LEILA FADEL, HOST:
At 6:29 a.m. on this day one year ago, life changed forever for Israelis and Palestinians. That's the minute Hamas launched its ambush on Israel last October 7. The deadliest attack in Israeli history led to the deadliest war in Palestinian history. The war continues, and so do the consequences for the region and the world. This week, NPR will be reporting from Israel to Gaza and beyond to look at the ways life has changed for those touched by these events. We start this hour in southern Israel at the border with Gaza, at an Israeli kibbutz that is grieving the biggest loss from last October 7. NPR's Daniel Estrin has the story.
DANIEL ESTRIN, BYLINE: Silence is what kept the survivors of Kibbutz Be'eri alive on October 7. They stayed silent, some of them for 20 hours, huddled in reinforced safe rooms at home, hoping they wouldn't be discovered as Hamas attackers went door to door, breaking into safe rooms, shooting, burning down homes. Silence is what the survivors carried out of hiding from their homes along the Gaza border to the hotel on the Dead Sea that took them in. That's where psychologist Merav Roth met them.
MERAV ROTH: It was the most quiet place I've ever seen. Everybody were quiet, defeated. Their bodies were, like, no air inside.
ESTRIN: She had heard their whispers on October 7 live on the news as Hamas led thousands of attackers bursting out of Gaza, ambushing Israeli towns and communities.
ROTH: The Israelis - we all were on the radio, hearing them whispering to the radio people, why doesn't anyone come? Where are everybody? Where's the army? They're in my house. They're shooting at me. We will remember this for the rest of our lives, all of us.
ESTRIN: It took many weeks to account for everyone - who was dead, who was captive in Gaza. Roth sat with the survivors of the tight-knit community of Kibbutz Be'eri in the hotel basement, as the village secretary read the names of 27 identified bodies and 108 people unaccounted for.
ROTH: So imagine the reading of 27 names and then 108 names, and it's just name by name by name. And the - everybody are, again, quiet, dead quiet.
ESTRIN: By Israel's final tally, about 1,200 people were killed. Kibbutz Be'eri's loss was the greatest - 102 dead, three still held captive in Gaza, believed to be alive. All year long, Roth has helped the kibbutz make agonizing decisions.
ROTH: For instance, there is a boy in the Kibbutz who lost four members of his family, two parents and two siblings. So do we tell him about each separately, or do we tell him about all of them together? It's like questions from inferno, really.
ESTRIN: Kibbutz Be'eri is still burying its dead one year later. Mourners walk quietly out of the neighborhood cemetery. They laid to rest a mother and her 15-year-old son with his surfboard, his dying wish as he bled out in his home October 7. Many families are exhuming their loved ones from temporary graves and moving them home to the Kibbutz graveyard along the Gaza border, where it's safer now, a year into the war.
GAL COHEN: I am so exhausted after every funeral that we have to deal with again...
ESTRIN: The head of the kibbutz, Gal Cohen.
COHEN: ...Because it brings everything, and we cry again, and we tell the stories again.
ESTRIN: So why...
COHEN: It's really, really hard.
ESTRIN: Why do it again?
COHEN: Because, at that time, I was in another funeral, so now I have time to say goodbye to them.
ESTRIN: The natural course of grieving is stunted. It keeps getting rewound.
BATYA OFIR: (Non-English language spoken).
ESTRIN: We meet Batya Ofir. She watched her brother's partially decomposed body be exhumed recently. They reburied him here. She said, it was not easy, but I had to see him. She felt she needed to be there because she feels guilty she wasn't with her brother and family in their worst moment.
OFIR: (Non-English language spoken).
ESTRIN: And now...
OFIR: (Non-English language spoken).
ESTRIN: ...She says, "what gives me strength?"
OFIR: (Non-English language spoken).
ESTRIN: "First of all, it's a decision."
OFIR: (Non-English language spoken).
ESTRIN: "I said to myself, what do you want?"
OFIR: (Non-English language spoken).
ESTRIN: "To continue living? I can also not."
OFIR: (Non-English language spoken).
ESTRIN: "I really thought about it."
OFIR: (Non-English language spoken).
ESTRIN: "And then I decided that I wanted to continue to live."
OFIR: (Non-English language spoken).
ESTRIN: "I have a family. I have children. I have grandchildren."
OFIR: (Non-English language spoken).
ESTRIN: "I draw. I'm learning to kayak, to deal with all my fears."
OFIR: (Non-English language spoken).
ESTRIN: "I do everything to give some meaning to life now that they're gone."
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: (Non-English language spoken).
ESTRIN: A couple hundred families have moved back to Kibbutz Be'eri. They're living among the wrecked homes from that day - bullet holes, shattered windows, a pair of children's shoes in the debris - October 7 frozen in time. There's a debate in the community what to do with these buildings.
COHEN: Some of the people say, let's make it like the Auschwitz, OK? And it will be open for people to come and see what happened here.
ESTRIN: Gal Cohen.
COHEN: So it's something that we'll have to vote on, but I think that - I believe we'll have to take them all down.
ESTRIN: He doesn't want one person moving back to see all this and relive the nightmare.
(SOUNDBITE OF BIRD CHIRPING)
YASMIN RAANAN: (Non-English language spoken).
ESTRIN: (Non-English language spoken).
Yasmin Raanan waters her new plants. She moved back home a few months ago. The attackers tried to burst into her safe room, but she had an extra lock that kept them out. When she was finally rescued the night of October 7, she saw rows of grenades in her living room. They had turned it into their headquarters. The man she had heard all day preparing ammunition in her home was sitting outside guarded by an Israeli soldier.
RAANAN: (Non-English language spoken).
ESTRIN: She said, "I came with my gun to the terrorist to kill him. And then the special forces commando takes me and says, ma'am, we're a moral nation. I said, I have no more morals anymore."
RAANAN: (Non-English language spoken).
ESTRIN: "He took my gun away, so I took the terrorist by the head. He said, what's your name? He said his name. She said, I will make sure you have no more family, no home, no Gaza."
RAANAN: (Non-English language spoken).
ESTRIN: I asked her if she still wants vengeance one year later.
(Non-English language spoken).
RAANAN: (Non-English language spoken).
ESTRIN: She said, "revenge? Yes. But a year later," she said, "things begin to sink. Time heals."
Daniel Estrin, NPR News, Kibbutz Be'eri on the Gaza border. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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