Please join JCC Chicago as we welcome 4 survivors of the October 7 massacre in Israel. These heroes stood in the face of evil, lent a helping hand, saved lives and now they share their stories of survival.
Free and open to all.
Registration is REQUIRED.
Government issued ID is required and will be checked against registration list.
No walk-ins will be allowed.
Sharon Anna Yacobi
Kibbutz Gevim
Terrorist invasion of our kibbutz, the thwarting of the invasion at the kibbutz entrance, 3 people injured. 27 hours in our “safe room” until we could flee the kibbutz. During this time, we managed to smuggle my nieces and a German visitor out of the kibbutz, and continuous WhatsApp & sms messages from my pupils living in Sderot, imploring us to help them as there were terrorists by their house. The terrorists’ filming of kidnapping & hearing that my close friend had been murdered. Evacuation of the kibbutz under attack and interception of rockets with terrorists still in the area. Innumerable friends clamouring for help to be saved on Facebook and all the other social media. And we are still at war.
David Bar
Kibbutz Alumim
On October 7th my sister in law was murdered in the city of Sderot. My wife and I have 3 kids that each live in different Kibbutzim in the Gaza envelope. All of our children, and us, have been evacuated from our homes since October 7th in different places.
We miraculously survived the attack on our Kibbutz but 23 workers were murdered at Kibbutz Alumim.
Zohar Lahav-Shefer
Kibbutz Gevim
51 years old, married to Liron and a mother to three children (a 21 year old daughter which is a combat soldier, a 18 year old daughter who is in a year of service before her military service and a 12 year old son). I am a lawyer and I grew up in Kibbutz Nahal Oz until after the Tzuk Eitan war in 2014. Today I live in kibbutz Gevim. On October 7th I was in the safe room with my family. The Hamas terrorists arrived in the morning with a van at the gate of the kibbutz, where the alert squad fought a heroic battle, in the end the terrorists retreated and thus we were saved. It was only on Sunday afternoon, after another battle on the fence, that we received permission to evacuate from the Kibbutz, and since then we have been in the north, in Kibbutz Mazra. My sister lives in Kibbutz Nahal Oz and I was in contact with her (on WhatsApp) all those terrible hours, when terrorists filled the kibbutz and went from house to house, until at night they rescued her and her three children. From a family point of view, we were very lucky, but we lost a lot of friends that day. And our friends are still kidnapped and we are waiting that they will return
Shoham Cohen
Nova festival
On October 7th I left the area of the festival at 6:30am. We started walking towards the parking lot while we saw a rain of missiles in the sky, non-stop booms and screams of people who didn’t understand what was happening. We put the things in the car and because there was a traffic jam we decided to stay in the parking lot, my friends sat next to the car and I went to help people carry things to their cars and try to calm them down as much as possible. At about 7:30-7:45 my friends called me and told me it was time to go and at least stand in the traffic so we could move forward, we got into the traffic and then we saw people running and we just got out of the car and started running. From this point we ran and had a few stops on the way, while bullets were being shot around us and people were screaming. While we were positioning ourselves among the trees, we saw a policeman and two soldiers who looked a bit like terrorists because they were wearing clutches and not M16,
They signalled us to bend down and after a minute they told us to run with our hands up and shout names,
Luckily for me they were from our security forces, Jews.
They took us a hundred meters back on the road near a tank that was in the area, they finally gave us water and calmed us down even though it was impossible because there were a lot of terrorists in the area.
There were several dozen other survivors, soldiers and policemen.
After half an hour, a convoy of vehicles arrived to evacuate us and from there they scattered us home.
