WELT series: Hamas Oct 7 terror — 'Germany is next'

An Israeli woman mourns with her son in Jerusalem on October 15, 2023. Source: picture alliance/newscom/Jim Hollander

It is the largest mass murder of Jews since the Holocaust. The Hamas terror of October 7, 2023, shakes Israel and the world. This is the new episode of our series on 80 years of WELT.

A Survivor's Story: Alon Gat

"I saw the terrorists setting houses on fire, with people inside. I saw the hate. I saw the evil."

The last thing Alon Gat sees before Hamas terrorists force him, his wife Yarden, and his three-year-old daughter Geffen into a car on October 7, 2023, is the body of his murdered mother lying on the street. From Kibbutz Beeri, the terrorists drive toward Gaza.

The young parents do not want to surrender to their fate and make a courageous decision. They jump out of the moving car and run. Yarden holds their little daughter in her arms. The kidnappers shoot at them; she hands the child to Alon.

"I heard the bullets hitting very close to the ground and into the trees," he recalls. "I told myself I had to keep running to save us."

His wife Yarden plays dead. But the terrorists see no blood and abduct her to Gaza. There, in her torn pajamas, she is paraded before a cheering mob like a hunting trophy.

Meanwhile, Alon is still hiding with his daughter in a hole in the ground. They cover themselves with leaves and lie motionless for eight hours. Only after nightfall do they get up and reach safety.

Now Alon learns that his sister Carmel has also been taken hostage to the Gaza Strip. Shortly after, Alon travels with a delegation of relatives of Israeli hostages to Berlin and tells his story in the television studio of WELT TV, which also appears in the printed WELT.

He wants to draw the German public's attention to the suffering of his wife and sister and to move German politicians to advocate for their release. Yarden holds German citizenship because she is a descendant of Holocaust survivors from Germany.

Shani Louk: A Mother's Plea

Shani Louk's mother also visits the WELT editorial office. A video of her daughter from October 7 is particularly shocking. The young German-Israeli had been celebrating at the Nova Festival. The video shows her body half-naked and motionless on the flatbed of a truck in the Gaza Strip, as terrorists pull her hair and spit on her. It is not clear whether Shani Louk is still alive. A crowd cheers around the truck.

WELT front page from October 9, 2023. Source: Axel Springer SE

Anti-Semitism on German Streets

But the largest mass murder of Jews since the Holocaust is not only celebrated in the Gaza Strip. On Berlin's Sonnenallee, terror sympathizers distribute sweets to celebrate that Israeli babies were killed, families burned alive, women raped and mutilated.

To counter the images of mostly unpunished anti-Semitism displayed on German streets, WELT repeatedly reports from Berlin's Bebelplatz, which a courageous German-Israeli alliance has symbolically renamed "Place of the Hamas Hostages."

On Bebelplatz, history, present, and future painfully merge. Here, on May 10, 1933, the National Socialists burned more than 20,000 books amid the jeers of thousands of students, professors, and members of the SA and SS.

Heinrich Heine's dark prophecy came true: "Where they burn books, they will ultimately burn people too."

Burned books in a display case now commemorate the greatest crime against humanity of the present day at Bebelplatz. They come from the ruins of Alon's house.

Read also:

• Weltplus article: Fate of the hostages – The abducted from Beeri