When Hamas terrorists invaded southern Israel on October 7, they committed the deadliest attack on Jews since the Holocaust. This year’s Holocaust Remembrance Day began Sunday evening. It carries a heavier weight than usual for many Jews around the world. For Holocaust survivor Judith Tzamir, that means making a journey she’s long avoided.
Tzamir moved to Israel in 1964. Her kibbutz fended off Hamas attackers on October 7. This year, the horrors of that day prompted her to mark Holocaust Remembrance Day with a visit to Auschwitz, a Nazi concentration camp in Poland.
Tzamir joins 55 other Holocaust survivors from around the world and about 10,000 others. They participate in the March of the Living. The event recreates the two-mile march from Auschwitz to Birkenau Camp, where Nazis killed approximately one million Jews.
The event, now in its 36th year, usually draws thousands of participants. They include Holocaust survivors and Jewish students, leaders, and politicians. This year, Israeli hostages released from captivity in Gaza and families whose relatives are still held captive joined the march.
Holocaust Remembrance Day is traditionally a time for Israelis to gather and listen to testimony from survivors. It is one of the most somber days of the year in Israel.
Memorial ceremonies happen throughout the day, and names of victims are recited. When a two-minute siren sounds, traffic halts and people stand at attention in memory of the victims.
“I don’t know if the world will listen, but even for myself, it’s important,” says Tzamir, who turned down past invitations to visit Auschwitz. “To remember that there’s still anti-Semitism around, and there are still people who will kill just for religious reasons.”
In 1948, when Tzamir was four and a half years old, the people she knew as her parents took her to a plaza in Berlin, Germany. She remembers clutching her doll, Yula, when they revealed that they were not her parents. Instead, the woman standing before them was her biological mother.
Tzamir’s mother hid her Jewish identity during World War II by serving in the German army. She gave birth to Judith in 1943 in a hospital run by nuns. She left Judith behind to save her life. Tzamir, then called Donata, was placed in a foster family. She had no idea she was Jewish until she met her mother.
In college, Tzamir went to Mefalsim, a kibbutz in southern Israel on the border with Gaza. After her studies, she returned to the kibbutz, married, and had four children. (A kibbutz is a small community typically centered around a collective farm. Historically, residents held wealth in common and reinvested profits into the settlement.)
On October 7, Tzamir was faced with the possibility of losing her home once again. Hamas terrorists poured over the border from Gaza and attacked towns, army bases, and a music festival in southern Israel.
Hamas militants killed around 1,200 people that day, mostly civilians, and kidnapped 250 others. The attack sparked the Israeli response in Gaza.
During the attack, Mefalsim’s emergency readiness squad kept most of the Hamas militants outside the kibbutz perimeter. Many residents stayed in safe rooms for nearly 24 hours, until the Israeli army was able to evacuate them.
No one died at Mefalsim during the attack. But its roughly 800 residents had to leave along with more than 120,000 other Israelis who lived near the borders with Gaza and Lebanon. Mefalsim, Tzamir’s steady anchor after a childhood filled with upheaval and uncertainty, was no longer a safe haven.
Many Mefalsim residents have lived in a hotel north of Tel Aviv for the past seven months. Tzamir and some others hope to return to the kibbutz in June.
Tzamir says the Hamas attack brought up memories from her childhood. At night, her dreams are filled with visions that remind her of bombings she witnessed as a child in Germany.
Tzamir is one of approximately 2,000 Holocaust survivors in Israel who evacuated their homes due to the war in Gaza, according to Israel’s Ministry of Welfare and Social Affairs. The ministry estimates that 132,000 Holocaust survivors live in Israel.
Tzamir says some families may never return to Mefalsim, just a mile from the Gaza border.
But returning was never a question for her, she says.
“I’m 80 years old. I don’t want to lose my home again,” Tzamir says before her flight to Poland. “We are coming back.”
The Lord God will wipe away tears from all faces, and the reproach of His people He will take away from all the Earth. — Isaiah 25:8
