For Holocaust survivors, the massacre of October 7 evokes grim memories

2024-01-27 19:19:00, Kosova & Bota CNA

Today the world marks Holocaust Remembrance Day. The US Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, marked the day with a statement stating that today and every day the world mourns the six million Jews and members of other discriminated groups who were killed during the Holocaust by the Nazis and their collaborators.

He expresses concern about the rise of anti-Semitism and says that the United States reaffirms its commitment to fight against denial and distortion of the truth of the Holocaust, speaking out and raising its voice against hatred in all its forms, including anti-Semitism and intolerance of all kinds. .

Meanwhile in Israel, many people are comparing the genocide during the Holocaust with the October 7 massacre carried out by the militant group Hamas. Some of those affected on October 7 are Holocaust survivors.

When World War II began, Zvi Solow was a five-year-old in Warsaw. Together with his family, he fled to Italy, Greece and Australia and eventually found refuge in 1959 in the settlement of Nirim on the border with Gaza.

Hamas militants attacked the settlement of Nirim on October 7, during a terrorist attack on Israel that left 1,200 dead, including five victims from Nirim. Hamas also took 240 hostages, including neighbors of Mr. Solow.

"We woke up at 6:30 in the morning, there were shots outside. They heard people talking, shouting in Arabic, running from house to house. We closed the door and waited for the army to come and release us. But it took them seven hours."

The 89-year-old Solow says that it is painful for him that he has been forced to leave his home, where he has lived for almost seven decades, and he is not sure when he will be able to return there. He says this bitter experience brought back memories of his childhood, when he was forced to flee the Nazis, becoming a homeless refugee for many years.

Polish Holocaust survivor Sarah Jackson says being forced to evacuate the Sa'ad settlement, where she had lived for six decades, also brought back memories of her childhood as a refugee.

During the October 7 attack, Ms Jackson hid for hours in a security room inside her home, along with six young men who had fled the massacre at the Nova music festival. Some of them visited him recently to thank him.

"Those dear people came to my house. I don't remember if they asked permission. They went to the gate, closed the gate. In the corner of the room I have a very large armchair and they put the armchair by the door. And we all went into the security room."

Historians, such as Robert Rozett at the World Holocaust Memorial Center in Jerusalem, say the Holocaust is still central to the Israeli consciousness and that the Oct. 7 attacks may have fueled a sense of collective trauma.

"What happened on October 7, like the experience of people who were locked up for hours in security rooms, reminded people of what happened in the ghettos where they were gathered during the Holocaust."

Hamas militants shot and seriously wounded young man Tomer Zadik, who was at the Nova music festival and was trying to escape from them. His great-grandfather, Jacobi, survived the Holocaust by jumping off a train en route to Auschwitz.

"Eighty years later, we have our own state, and Jacob's great-grandson, in the state that Jacobi worked to create so that nothing like this would ever happen again, found himself hiding in the woods for hours after being shot, fighting for his life and waiting to save him. I think this eerie similarity between my experience and my great-grandfather's experience clearly shows what happened on October 7th."

The trauma of October 7, like the trauma of the Holocaust, Israelis will pass on to future generations./ VOA