Kai’s grandmother shares with ALL ISRAEL NEWS incredible details of their survival
“I’ll tell you a little bit about Kai,” Deborah Mintz, grandmother of Kai Labban, who was just 10 days old on Oct. 7, 2023, said in an exclusive interview withALL ISRAEL NEWS. “He’s a year and seven months old now, and it’s pretty much due to his mother’s quick thinking that we were safe.”
Mintz traveled from her home in Eilat to join her family at Kibbutz Nirim for her grandson’s brit (circumcision ceremony) and to visit with her daughter and family for the Sukkot holiday. However, on the last day of the holiday, when the sirens blared on the morning of Oct. 7, 2023, they found themselves trapped in a safe room that was gradually filling with thick, black smoke.
They were almost all burned alive. “We were coughing up black gunk from our lungs for weeks afterwards,” she said.
“I had prepared myself to die. They set fire to the house, they shot the front door, they shot at the window. There were bullet holes… and I sent goodbye messages,” Mintz recalled. She was holding little Kai during the horrific event. Remarkably, every family member survived, making Kai the youngest survivor of the Hamas attack.
“He is an adorable child,” she enthused. “He understands three languages: Hebrew, English and Spanish.” Deborah and her daughter Aimee speak to him in English, while Kai’s father, Uriel, came with his family from Argentina when he was 10 years old and speaks to him in Spanish.
Kai is now attending nursery school and is learning Hebrew as well. “So, yeah, he’s a very, very intelligent child. He’s funny, he’s sweet, inquisitive… he’s just everything that you could wish for a child to be,” she said. “He’s just wonderful.”
Mintz hadn’t realized that Kai was the youngest survivor of the worst attack in Israel’s 77-year history until a recent article spelled it out. The soldiers were on their way to the neighboring community, Kibbutz Nir Oz, but got the message that there was a baby at death’s door and turned around.
“There is something about Kai, when I look at him and I realize how special he is, not just that he was the youngest survivor. It’s because of Kai that the soldiers came and they saved us.” Mintz believes that the rescue of many on their kibbutz was the result of that split-second decision to turn around.
“Future generations of his can look back and say, we’re only here because our grandfather survived the seventh of October, the same way I look back at my family and say, we survived because they left Poland in 1890,” Mintz continued. “Among the Jewish people, there’s a reason why we’re here. It’s normally one branch of the family that survived, for one reason or another. When I think about all the other branches of the family who didn’t leave Poland in the 1890s and perished, and then there’s our branch that just went from strength to strength. And now Kai, too, he’s that branch.”
Reflecting on the myriad of survival stories gathered by the people of Israel through the millennia, Mintz said, “You could put that into any scenario and in any story, but it’s very profound because by all rights, we should never have survived. There’s absolutely no reason how or why we got out of that room. I cannot tell you why I’m here today, and there’s something that I have a day-to-day problem with, dealing with the trauma, the PTSD. We are still all in therapy,” she said. “We are a year and a half after the event, and I’m a lot better than I was, but I’m not better, and I don’t think I ever will be.”
It’s not a simple, happily-ever-after story. Aimee, Uriel and Kai are still living in temporary housing, among the thousands who have been displaced from their homes, with their lives on hold. Mintz had hoped to join the family on Kibbutz Nirim when she retired, but now, returning is uncertain for everyone. The idea of going back after such deep trauma is something she is not sure she could mentally handle.
“It’s a day-to-day problem,” she explained. “It’s the last thing you think of when you fall asleep – if you fall asleep – and it’s the first thing you think of when you wake up.” Everyday noises like motorbikes can trigger the most intense feeling of fear. “That’s what we live with every day. People say, ‘but you’re alive, you should be happy,’ but you can’t explain to people what it’s like when you’re that close to death.”
Survivor’s guilt can be a heavy burden to bear, an unsolvable riddle about why they escaped death when so many didn’t. “Am I here to tell my story?” Mintz reflected on this, acknowledging that many others carry similar stories – some even more harrowing than her own.
“I mean, every second story is 10 times worse. You know, we weren’t kidnapped. But what if Hamas got the door completely open? If my daughter wasn’t that strong? I mean, luckily, she’s a black girl in karate and a black belt in Krav Maga. She’s a sports teacher and a very strong woman, but she was ten days after a very, very difficult birth.”
Aimee and Uriel managed to prevent the terrorists from getting inside the room and opened the window from time to time to let some smoke out while Mintz tried to comfort little Kai.
There were terrible sounds coming from outside, she continued. “We heard the dog screaming, which was absolutely horrendous, until he died. I couldn’t tell you if it was ten seconds or ten minutes. After that, I just completely dissociated,” she recalled. Faced with the option of jumping out of the window and potentially succumbing to Hamas, they wondered, “Where is the army? Where are the people to save us? And then you just…as it goes on…you know, there’s no one to save you but yourself, and can you?”
“When the soldiers came and I started filming the floor and the noises from outside, and I actually said, I think we’re going to get out of this alive.”
She said that, in hindsight, the thought of what might have happened if they had jumped is chilling. “What would they have done? We don’t know,” Mintz said, admitting that dealing with such thoughts can be very challenging. “I try not to think about it. I try to occupy my mind, but… I don’t go out very much.”
During the interview, Mintz revealed that she is without a vehicle, after hers – along with many others – was completely destroyed in the Hamas attack. She hates the feeling of being immobilized, but noted that there is still much to be thankful for.
“I’m grateful that I was with my daughter, her husband, and the baby on that day in that room, otherwise I would never, ever understand what they are going through,” Mintz said. “I understand what she’s going through and she understands what I’m going through.”
And of course, she is grateful for Kai.
“I am eternally grateful for people that see what happened and are side by side with the Jewish population. I’m heartbroken about all the antisemitism that’s going around in the world and I want to thank everybody who stands by us. It’s wonderful. When people can see the truth and can filter out the truth from the fables, the stories, and the lies. I want to say a big, big thank you to those people. I appreciate all their good thoughts. There’s so much evil out there. I wish there wasn’t. But there is.”
