GAZA ENVELOPE, Israel: A layer of dust has settled on the sturdy wooden furniture that Ofer Calderon built for his home in Kibbutz Nir Oz. It’s been a year since Calderon and two of his four children were awakened by Hamas terrorists in their neighborhood and attempted to hide, rushing out the back of their home, through a window and into the bushes before they were captured.
Sahar and Erez Calderon were taken with their father, released a month and a half later in the agreement that freed most of the child hostages. Their mother, Hadas, survived the attack on the other side of the kibbutz; her mother and niece were killed.
In the first weeks of the war last fall, reporters in Israel were given access to the kibbutzim and Nova music festival site when the entire Gaza border area was still considered an active military zone. The only people not wearing full protective gear were the few weary kibbutz residents as they sifted through the remnants of their homes. On a day that reporters were taken to Kibbutz Nir Oz last October, Hadas Calderon guided them through her ex-husband’s home and traced her children’s efforts to evade Hamas.
Nearly a year later, reporters were again given access to the sites of Hamas’ deadly massacre. Some of the locations have been cleaned up and sanitized for the many solidarity missions that have traveled to the region over the last year. Others were private homes that members of the press were given special permission to enter.
The remnants of Ofer Calderons home in Kibbutz Nir Oz. (Photo credit: Melissa Weiss) A year later, the Calderon house, like all the others on its block, sits empty. On the front door are posters of Ofer and his children. Peeking through a broken window, one can see that the house has been largely cleared out —all that remains in the living area are a couch, tables and chairs. The shattered glass, scattered papers and household items that littered the floors after the home was ransacked by terrorists were cleaned up months ago. The only item on the wooden kitchen table is a mug with the word toda — “thank you” — that had survived that day and all the days since.
***** A five-minute walk from Ofer Calderon’s home, Batsheva Yahalomi walked through what had until last October been the home she shared with her husband, Ohad, and their three children. On the morning of Oct. 7, they were awakened by terrorists in their neighborhood and ran to their safe room.
“We understood something very dangerous and bad was happening,” Yahalomi explained to reporters in front of her home. The Yahalomi’s safe room door wouldn’t close from the inside, so Ohad Yahalomi stood out in the hallway with a gun, barricading his wife and children inside and comforting them through the door. Not wanting to further scare his family, he reassured them and told him he loved them. But as he spoke through the heavy door, he was simultaneously texting his best friend: “It’s our last minutes.”
After several failed attempts, Hamas terrorists made their way into the Yahalomi house, throwing grenades into the rooms and spraying bullets. Ohad was hit in the leg. Batsheva heard her husband scream seconds before four terrorists entered the safe room. At first, she resisted the terrorists’ efforts to get her and the children out of the safe room, certain that the IDF would soon come to their rescue. It was only after a gun was pointed at her that she and the children were led out of the room.
She and her two daughters were loaded onto one motorcycle; her son was put on a second. But when the motorcycle she was on tipped over and she and her daughters were herded to a structure off the road, she lost sight of the motorcycle carrying her son.
Sensing a brief opportunity —and believing that she was unlikely to be connected with her son in Gaza — she ran away from the armed men with her infant and 10-year-old. It took hours —and a second encounter with terrorists, who were unarmed and couldn’t force her to come with them — for Yahalomi to reach safety.
Yahalomi had assumed her husband had been killed and that his body would be found at their home. But the only trace of her husband found by the IDF in their home was his blood on the walls, which, a year later, remained splattered down their hallway. It was determined that he had been taken into Gaza.
Until January, the IDF was tracking Ohad’s location. In the middle of that month, a group published a video of Ohad, believed to have been filmed in the early weeks of the war. In the film, it was claimed that Ohad had been killed in an Israeli airstrike; the IDF has not seen any evidence to corroborate that claim, but he is known to still be in Gaza.
A hostage poster sits on a table in the home of hostage Ohad Yahalomi (Photo credit: Melissa Weiss) Eitan was held alone for the first several weeks of his captivity, forced to watch footage of the atrocities. When the 12-year-old cried, terrorists pointed guns in his face. Eventually he was moved into a hospital alongside other Nir Oz residents and later released during the weeklong temporary cease-fire in November.
Her children constantly ask about their father. “I prefer to think that Ohad is alive,” she said. “He is a very strong man.”
Yahalomi, whose husband is a French citizen, is spending the anniversary in Paris at the invitation of French President Emmanuel Macron.
Many of the kibbutz’s residents have relocated to Kiryat Gat. Devoid of full-time residents, there is a steady flow of people and workers in and out of the kibbutz to maintain the gardens and feed the resident cat population.
Yahalomi’s family moved to a kibbutz two hours away near Netanya, and she doesn’t anticipate moving back to Nir Oz. But she thinks the kibbutz should be preserved, as a reminder of the attacks and a lesson to future generations.
“It’s like Auschwitz,” Yahalomi said.
***** In Kibbutz Kfar Aza, Shahar Goldstein pointed out the home that she shared with her now-ex-wife, just past the block that housed the kibbutz’s young adults. Goldstein was not at the kibbutz the morning of the attack, having chosen to get away for the holiday weekend with her wife and parents, who also lived in Kfar Aza.
It was a decision that Goldstein believes saved her life. She gestured at the rainbow flag outside her former home. “If I was home that day, I would 100% be dead,” she noted matter-of-factly, acknowledging Hamas’ treatment of LGBTQ people.
Less than a 30-second walk from Goldstein’s home is what has become the most-visited street in Kfar Aza. Many of the street’s residents, nearly all of whom were young singles or couples, were killed or abducted by Hamas. Most of the homes were torched in the several days that terrorists controlled the kibbutz. Behind the neighborhood is a gate that leads to fields, and beyond that, Gaza. It was an easy first target for the first waves of terrorists who infiltrated the kibbutz.
A picture shows people holding a photograph showing the broken barrier between Kibbutz Kfar Aza and Gaza Strip on October 10, 2023, taken at the exact same location on September 26, 2024.(Photo by Ilia Yefimovich/picture alliance via Getty Images) On the day she walked reporters through the neighborhood, Goldstein wore a hat with the name Emily on it, part of an effort by kibbutz residents to raise awareness about the five Kfar Aza residents who remain hostages in Gaza, including Emily Damari, a 28-year-old dual British-Israeli citizen. Damari was taken from her home along with twin brothers Ziv and Gali Berman, who had gone to Damari’s home to keep her company during the onslaught. In addition to Damari and the Berman twins, two others —Israeli-American Keith Seigel and Doron Steinbrecher —are believed to be alive in Gaza.
Goldstein said she felt a special connection to Damari. They both had nephews the same age, and Goldstein remembered seeing Damari playing in the pool with the kids weeks before the attacks.
Earlier this week, Damari’s mother, Mandy Damari, spoke publicly about her daughter for the first time, pleading for her release.
Goldstein’s parents have returned to live on the kibbutz, nearly nine years ago after first moving there. Goldstein visits weekly, usually for Shabbat dinner, but has entered her former home just a handful of times since residents were allowed back. Many homes that weren’t burned down were booby-trapped with explosives.
A year later, she said, “It’s like someone exploded a grenade in my life.” Her marriage collapsed in the months after the attacks, and she is living near Tel Aviv while she works to rebuild her life.
Goldstein doesn’t know if or when she will return. “It’s like I’m asking you what you want to eat on Friday, 15 years from now. God knows.”
On Oct. 7, she plans to attend a morning ceremony for her sister-in-law’s parents, who were killed in the attack, and will join the Kfar Aza community memorial in the evening. But the anniversary does not stick out to her. “I mark Oct. 7 every day,” she said. “There is no day that passes by without me reliving it in one way or another.”
***** In the weeks after the attacks, Simcha Greiniman, the international spokesperson for Zaka, was a regular presence on every major television network. An Israeli who speaks in virtually unaccented English, Greiniman was the face of the aid organization, which retrieved the thousands of bodies of the dead — both victims and terrorists — and prepared those who were Jewish for burial according to the strict rules in Judaism surrounding death.
Jewish Insider first spoke to Greiniman in Kibbutz Kfar Aza weeks after the attack. Standing on the block that housed the kibbutz’s young adults, Greiniman would alternate speaking stoically, in an almost detached manner, eyes staring past reporters, with sentences interrupted by the cracking of his own voice.
ZAKA spokesperson Simcha Greiniman speaks to reporters at the Nova music festival site (Photo credit: Melissa Weiss) In the year since the attacks, Zaka has continued its rescue and recovery work across Israel, responding to terror attacks, car accidents and all manner of medical emergencies. But the group’s 4,000 volunteer members have suffered, Greiniman acknowledged. Zaka volunteers and their families have to go through mandatory sessions with mental health professionals. The costs are fully covered by private donations, Greiniman said.
As the anniversary approached, Greiniman said, “we saw that the guys are falling apart.”
“We get calls from the wives, or we get calls from their co-workers, saying that theyre not functioning right, there’s more [of] an attitude, they get more upset.”
Those volunteers, he said, can be reluctant to seek help, and so the group has utilized small gatherings of volunteers as a way to encourage those who are struggling to open up. “When a person is in a situation that hes not willing to [get help], you can’t force them. But when you cause a meeting of different volunteers together, then he sits around and starts talking.”
When Greiniman thinks about the early weeks of Zaka’s work, he recalls entering a home that had been flagged for the group but that he thought had been mismarked, seeing little amiss outside. When he walked in the home, he was hit with the smell of blood. Walking into the bedroom, he encountered an elderly kibbutz resident who had been killed in her hospital bed, still connected to her oxygen machine.
“She couldnt run away, she couldnt hide, she didnt harm anybody. She was butchered: knives, hammers, screwdrivers.”
***** That hand-to-hand violence and intimacy between the perpetrators of the atrocities and their victims is what many Oct. 7 survivors and first responders recall now, a year later. When Shahar Goldstein returned to Kibbutz Kfar Aza for the first time weeks after the attack, she found feces — larger than a dog’s —on her couch. The experience, she said, felt violating.
“It’s home and it’s not home,” she explained. Being back, “it’s comforting and painful.”
When Batsheva Yahalomi talks about the moments she was being taken toward Gaza, one visual sticks out: “I saw many of them with big knives, even children. I remember the knives because I remember I thought, ‘This is so violent, a knife. Its not a gun or a grenade. I thought to myself, ‘What are they attempting to do with that?’ It was so shocking.”
Yahalomi sees the signs of trauma in her young son after his time in Gaza. He has nightmares, she said, and his hair falls out. He no longer wants to talk about what he endured, and he stays up late into the night so that when his head hits the pillow, he falls asleep immediately.
“We can’t really heal until the story will be closed,” and her husband is returned home, she said. “We must close it for continuing our life.”
Greiniman, who operated in all of the kibbutzim in the weeks after the attacks, said that despite what he has seen, he is still a believer.
“We say in Hebrew, ‘Lhagid baboker chasdecha, vemunatcha baleylot’ —‘to praise God in the morning is by falling asleep at night,’” he said. “But you cant fall asleep at night. When you close your eyes and you see these images, for sure, every day, every night, we see things that we cant really live with it, but we have to praise God, thanking him for getting up in the morning, continuing to live a normal life, as much as we could.”
