The man who survived the Holocaust and Hamas militants

As a child Yaakov Weissmann lived hidden in France during the genocide perpetrated by the Nazis and their collaborators against the Jews Europeans. At 83 years old he has once again escaped death, this time at the hands of the militiamen Palestinians of Hamas.

Ten days after the Islamist movement’s attack on Israeli territory, launched on October 7, this retired farmer talks about the “sadness” and the “gonna” what he feels when thinking about the 20 dead in Netiv Haassara. I knew many of them personally.

“How could our famous army be surprised?” he wonders.

On Saturday, October 7, coinciding with the end of the Jewish holiday of Sukkot, hundreds of Hamas fighters infiltrated Israel by land and air from the Gaza Strip.

More than 1,400 people died in this assault, which shocked the country, while the Israeli bombings carried out in retaliation in Gaza have so far left more than 2,750 dead, according to the authorities of Hamas, which governs this Palestinian enclave.

Yaakov Weissmann, born in France in 1940, says the attack refreshed his memories of his childhood during World War II.

His Polish parents fled the pogroms in their homeland to settle in France in 1933, although his father was later arrested in 1944 and deported to the Auschwitz extermination camp, where 1.1 million people were murdered, the vast majority Jews.

Yaakov lived in hiding with his sister in a village near Lyon, welcomed by a non-Jewish family, who pretended to be his nephews.

Less than 500 meters from Gaza

In 1959, Yaakov Weissmann settled in Israel, in a kibbutz near the Jordanian border, with the desire to “make the earth revive.” He then left for the Egyptian Sinai, occupied by Israel after the 1967 war, where he was later one of the founders of an agricultural settlement called Netiv Haassara.

Evacuated in 1982 by Israel within the framework of the peace agreements with Egypt, Weissmann settled with his family less than 500 meters from the Gaza Strip, and they rebuilt their village, of which they kept the name.

Since 2005 and the unilateral Israeli withdrawal from Gaza after 38 years of occupation, its town of 800 inhabitants has become accustomed to rocket fire from Palestinian armed groups and alarm sirens.

On the morning of October 7, faced with an assault by Hamas militiamen, he and his wife went into their shelter armed with a revolver. Shortly afterward he heard the noise of machine guns.

In other locations, civilians were unable to escape Hamas commandos, who killed or kidnapped them, despite shelters.

Upon emerging from his shelter, Yaakov Weissmann discovered with relief that his children, his grandchildren and his two great-granddaughters, 23 descendants who all live in the village, were safe and sound.

“Eliminate Hamas from the map”

Yaakov Weissman, relocated to a retirement home in Modiin, central Israel, says that for “get revenge” of the Nazis decided “found a family and continue living.”

He refuses to compare Hamas to the Nazi regime, as some Israelis do, but he is clear that those responsible for the massacre on Israeli soil must be “pay”.

“We must do what was announced, eliminate Hamas from the map,” says Weissmann, after Israeli authorities vowed to crush the Palestinian movement, and while awaiting ground intervention in the Gaza Strip.

And how do you see the future?

Weissmann wants “Go back to Netiv Haassara, that’s for sure, although I would understand if my daughters don’t want to.”

Source: AFP