PARIS – Hundreds of people arrived Tuesday evening at the Majestic Passy cinema in the 16th Paris neighborhood to see the exceptional #NOVA documentary on the October 7 events, directed by Dan Pe’er. The film is composed of video clips filmed by partygoers from the moment they arrived at the festival and through the horrendous attack. Fifty-two minutes where young people talk to their phones while Hamas terrorists are attacking, leaving a documented trace of what these young people saw and what they felt during these terrifying hours.
But more than watching the film, the Parisians who arrived at the Majestic Passy to listen to Michal, Yuval, and Itay, all survivors of October 7, who told them in their voices and in their own words what happened to them that terrible day.
The survivors' stories in their own words
These three brave young people have each a different Nova story. They are part of the film. Together, they shared after the screening what took place outside kibbutz Re’im. They shared their own stories, but also those of their friends, who did not survive.
Michal Ohana lives in Portugal. She arrived in Israel just a few days before October 7, after her sister gave birth. The party, she tells The Jerusalem Post, was the perfect opportunity to meet with many friends she has not seen for a while. And indeed, the festival was a fantastic experience, for the first few hours.
‘’The atmosphere was amazing. Really. Until 6:30 in the morning, when the missile fire started. The music stopped. We were told to lay on the ground and protect our heads. We didn’t understand exactly what was happening. With my friends, we decided to stay in the parking lot, because we thought that this close to Gaza the missiles will just fly over us. But at 8:00, people started running in our direction, shouting that terrorists are coming.’’
Michel says that at that point they decided to flee. After driving for just a few hundred meters, the bullets of the terrorists reached the car, so they decided to ditch the vehicle, with the engine still running. They spotted the small police shack set up for the party. It was only inside, when she saw people wounded, that she began realizing what was going on.
Escaping the massacre
‘’A policewoman was watching the outside from a small window. Suddenly, she started screaming ‘’if you want to stay alive, get out of here and run.’’ My friend and I looked at each other for a second, and started running,’’ she tells.
Michal and her friend kept running until a car passed by. ‘’They told us to come in, but the car was already packed, so I just hang on the car from the outside while it was driving, and they pulled me in through the window. We arrived to rout 232, and then I saw for the first time the atrocities. Bodies were laid on the ground. Cars burned. Strong smell of blood. The terrorists came closer and started shooting, so we left the car and started running. I saw an Israeli tank and ran in that direction. Two of the soldiers were kidnapped, I was told, and one soldier was inside, burned.’’
Michal says that she hid under the tank with some other survivors for many hours. During her escape, she was shot in the leg. Her body was covered with ricochets. It was only at three in the afternoon that the army came to rescue them.
Michal is composed when she tells us her story but says that she feels lost. She spent two weeks at the hospital for her wounds, and then a few weeks at a retreat. She does know how to pick up her life. A psychologist is accompanying their group on their trip to Paris. The three survivors, who did not know each other before the trip, have become like a small family, supporting mentally each other and sharing emotions only they can fully understand. This short visit to Paris has become also some sort of group therapy for the three.
Inspiring resilience
While struggling to keep in control, Michal’s amazing resilience, her courage in telling her story even in France, far away from Israel, inspires all those she meets here. That was clear in the encounters the group had first with Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo on Tuesday and with the President of the French National Assembly Yael Braun-Pivet Wednesday evening. Both women expressed their amazement at the interior force of Michal, Yuval, and Itay.
The story of Yuval Vacknin is also extremely moving. Not only did she survive the massacre at the Nova festival, she also survived the attack on kibbutz Zikim where her father lives. It was there that she went after she managed with her boyfriend to escape the terrorists at the festival.
‘’We were stuck in a traffic jam, driving a small car, not a jeep or anything like that, and the road was narrow. There was nowhere to go, and the terrorists were getting closer. Then we saw a small bicycle lane and decided to take it, even though we didn’t know where it was leading,’’ Yuval tells the Post. ‘’My boyfriend driving as fast as he could. With this lane, we arrived at the 232 road, but that road was also full of cars, so we drove on the margins of the road, in the direction of Re’im. ‘’
Michal recounts that soon after taking the 232 road, several jeeps arrived, each packed with a dozen or so of terrorists, waving rifles in the air and sounding music in Arabic. After the jeeps, there were motorbikes.
‘’The drivers were dressed in IDF uniforms but it was all wrong. I told my boyfriend, ‘’that can’t be right. The army is not using bikes, and surely not three people on one. These are terrorists!’’ When I realized this terrible scenario - the worst scenario any residents of the Gaza-envelop region can imagine – I started panicking. I cried at my boyfriend ‘’whatever happens, even if they shoot, don’t stop. Just keep driving!’’’
Yuval and her boyfriend Noam drove fast. They were lucky. More jeeps with terrorists passed but didn’t shoot. Rather, one jeep with terrorists stopped in the middle of the road to block it, but just after Yuval and Noam passed. ‘’The terrorists started firing at the cars behind us. We were thinking, we must go and save them, but there was nothing we could do. We saw bodies of police officers dead, covered with blood on the ground. A female police officer dead. Terrible sights. Terrorists moving on the road. I screamed. Noam was more focused. From the window of our car, I kept seeing people going out of their cars and falling on the ground.’’
Yuval tells the Post that during her escape she spoke shortly with her father in kibbutz Zikim, convincing him to enter the shelter. At some point, the electricity in the kibbutz was cut, and the conversation stopped. She says that she thought her father was dead. Her father thought that he lost his daughter forever. It was only when she managed to get to the kibbutz, while terrorists were still roaming there and fighting still ongoing, that her father learned his daughter was alive.