Here lived
This was the home where I lived with my daughters – Nir Adar, Noga (then 5), and Rani (then 4). I was 34 years old at the time, a third-generation member of the kibbutz. I owned a bakery at Moshav Ein HaBasor, which closed in the wake of the massacre. We loved community life on the kibbutz and walked in the fields every day with our dogs.
October 7th
On October 7, my daughters, our dog, and I were home. Three separate groups of terrorists broke into our house in three “waves”. They fired at the safe-room door, and this is the only home in the kibbutz in which the bullets didn’t penetrate the door. After shooting, the terrorists tried to force the door open, but I held it shut with everything I had. We were terrified, and I thought the worst, as every possible nightmare scenario ran through my mind.
Eventually, the terrorists gave up and left. Another group arrived later and looted and destroyed the entire house, their shouts and laughter audible through the safe-room door. During all those hours, we were in complete darkness, without water or food, and from the early morning hours, without a phone, completely cut off from the world.
I had two goals:
1. To save my daughters.
2. If I managed to save their lives, to protect their souls. To do so, I concentrated during those endless hours on creating an “alternative reality” for them. I told them that the terrorists in and around the house were IDF soldiers keeping us safe, and that this was just a drill or a game, not unlike the film “Life is Beautiful.” As hard as it was for them, they didn’t understand that their lives were in danger.
We were in the safe room for about nine hours. Afterwards, we got ourselves out. We stepped outside, barely clothed, and found soldiers from the Egoz unit outside, who were stunned to see us. They could barely speak.
When I went outside, I saw my brother Tamir Adar’s house in flames, And the sky was black from a dark cloud that darkened the whole kibbutz.
We walked to the shelter where the survivors had been gathered. The next thirty hours there were no easier than the hours in the safe room. My daughters were suddenly exposed to the horror: people covered in soot, people wounded, and the slow realization of those who were missing. We still didn’t understand that people had been murdered and abducted. As the hours passed, we began to receive information about friends who were gone, about the scale of the massacre. All that time, we were jammed into a small space without water or facilities, while the kibbutz was still under fire. It was during those hours that I learned my brother Tamir and my grandmother Yafa Adar were missing and had apparently been taken hostage.
By evening we were surrounded by hundreds of soldiers, but even they couldn’t give us a sense of safety after the many hours we had spent alone.
What Happened Since
We now live in Kiryat Gat. My grandmother Yafa Adar was released in the first hostage deal, and the whole family fought for Tamir’s return, until he was brought home in October 2025.
