“You feel like you’re in Holocaust stories” Ofer Calderon spent months in Hamas captivity, buried underground in suffocating tunnels, believing his entire family had been murdered on October 7. Three weeks into his captivity, another hostage told him his 16-year-old daughter Sahar was alive. Ofer begged his captors to let him see her, and for three hours, he was taken above ground to the apartment where she was being held. It was the only time he saw daylight during his entire captivity. Later, a Hamas commander told him that his 12-year-old son Erez was alive too, being treated in a Gaza hospital. During his captivity, Yahya Sinwar visited Ofer carrying a fax machine to communicate without being tracked. Ofer spent weeks lying in a tunnel just 28 inches wide, with unbearable sanitary conditions, constant explosions above, and the ever-present stench of death. He was given only salty water to drink and a thin piece of pita a day, which he would break into small pieces to make it last. Ofer: “the morning of October 7 is the moment when my life shattered to pieces. That moment, when Erez was torn from my hands and Sahar was led away on a motorcycle between two terrorists, is a nightmare that keeps coming back and won't let go of me. I thought that when I returned, I would be able to compensate my children for all the suffering they went through. But the truth is I can barely compensate myself. When you see us smiling during the day, you don't know that in the dark everything comes back.”
See Tweet