How I Survived the Nova Festival Massacre

as a Jew I feel safer in Israel than I do in the United States even at this time of war I'm going to introduce um Natalie by asking the question that probably is a good starting point which is what brought you to be in Israel this um October so growing up I've been going to Israel basically almost every year my entire life and this summer was no different I went for a friend's wedding and I ended up staying for the holidays to be with friends and family and some of my friends from Israel told me about this party um and I figured they're going it's happening while I'm there I might as well just go with them and uh I guess we can get into uh how everything started on that day go for it um so I arrived at the Nova festival with three friends all Israeli I was the only American in the group and we got there at around 1:00 a.m. we danced for a couple hours and then my friends were tired and they wanted to go back to our campsite which is it was right by the dance floor so you could still hear the music we were very close to where everything was happening and they wanted to go rest for a few hours and wake up to the sunrise set of the Festival of the party and um I decided I don't know anyone else here I'm going to go with them so we went to sleep at around 3: and instead of waking up to the sound of the sunrise set we instead woke up to the sound of rockets and something I I always um like to point out to people is the way we were woken up so uh one of my friend's friends that was on the dance floor when the first Rockets were sent over uh she's Israeli and she she knew that we were sleeping at the time so she came over back to our campsite and she came to wake us up and this is the way she woke us up she kind of nudged us awake and she was smiling she said BTO good morning guys um I just wanted you guys to know a few Rockets were intercepted overhead but it's fine it's normal for the area that we're in there's really nothing to worry about it'll probably just be a few it'll pass and the party is going to continue so nobody worry everything's fine I want everyone in this room I'm sure majority of the people in this room didn't grow up in Israel and I want you guys to imagine being at a concert here in the states or anywhere else in the world where you grew up and suddenly Rockets are intercepted over your head none of you would react in such a calm manner the way that this girl or all the other Israelis at this Festival reacted and that's just a testament that just goes to show how unfortunate it is but how normal this is for them and that's one of the main questions that I started to get after October 7th um from interviewers they asked why why didn't you guys run right away Rockets are being intercepted over your head and I said because if Israelis were to stop everything that they were doing every time Rockets are sent their way and intercepted overhead they would simply get nothing done unfortunately this is their reality this is something they grow up with but as one of the only Americans in the group I I realized that she was a little extra focused on me and she wanted to make sure that I was calm and that I was okay and um I kind of looked to my Israeli friends to see how they were reacting and I tried to follow suit so we all stayed fairly calm in the beginning and we we just stood up and we looked up at the sky and we started counting the rockets and at first we were calm it was 1 2 then it was 5 then it was was 10 then it was 15 then it was 20 and obviously we started to get a little nervous we started to realize this isn't just another ordinary situation um and then after maybe 10 minutes the festival security shuts off the music and asks everyone to please evacuate to their cars so we start packing up our stuff we're still fairly calm because in our heads we figured okay we have the Iron Dome our biggest fear was maybe scrp TRS from intercepted Rockets hitting us as we're trying to drive out of the festival grounds but overall we were still pretty calm and pretty hopeful that we're all going to get out and get home safely so we started heading to our cars and on the way to the cars I figured we're going to be stuck in traffic for a while there's one dirt road which I'm I'm sure you guys have all seen the video of this dirt road with all the cars pulled over to the side um that are were all burnt um so we figured 's one dirt road there's about 3,000 people at this Festival we're all trying to leave at the same time there's going to be traffic so I asked my friends if I can go use the bathrooms before we start heading out and they were like sure there's no rush go ahead we're going to wait for you by the car so I I go to these yellow bathroom stalls and not until maybe 2 weeks after October 7th did I realize how much I was putting my life at risk by going to those bathroom stalls because if I was in those stalls maybe 15 minutes later I'm sure you guys all saw the video of the Kamas terrorist coming to those stalls and shooting at every stall trying to kill anyone who was inside that wasn't too long after I was there but thankfully um I left before they arrived so after going to the bathrooms we we went to our car and we started driving out and obviously as I assumed there was traffic and we're driving very very slow and the festival security is kind of on either side of the road kind of hurting us like sheep trying to get us out safely and after a few minutes of driving they start yelling at all of us to please pull our cars over to the side of the road and get out and start running and at that point we still didn't know that there were terrorists on foot so we couldn't understand why they would tell us to run from Rockets it didn't make any sense to us but we figured they have our best interest at heart we should just listen to them so we pull our car over and we're sitting in the car for a few moments and we're just kind of looking at each other confused and that's when we heard the first gunshots and as soon as we heard the first gunshots we opened our doors and we started to run and people were running in every direction it was complete chaos nobody knew what direction was the direction of safety and another one of the the most common questions I got asked when I first started doing interviews was how did you know what decisions to make in in that situation how did you know if to run left or right um how did you know if you should hide or keep running and at first it was very hard for me to answer that question because the answer is nobody knew nobody knew what decision was the right decision um and a few months after the attack I was speaking at a vigil Columbus Circle and a man came up to me and he said that he had seen a few of my interviews and he saw how hard it was for me to answer that question and he he told me he had interviewed many Holocaust survivors in his life and that when they were asked how they knew what decisions to make in life and death situations that they coined a term and it was called a choiceless choice and basically the meaning of of that is that in a life and death situation you don't know what choice is going to save your life for get you killed but you simply have to make a choice in that moment and that perfectly describes every choice we made while running from the Kamas terrorist they were all choiceless choices um an example of one of those choices was we started running in a certain direction and after about maybe 15 minutes we decide to check our phones and make sure we're not running towards Gaza and we realized that we are and then we had to change directions so we start running in another Direction and after maybe 10 15 minutes again we see dozens of people running in our Direction and we realize that they're being pursued they're being chased after they're being shot at and we realized that we not only have Kamas terrorists chasing us from behind but they're also coming from the left so now we have to turn right and we have to hope that that choice isn't another wrong choice another example of a choiceless choice was as we were running I I think it was about maybe an hour or two into running we passed by a group of friends of my three friends that I came with and they said hey guys we're over here we're hiding in this ditch come hide in this ditch with us and we start crawling into the ditch to hide with them until one of my friends starts yelling at us that this is a bad idea if we hide in this ditch and the Kamas terrorists find us they're going to shoot us on the spot and he said that hiding is not an option the only option for survival is to continue running and that was a choiceless choice that actually ended up saving Our Lives because unfortunately we later found out that our friends who stayed back and hid in the ditch did not make it out about I want to say about 2 hours maybe almost 3 hours into running we passed by a police officer and this was the first time that we saw anyone in uniform during all this running and and we asked him where is everyone where where's the Army where are the police and he said that most of the people that he worked with um had been shot and killed that his police station had been taken over by the terrorists and we asked him can you call anyone for backup and he said no because they also took over the radio station and he the most he could do was walk alongside us and as he was walking alongside us we could hear them yelling on his walkie-talkie we could hear the screams of the terrorists and he told us to just continue walking in the direction of the sun because in that direction was a town called petish and it was one of the nearest towns to get to to safety so we continue walking and about 4 hours into walking um and when I say running and walking anytime we didn't hear gunshots for a few minutes we would slow down to catch our breath because obviously we're in the sun it's hot everyone's Running Out of Water we had nothing to eat for hours and after about 4 hours me and my friend saw a little tree and we decided to sit under this tree to get some shade from the sun we hadn't heard gunshots in a few minutes and we decided it was a good time to take a little rest while we're sitting under this tree there may be 10 other people sitting with us and we're all kind of just sitting there talking none of us really understand what's happening at the moment a lot of us didn't understand the severity of the situation still until honestly days or weeks after the attack when all these stories started coming out so at that time we're just talking and we're all shocked we're all confused and suddenly we saw a white pickup truck driving in our Direction and for all of us our automatic reaction was that these were terrorists coming to kill us because as I'm sure most of you know these are the that's the type of car that they usually drove and I just remember all of us half getting up contemplating running and then all of us simultaneously realizing we have nowhere to run to if this is a terrorist they're in a car they have guns and I just remember everyone under this tree simultane L sitting down and without a word kind of communicating to each other through nods and smiles that it was nice knowing you and just accepting that this is most likely the end but luckily for us it it wasn't a terrorist it was a man from the town of petish Nam Moshe um him and his son I I was able to get in touch with him months after the attacks and um I learned that him and his son on that day drove back and forth from petish to the festival grounds for about 8 or 10 hours um and together they probably saved around 300 to 400 lives that day he picked us up he put us in the back of his truck and he dropped us off in petish and at that time I didn't even get a moment to ask him what his name was I hardly even saw his face um because as soon as he dropped us off he turned around again to go save more people um he's truly an angel and uh once we got to petish everyone from the town they brought us to the local bomb shelter they brought us food they brought us hin chant all types of food of Shabbat that they took such good care of us there were people walking around reading off lists of names that they were receiving from parents whose kids were at the festival who lost touch with their kids in hopes that they were going to give their parents good news that their kid was there um that's kind of the first moment where I really saw the Jewish people come together um and it only I only saw it more and more as time went on after the attacks um after the attacks I went back home to New York and I started doing interviews and one of the questions that um this one interviewer for the most part the questions I got asked were about October 7th in the beginning that's what people wanted to hear about that's what they wanted to talk about they wanted to ask me about the story I just told you guys about the story of survival and then one interviewer called me and interviewed me for an article and I'm speaking to her and I'm I'm speaking about October 7th and then she starts asking me about life post October 7th and I said one line that to me the this sentence wasn't that crazy I didn't think it was that meaningful I didn't think it was even going to be in the article um but this sentence ended up being the title of the article because to this interviewer what I said was so crazy and so outlandish um that she decided to make it the whole title and what I said was as a Jew I feel safer in Israel than I do in the United States even at this time of war and since that article came out that's basically all any interviewer wanted to talk about they would give me a few minutes to talk about October 7th and then they would start asking me about what I said and I'm happy that they wanted to talk about it because I wanted to explain to them why that's not a crazy statement and why we don't feel safe um but it it really it really became basically the topic of discussion after after that it was mostly about what happened since then and since then I my entire life just turned to a whole different track um before October 7th I was just a Jewish girl working in real estate living in New York never really felt um fearful of the fact that I'm Jewish I remember um growing up the first time that I witnessed any form of anti-Semitism was when I went to visit my family friends in France and I remember we were on the train and I was wearing it was either a hamsa or a Jewish star necklace and it was out of my shirt and my family friend told me to tuck it inside my shirt and I I couldn't even understand why I was like that's such a weird thing to say why would I do that and she said because if someone realizes that we're Jewish they might start yelling at us try to attack us cursing at us and I remember thinking to myself how sad the place where you grew up the place that you call home you don't feel 100% safe being 100% yourself and then the New York that I came back to after October 7th kind of feels like that and it makes me very sad because my whole life I've always been Natalie a Jewish New Yorker but now I don't feel 100% safe in my own home and since then I I've had the opportunity to meet many people and share my story and the combat anti-Semitism movement um had reached out to me to send me to DC to share my story with senators and to put a face to what happened on October 7th because a lot of people have been dehumanizing the Jewish people people and we needed to make it human again we needed to put a face to the story instead of just reading an article and since then I've had the privilege to be able to start working with them and I I truly think that that opportunity has also helped me a lot with the trauma that comes along with experiencing something like this the trauma of fearing for your life um being able to share my story and speak out and on a day-to-day basis work towards a better future and feel comfortable in my surroundings um I think has helped a lot with that trauma and unfortunately a lot of my friends don't have that privilege a lot of my friends feel alienated in their workspace in their schools um but I I do feel very fortunate to be here today to be able to share my story with all of you to now on a day-to-day basis work towards hopefully a better future for all the Jewish people um and yeah it's it's unfortunate the way that I got here but I feel that working in this environment working in the Jewish space I feel like this is where I was meant to be this whole time and I got here in a very unconventional way but I'm happy to be here

Channel: Jewish Learning Institute

Views: 562,591

Keywords: jli, Jewish Learning Institute

Id: g0N7wLY5VGk

Length: 19min 32sec (1172 seconds)

Published: Wed May 22 2024