Israel
Aunt recounts Roni Krivoy’s escape as more details emerge about the prisoners’ ordeal held in Gaza
One of the Israeli hostages released on Sunday briefly escaped captivity and hid in the ruins of Gaza, it has emerged. New details emerged about the conditions under which Hamas prisoners were held.
Roni Krivoy, 25, who was kidnapped while working as a sound engineer at a music festival attacked by Hamas and has dual Israeli-Russian citizenship, escaped the building where he was being held after it was damaged in an Israeli airstrike .
According to his aunt, Yelena Magid, Krivoy was being held in an apartment building. “Due to the bombing, the building collapsed and he managed to escape the rubble and free himself,” she told Israeli media.
“For a few days he hid alone,” Magid said, describing a half-hour conversation with her nephew after his release under a deal brokered between Israel and Hamas.
She added that Krivoy, who suffered a head injury when the building collapsed, had tried to reach the Gaza border fence but did not know where he was within the territory and was eventually found by Palestinian civilians who took him to Hamas would have brought back.
“He was trying to get to the border. He was unable to understand where he was and where he needed to go, and therefore could not find his way around the open field. He was alone,” Magid said.
“I asked him today, ‘How are you? Do you have nightmares?’ He replied: “Yes, I have nightmares about the party and the imprisonment, but that’s good, it means I’m coping well with it.”
Freed hostages have begun to speak about their time in captivity. Some described using plastic benches without mattresses as beds, eating meals of bread and rice, and often having to wait hours for bathroom breaks.
The 58 hostages released under a ceasefire agreement over the past three days remained largely hidden from public view, with most still in hospitals.
Elma Avraham, 84. Photo: Hostages And Missing Families Forum/Portal
While most are reported to be in good physical condition, one released hostage, 84-year-old Elma Avraham, remains in hospital in critical condition after being released on Sunday. Her daughter accused Hamas of neglecting Avraham’s health.
“My mother doesn’t deserve to come back like this,” Tali Amano said. “[She] was medically neglected…She arrived with a heart rate of 40 beats per minute and a body temperature of 28 ° C, on the verge of losing consciousness and with injuries all over her body.
Three generations of the Munder family were among those released at the weekend. Nine-year-old Ohad Munder, who was released along with his mother Keren and grandmother Ruti, described his captivity to a relative who said he “learned a few new words in English and Arabic” during his ordeal.
“The conditions in which they were held were not good. They slept on plastic benches – 80-year-olds – without a mattress,” said a relative.
Ohad Munder, nine, meets with his family members after returning to Israel. Photo: Schneider Children’s Hospital/Portal
One of Ohad’s school friends, Romi Dor, who spoke to him after his release, told the Walla News website that during his captivity, Hamas brought other children to play with Ohad and that he managed to keep a diary . The diary was later thrown away by his mother for safety reasons.
In video footage released by the family, Ruti Munder recounted how she learned that her son Roy had been killed in the Hamas attack on Kibbutz Nir Oz while listening to the radio in captivity.
Accounts from some of the released hostages make it clear that family members were not necessarily kept together and that many did not know what had happened to their loved ones during the October 7 attack.
In one scene from the footage, a family member reveals that her father Avraham, 78, was still being held hostage in Gaza, to which Keren Munder replies: “So he wasn’t murdered.”
Another relative, Merav Raviv, described how Keren and Ruti Munder had each lost about 7kg of weight in just 50 days.
Yaffa Adar, 85, right, is reunited with her family after being held hostage. Photo: X
Adva Adar, the granddaughter of released hostage Yaffa Adar, 85, said her grandmother had also lost weight. “She counted the days of her captivity,” Adar said. “She came back and said, ‘I know I’ve been there for 50 days.'”
Adar said her grandmother was captured believing her family members were dead, only to hear the news that they had survived. Still, her release was bittersweet: She also learned that her home had been ransacked by militants.
“An 85-year-old woman usually has her house where she raised her children, she has her memories, her photo albums, her clothes,” Adva Adar said. “She has nothing and as she gets older she has to start over. She mentioned that it was difficult for her.”
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