“I went through a holocaust,” freed hostage Mia Schem said.In an interview with Channel 13 explaining why she decided to break her silence, the 21-year-old dual French-Israeli national – who was held captive by Hamas and released from captivity more than 50 days later – said: “It was important for me to reflect on the true situation of the people living in Gaza – who they are, and what I went through there.”Her interview will be in full tomorrow.“These are families under Hamas. In retrospect, I suddenly realized that I was with a family. Suddenly, I started asking myself questions, why am I in a family’s house? Why are there children here? Why is there a woman here?”
Psychological terror
Mia was abducted from the party in Kibbutz Re'im, one of the many places where Hamas conducted a massacre on October 7. At the time of her abduction, her right hand was severely injured, and she was operated on in the Gaza Strip.
In the first days of the war, Hamas published a video of her from captivity as part of the psychological terror they used, in which she asked to return to Israel and see the treatments she underwent on her arm.
Two weeks ago, she revealed on Instagram a new tattoo she had done that says in English, “We will return to dance again,” next to the date October 7, 2023.“I will never forget this date,” Mia wrote in the post. “The pain and the fear, the hard sights, the friends who won’t come back, and the ones we have to bring back. But we will still win – we will still dance!”
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