.

“Then, all of a sudden, we see a lot of shooting happening outside the house,” said Tato. “As soon as I saw them running around, it was like nothing we had ever experienced in our time on the kibbutz,” said Roxana.

Roxana and Tato were in their mamad (safe room) for about 11 hours while Hamas terrorists entered their home three different times, each time trying to get into the safe room, probably in an attempt to kill them.

“I just stood there holding the door to the safe room shut so they couldn’t enter,” said Tato.

While they were in their safe room, Hamas terrorists shot at their house and looted whatever they could. Terrorists shot through the window of their mamad, as well as many other points in their house.

“We don’t understand Arabic, and the entire time they were inside the house, they were screaming things in Arabic. We had no idea what was going on,” said Roxana.

It was only when things went quiet after 11 hours that they were able to escape through their window to see the devastation on their kibbutz.

“We were lucky in that we were able to get out of our house and it was in one piece,” said Tato. “As soon as we left, we saw that many houses had been burned.”

The first burned house they saw was that of their friends, the Silbermans, Shiri’s parents. “We later found out that not only were they dead inside the house, their bodies had been burned in it.

“I knew that they were killing people and taking hostages, but I never thought that they were burning houses with people inside,” said Tato.

After they were released from their home, they were taken to the kibbutz’s war room, when, said Roxana, “I heard about a family that was murdered, then another one, and then about a family that was kidnapped or missing. It continued from there. One family after another.”

While in the kindergarten, Roxana tried to help make this all seem less scary for the children and their parents.

“There were many people who were injured, but mainly children and frightened parents. The children wouldn’t leave them. I started to bring out colouring sheets, coloured pens, and crayons for them to have something to do. I approached the parents, and hugged them. There was nothing more I could do. They were in such a difficult emotional state. But because they were in the kindergarten, in a place that was familiar to them, it helped somewhat,” she said.

The next day, the Salimsons and other survivors from the kibbutz were escorted by the army to their bullet-riddled homes, where they collected what they could to begin their journey to the hotel in Eilat where they stayed for three months before being moved to an apartment in Kiryat Gat.

In South Africa, they were itching to get back to Israel so they could get back to their normal lives and start rebuilding the kibbutz that they have called home.

“We need to reconstruct the kibbutzim,” said Tato, “Our kibbutz is being completely rebuilt from the ground up. I don’t know who is going to return to the kibbutz, but I want to go back and feel safe in my home again.”

The couple said they were happy to see many of those who were taken from their kibbutz come home, like Gadi Moses, Arbel Yehud, and Yarden Bibas, but they know their home can never be truly revived until all the hostages are home.