Cecilia Montoya, Danny Garcovich, Iván Illarrimendi and Loren Garcovich, during a family dinner. Danny Garcovich (Courtesy)
A little more than ten years ago, when she was completing her quality control studies in Israel, the Chilean-Israeli Loren Pamela Garcovich Montoya (47 years old), who also calls those around her Dafna, took a trip to Spain to celebrate the end of a stage. He stayed for three months because he not only made several friends, but also met the Spaniard from Zarautz (Guipúzcoa), Basque Country, Iván Illarramendi (46). “That’s where he met his better half,” Danny Garcovich, Dafna’s father, who came to this country with his wife Cecilia Montoya in 1984 when his daughter was eight, tells EL PAÍS by phone from Israel.
The Chilean and the Spaniard married in Spain nine years ago and then decided to settle in Israel. Danny Garcovich (Peñaflor, Chile, 66 years old) is the commander of the fire department in the Gaza Strip and describes them as a very neat and organized couple who have saved up to have their own house in Kibbutz Kisufim, two kilometers from Gaza, on the border . They had many plans, both firmly anchored in their jobs: she at a plastics factory as head of quality control and he as head of logistics at a kibbutsim dining hall near their home. “You love my son-in-law very much. That’s why they gave him a lot of tasks,” says the Chilean.
The couple looked for a house about 100 meters from Dafna’s parents. The four spent a lot of time together and one of their favorite activities was eating together. It was common, says Dafna’s father, for Iván, whom he describes as someone with a lot of talent in the kitchen, to prepare Basque food while they returned the hospitality with Chilean empanadas, his son-in-law’s favorite menu item. “We are a very close-knit family that, like any normal family, shared a lot with parties and dinners,” he describes.
But all that “normal life,” as Danny Garcovich calls it to explain that they were “a family like any other,” ended on October 7 when Kibbutz Kisufim was attacked by the Islamist Hamas militia. Amid the rockets, Iván and Dafna hid in the shelter of their home; His parents did the same to them, a few feet away. Danny remembers them talking on the phone while they heard the rockets; that her daughter told her how she felt like they were entering her house, that she heard screams and voices in Arabic, and that by the time she knew they were inside, she began to speak in a low voice to them they didn’t want to hear it.
The last thing I heard him say was “Help, help, help,” Garcovich says. It was 12:30 p.m., he remembers. Then communication was interrupted as the cell phone antennas were torn down.
Almost two weeks have passed since then and Danny Garcovich has not heard from his daughter or son-in-law. “We have no information about where they are.” For him, they are considered missing as long as there is no list from the International Red Cross showing that they were kidnapped. “At the moment we have no information about who it is and who is not, apart from two or three shots that they (Hamas) took to show one or two people. We can classify her as kidnapped; There is no trace or idea of the others, nor is there any way to check the condition they are in.”
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Iván Illarrimendi and Loren Garcovich, the Basque and the Chilean kidnapped by Hamas.Danny Garcovich (Courtesy)
However, the governments of Chile, Spain and Israel include Loren Garcovich and Iván Illarramendi among the approximately 200 people held hostage by Hamas. The Chilean government was the first to spread the news. This happened on the night of October 9th by the Chancellor of President Gabriel Boric’s government, Alberto van Klaveren, who confirmed on his X account (formerly Twitter) that Loren Garcovich was “abducted by terrorists in the conflict zone” and said, with whom he had communicated Danny Garcovich: “The moderation and clarity of his words is admirable. I have expressed our concern and solidarity regarding the situation. We will not give up supporting their search and return,” said Minister Gabriel Boric.
At the same time, on Tuesday 17, the President of the Spanish Government, Pedro Sánchez, called for the immediate release of “all hostages held by Hamas, including our compatriot Iván Illarramendi”. On the same day, the Israeli Foreign Ministry, through a statement in X, included the Spanish flag among the 42 countries whose nationals are in the hands of Hamas.
Israeli-Chilean Dafna Garcovich and her Israeli-Spanish partner Ivan Illarramendi have been held hostage in the Gaza Strip for days.
Listen to the courageous testimony of Dafna’s father as he recalls the terrible events his family experienced.
Help us bring her home. Share the… pic.twitter.com/QEnCDUg33U
— Israeli Foreign Ministry (@IsraelMFA) October 19, 2023
Firefighter in Chile and Israel
Loren Darcovich’s parents left Chile in the late 1970s, first living in Argentina and then settling in Israel in 1984. They left San Felipe, a town about 75 kilometers north of Santiago de Chile, where his son was born. “The wish of every person who belongs to the people of Israel is to reach this place at some point. “It’s always there, without the memory and longing for the place from which we came,” says the man.
Before leaving Chile, Danny Darcovich worked as an electrician in the community of San Felipe and was a volunteer firefighter, as he does today on the Gaza border. “Being a firefighter is in my blood. When I arrived in Israel, the first thing I did was contact the fire department.” Since people are paid a salary in Israel, he was one of the founders of the volunteer corps, which works without pay.
As commander, Darcovich has continued to work as a firefighter in the region despite the dramatic situation he is experiencing due to the disappearance of his daughter and son-in-law. This partly explains how he copes with not hearing from Loren and Iván. He works in the area, he says, “24 hours a day,” without a break. “I know a lot more about what happens in these cases. Therefore, as a professional, the information or data is much more truthful than anything that is talked about in different places, since there is a lot of conjecture or is organized in one way or another according to the people who transmit it. We can see much more, although we are prohibited from reporting anything that could endanger or interfere with the military operation.”
He shares that for him and his wife, there is “a 50 percent chance that everything will end well and positively, and a 50 percent chance that the news will be painful” and not what they want. Darcovich says he has witnessed many tragedies in his daily life as a rescuer. “Many traffic accidents, many fires where we had to rescue people. This perhaps hardened me and made me see things from a different perspective, different from that of a person who has never seen a drop of blood and is frightened at the mere sight of it. That helps to be very strong,” he says on the phone, almost at night in Israel. But the Chilean admits he is “scared” about what is happening. “As long as we don’t know what reality is, there is uncertainty. And uncertainty is much worse than knowing reality, whether happy or sad. We are completely convinced of this.”