Here Lived
This is the Cohen family’s home: Yakir and Rotem and their three children – Amit, Inbal, and Yuval, and their dog Mika.
October 7th
At 7:00 a.m., Ravid Katz z”l went out to fight as a member of the Nir Oz first-response squad, but first he brought his wife, Revital, and their four-month-old baby, Alma, to the Cohens’ house. At about 10:00 a.m., terrorists entered the house, and we told the children, “No matter what happens, stay quiet.” We heard them break into our house with gunfire and grenades, and tear the house apart. They came to the safe-room door, knocking and shouting in Arabic for us to open the door. Then, they tried to open the door, and for about 40 minutes, Yakir battled with them in a tug-of-war over the door handle. Then, we heard gunfire, and a bullet was shot through the safe room door hitting Yakir in the knee and the dog Mika in the spine. The terrorists tried to get in through the steel window and then again through the door. Yakir held onto the door handle and Rotem to the handle of the steel window. Meanwhile, Revital was holding her baby with one hand and our three children huddled next to her, all of them under the bed. At this point, the terrorists stopped fighting over the door handle, and we heard them breaking things. They looted everything they could, and one of them shouted in Hebrew, “Today you will have no afternoon.”
A few minutes later, we began to smell smoke, and we understood that they were burning us alive. There was a strong smell that penetrated the safe room and burned our throats. The walls of the safe room were burning hot, as if we were in an oven on maximum heat. The children began to vomit and we felt completely helpless. At 12:40 p.m., we decided to open the safe room window and try to escape from there, knowing that otherwise we would die of smoke inhalation.
Yakir jumped out the window first, making sure there weren’t any terrorists in the area, and then helped the rest of us out, one by one. We stood there by the safe room window for three seconds, and then Yakir decided to run for the bomb shelter located in the playground behind our house, about 100 meters away. We ran in silence, hoping that we wouldn’t be caught. At 5:00 p.m., IDF forces arrived to check the playground, and they rescued us from there. Yakir was evacuated to Soroka Hospital in Be’er Sheva to receive treatment for the bullet wound to his thigh.
What Happened Since
We were evacuated to a hotel in Eilat with the rest of the survivors from Nir Oz. Our dog was taken for medical treatment.
Today, we live in Karme Gat with the rest of our community.
