90-year-old Ruth Haran survived the Holocaust and massacre at Kibbutz Be’eri: ‘When the war ended, I was barely seven years old, about the age my great-granddaughter Yahel was when kidnapped to Gaza.’
The life story of Ruth Haran, a Holocaust survivor whose life is filled with tragedy and heroism, echoes the twists and turns of the history of the Jewish people. She survived the Nazi horrors as a young child, and tragically, decades later, lost her son Avshalom, of blessed memory, in the brutal massacre at Kibbutz Be’eri on October 7th, 2023, when seven members of her family were taken hostage to Gaza.
Ruth was born ninety years ago in Bucharest, Romania. With the outbreak of World War II, when she was just three years old, her family was caught in a whirlwind of displacements and separations. They wandered between Odessa, Chernivtsi, Uzbekistan, and Chisinau, experiencing firsthand the hardships of war. After the war ended, Haran lost her father, a doctor by profession, who contracted typhus while treating patients.
“When the world war ended, I was barely seven years old, about the age that my great-granddaughter Yahel was when she was kidnapped to Gaza,” Ruth shares from her hospital bed at Soroka Medical Center. “That is how I remember the Holocaust – through the eyes of a little girl. My mother said: ‘We came to the Land of Israel, to build and be built.’ We came illegally, out of true Zionism. After ten days in the belly of a boat, I suddenly heard ‘Hatikva‘, and from the deck I saw the port of Haifa. It was very emotional.”
As an adult, Ruth studied at the Pardes Hanna Agricultural School, and then served in the Nahal Brigade and settled in Kibbutz Nahal Oz, where she met her husband Chaim. They later established their home in Moshav Tidhar and Omer, where Ruth worked in education and raised a family.
About five years ago, after Chaim’s passing, Ruth moved to Kibbutz Be’eri to live closer to her son Avshalom, who was brutally murdered in the Hamas massacre. “Life in Be’eri was wonderful. I was surrounded by a wonderful community, beautiful fields, and lots of nature,” she recalls sadly.
Ruth miraculously escaped the horrors of October 7th, after she managed to hide from Hamas terrorists who broke into her home. “I was alone at home on the Shabbat of Simchat Torah. I woke up to the sound of rockets and through the window I saw armed men on the lawn. Then there was a loud knock on the door. I don’t know how, but I wasn’t afraid. “I stood still for a moment, and suddenly they called out to me. I turned around and ran quickly into the house. I stayed in my hiding place for fifteen very long hours.”
