This is translation from a Hebrew X (Tweeter) post about the heroic October 7th story of the Cohen family from Kibbutz Nir Oz titled “The Fight for Our Lives!”
We realized that we were next in line. We heard them destroying our neighbor’s house, and we realized that at any minute they were coming for us. Our stomachs were turning inside out. And then at 11:00am they got to us. We told our kids that no matter what happens, keep quiet.
We heard them breaking into our house. They came to our safe room [many Israeli houses in the south have bomb shelters to protect against Hamas rocket attacks] and knocked on the door, and then they tried to open the door with force. This was a 40 minute battle over the door handle between Yakir [my husband] and the terrorists. Then we heard automatic weapon fire. Mika, our dog, started weeping from pain and ran from side to side of the safe room while bleeding. We realized that a bullet penetrated through the safe room steel door and hit our dog.
And then the terrorists started to try to open the steel window. Yakir jumped to the window and was holding it. We did not think of locking the steel window! Then they approached the door, again. Yakir jumped to hold the door handle, and I was holding the window. Suddenly, there was a crazy explosion and I ceased to hear anything. They threw a grenade at the window, but I continued to hold the window with all my might. Then I realized that Yakir was wounded and kept quiet about his injury. He took a dipper and our daughter’s hair band and tied his bleeding hip.
All this time our neighbor was holding the baby in her hands and our three kids were close to her under the bed. At this point the terrorists gave up penetrating our safe room and started to break everything in the house. They looted and broke everything they could. Then one of the terrorists screamed in Hebrew: “today you will not live past this afternoon.”
After a few minutes we started to smell smoke, and we realized that they wanted to burn us alive. There was a very strong smoke that penetrated the safe room. Our throats were burning. The walls of the safe room got very hot as if we were being fried live in an oven on high heat. Kids started to throw out and we felt helpless.
We waited for the terrorists to leave, and then Yakir opened the window little bit. He checked to make sure that no terrorists were around and then opened some more to let every one of us to take a breath of fresh air.
We were not able to stay in the safe room anymore. We decided to exit through the window. It was 12:45. Yakir jumped first and checked that there were no terrorists around. Then we got the kids and our neighbor one by one, and I tried to get out last. The smoke was so bad that I was not able to jump out. Yakir had to pull me out from the window.
We stood 3 seconds next to the safe room’s window, and then Yakir decided to run to the safe house that was behind the Kibbutz play-set about 100 meters behind our house. We were running quietly praying that the terrorists would not hear and catch us. We were lucky that our kids had their cell phones with them, and we were able to make contact and let people know that we were inside the safe house.
The stay in the safe house was very stressful as we heard sounds of weapons firing and explosions. We were scared that the terrorists would find us again. Yakir stood in the opening suffering from the immense pain from his injuries. He was praying that someone would come to save us. The kids were crying quietly. My son, Amit, whispered that he hoped that his friends were OK. In about four hours IDF soldiers came to rescue us.
