Visitors at the Car Graveyard exhibit at 7 October Square at the Great Park Synagogue. The event provided a public and communal space for those who wished to pay respects and mourn. Picture: Neil McCartney
Lotus Lahav woke up at 6.30am on 7 October last year to the sound of sirens. She thought it was another missile attack on her kibbutz of Nir Oz.
Unperturbed, she and her mother made their way to the safe room in the house.
But this was no air raid.
“All we could hear was gunfire and grenades,” she told journalists at the Great Park Synagogue in Houghton, Johannesburg, yesterday.
Their cellphones started vibrating. Other members of the 400-strong kibbutz were reporting how they were being attacked.
Soon the messages would change to urgent pleas on how to stop the bleeding and then to find out if others were alive.
ALSO READ: Israel marks first anniversary of Hamas’s October 7 attack
Lahav and her mother moved to secure the door to the safe room. They didn’t know how to because they never locked doors at Nir Oz.
“My mother’s sibling sent a message saying he had made an improvised lock for his door with two brooms, but this was her workroom, there were no brooms,” Lahav said.
Instead, they fashioned a lock by tying a vacuum cleaner and the oar of a boat to the door handle. Then they switched off the light and hid under the table holding each other’s hands as the attackers edged ever closer.
At 9am, they reached Lahav’s house.
“About seven big men entered the house, shooting and shouting. When they got to the door, I thought we didn’t have a chance.”
She turned to her mother and they started to make their goodbyes to one another.
ALSO READ: Insider revelations of son of Hamas founding member, who was also an Israeli agent [VIDEO]
But the door held, as the men outside shouted and hammered on it in frustration. Four more times attackers would come into their house as they hid.
It was only at 6.30am that night that Lahav and her mother were rescued by soldiers from the Israeli Defence Forces.
She and her mother were taken to a kindergarten that night with the other survivors before being evacuated the next day.
At least 117 people were missing while 20 still remain hostages.
A year later, the others were killed and 101 hostages remain unaccounted for.
On Sunday, the South African Jewish Board of Deputies opened a two-day “7 October Square” modelled on Tel Aviv’s Hostages Square, at the Great Park Forest in the grounds of the Great Park Synagogue in Houghton.
ALSO READ: ‘Israel’s violence against Palestinians has intensified,’ Ramaphosa says
Jewish community organisations across the spectrum from schools to women’s leagues and religious bodies created displays remembering the Hamas attack.
A corridor of trees ready for planting, each with the picture of a hostage, lined the entry to the display. Above them were a series of placards recounting the events from the murder of 1200 people to the capture of 360 hostages.
“The day will be forever remembered as Black Shabbat, a day of horror, cruelty and torture,” read one.
SA Jewish Board of Deputies national director Wendy Kahn said the purpose behind the 7 October Square with its 101 trees in the Great Park had been to provide an opportunity for people to remember and mourn.
It was vital to understand the brutality and especially the sexual violence perpetrated during the attacks, which had been confirmed by the United Nations. For Lahav, nothing will ever be the same again.
“There is no place that is safe, it doesn’t matter where I live, the fear is in every place. The most important thing to do now is to bring back the hostages and stop the war in Gaza, against Iran and Hezbollah. People are suffering.”
ALSO READ: Intense Israeli bombing rocks Beirut ahead of war anniversary
Download our app and read this and other great stories on the move. Available for Android and iOS.
