‘Even in the ghetto we ate something': Holocaust survivors say Gaza hostages endure a ‘second Shoah'
Holocaust survivors interviewed by Israeli outlets on Sunday said the skeletal appearance of Israeli hostages shown in new Hamas videos is akin to what they themselves experienced in Nazi camps, warning that the captives are living through 'a second Holocaust' and demanding immediate government action.
Eighty-four-year-old Dina Dega, who survived several concentration camps, toldWalla that the image of 24-year-old hostage Evyatar David 'skin and bones … is exactly what we looked like in the camps... only he is alone and no one comes.' She called the government's inaction 'a second Shoah on Israeli soil.'
Miriam Shapiro, 90, said she can no longer stand in the weekly demonstrations at Tel Aviv's Hostages Square but her 'heart is there.' 'My whole family perished in Auschwitz. I will not allow anyone else in this country to be left alone,' she told the site.
For 88-year-old Hannah Raanan, the latest footage was unbearable: 'Even in the ghetto we managed to eat something. The hostages look worse.' She accused the government of 'betrayal' and added that the Hamas guards 'are fat from the humanitarian aid while our children collapse.'
The Walla report also carried the voice of an unnamed survivor who said, 'The hungry child in the forest still lives inside me. Every hollow face brings her back.'
'Silence is a moral stain'
Speaking separately to Ynet, Naftali Fürst, 93, who survived Auschwitz and Buchenwald, said the hollow faces of David and fellow hostage Rom Braslavski 'take me back eighty years.' 'We got a slice of bread and thin soup—sometimes we ate grass. I know the humiliation,' he said, urging Israelis to 'raise our voices—silence is a moral stain.'
Dvora Weinstein, who fled burning Serbian villages as a child, said she 'could hardly breathe' on seeing the video: 'For me October 7 was a second Shoah. Our war is just, but the suffering must stop—bring them home before it's too late.'
Revital Yakin Krakovsky of the International March of the Living added that the images are a 'direct trigger' for survivors: 'Hunger is hunger, terror is terror, and Jew-hatred has not changed.'
Israel believes about 20 hostages are still alive in Gaza nearly 22 months after the October 7 massacres. Families say the latest video proves Hamas is using food deprivation as psychological torture. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told relatives on Sunday that negotiations 'continue relentlessly,' while the Foreign Ministry again demanded Red Cross access.
Survivors, however, say time is running out. 'We are living proof life can be rebuilt after the inferno,' Shapiro said, 'but healing, for them and for us, starts only when every hostage is home.'
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