‘Time is stuck’ – Nir Oz survivor speaks

“It’s hard to think that in one devastating day, our lives were changed so dramatically,” says Lotus Lahav (22). Both she and her mother, Irit Lahav (58), are survivors of the Nir Oz massacre, after spending a terrifying 12 hours hiding under a table in the saferoom of their home.

Built for bombs not gun-firing Hamas terrorists, “We quickly realised that the door of the saferoom could easily be opened from the outside,” recalls Lahav, who remembers every detail of the day as though it just happened.

“We managed to think quickly, and tied a vacuum cleaner pipe to an old rowing oar.” Because their improvised locking mechanism worked, they are both alive today.

Lahav is the third generation of her family born and raised on Kibbutz Nir Oz. Her grandparents were founding members, and she describes the small, tightknit community of 415 people as “a true extended family, all so involved in each other’s lives”.

Nir Oz was a place of freedom, where doors were never locked, and neighbours’ doors were always open.

“I lost so many people that day – friends, classmates, neighbours, the parents of friends,” she says. “Even thinking about those I wasn’t as close to but saw every day – the mailman, the lady who served us food in the dining room, teachers – all murdered.”

The remaining members of the devastated community are still suffering inconsolable grief one year later, with 117 members either kidnapped or killed, and 20 hostages taken from the kibbutz still unaccounted for in Gaza.

“We will never feel the same freedom again – not on our kibbutz, nor in our country,” she says. “So many members of our community will never come home, even if the hostages do. Life will never be the same.”

Sixty percent of the homes on the kibbutz were destroyed, and the entire community was relocated to a moshav just outside Tel Aviv. “It’s not what we’re accustomed to, but at least we’re all together,” Lahav says.

“It will be at least two to three years before we can go back to the kibbutz to start rebuilding our lives. In the meantime, while we wait to return, everyone is involved in decisions about the rebuilding of our home.

“There are two opinions among us,” she says. “Some think we should destroy what’s left and rebuild as fast as possible, others think we should wait. There’s lots of talk about creating a memorial site from the remaining homes to document this tragedy in some way, but with 20 hostages from our kibbutz still in Gaza, it’s just too fresh to make any decisions, and we don’t want to make any mistakes.”

Lahav has returned to Nir Oz on a few occasions, but only to attend funerals and memorial services, saying, “I think about the many children from the kibbutz who haven’t been home in a year. They need some kind of closure too.”

According to Lahav, the Nir Oz community believed peace was the only solution. “We all believed families in Gaza shared the same hopes we did – to live our lives peacefully, working and spending time with family. But on 7 October, we discovered this wasn’t the case because the people that came into Nir Oz and [the rest of] Israel weren’t only Hamas soldiers but Palestinian civilians, who were also there to kidnap us, steal TVs, wallets, jewellery, and whatever else they could find, from homes where people were either hiding or dead. They took videos and pictures in celebration. I could never celebrate the death of another human being, no matter how much I hate him. Witnessing this behaviour from Palestinian civilians broke our idealised picture. The difference in our moral codes became clear that day.

“Our people still believe in peace, but it’s different now. It doesn’t come from a place of trust. Our priority is to make sure this won’t happen again.”

Going back to her experience on 7 October, Lahav says, “We could hear the gunfire and chaos outside, and I was very scared. But when they came into our home, I made the choice to find peace in accepting my death. It seemed to be our fate, and there was nothing we could do about it. My mother and I said our goodbyes that day in the saferoom. We were lucky to be together.”

When Israel Defense Forces soldiers finally came to rescue them at around 18:00, Lahav remembers a soldier kissing her mother on the forehead. “He was just so happy to open the door and find people who were still alive.”

The soldiers collected whoever remained, and that night, they all slept together in the kibbutz kindergarten. “I was shocked to see how many people came in injured, covered in ash and blood – all of them still barefoot and in their pyjamas. But more of a shock was to see how many of us weren’t there,” she says.

That night and for the long weeks that followed, Lahav couldn’t sleep alone. But within the first two months following the attack, she managed to complete her military service and decided to start working at a law firm that represented victims of the massacre.

“Work has been the best thing to help me stay active and carry on with life. Helping others helps me not to be drawn into sadness and grief every day. I’m doing the best that I can to help, and it still doesn’t feel like it’s enough,” she says.

Lahav describes her first trip to South Africa as “an honour”. She was brought here through an ongoing joint initiative between The Base community and the Jewish National Fund.

“It’s crazy to think that a year has passed, but still it feels like time is stuck. Without our hostages back home, we just can’t move forward. I pray for their return and for the safety of our soldiers, but until this war is over, the real healing cannot begin.”