With her sea green coat, white sneakers and badge in her pocket, Ellay Golan looks like any hospital doctor. Only his beige bandages on his arms and legs betray the ordeal that the 34-year-old intern experienced a year ago.. “I was 70% burned in the October 7 attacks, so I have to wear compression clothing,” she shows, placed on a sofa at Sheba hospital, near Tel Aviv, where she is gradually returning to her previous life. “I was supposed to finish my internship in March, but October 7 interrupted everything. »
This black Saturday, Ellay, her husband and their 18-month-old daughter heard sirens much more insistent than usual in Kfar Aza (“the village of Gaza”), a kibbutz located 1.2 kilometers from the Gaza strip. Gaza and who faces it. “We were used to rockets, but paradoxically we felt safe”she smiled. “Around 6 a.m., we rushed into our daughter’s room, who is also our mamad (“secure room”, Editor’s note). We heard shouts in Arabic and the sound of automatic weapons, without knowing if it was close to us or not,” she remembers. Very quickly, the Mamad is not enough: this shelter, obligatory in kibbutzim, having been designed against rockets, but not against intrusions, it therefore does not lock from the inside.
“I told myself it was the end”
“Around 12:50 p.m., they opened the door, took clothes and set them on fire. We were suffocating. » The couple then has the choice between going out, at the risk of being shot, or being burned to death. “We didn’t think about the possibility of being captured. We wanted to go through the flames, but they threw a tank of gasoline. I told myself it was the end.” she continues, her voice wavering. “After throwing another tank, they took knives and a broomstick to try to stab us, but as the house started to collapse, they fled. »
Ellay and her husband in turn take the risk of fleeing, without imagining that 500 attackers were attacking Kfar Aza. “We left in socks, with open wounds and without water, towards the agricultural part of the kibbutz. We stayed in a bush, then on a tractor for an hour and a half, hoping the army would arrive. When my daughter fainted, we returned to the kibbutz to seek medical help. We saw soldiers for the first time at 3:30 p.m..” That is nine and a half hours after the start of their ordeal.
“Who could have written such a scenario? »
Evacuated by military helicopter to the hospital, all three were plunged into a coma: eight days for her daughter, ten for her husband and fifty-two for Ellay. “I had inhaled so much smoke that my lungs gave out”she still wonders, well aware of this resurrection in which no one dared to believe. When she wakes up, she discovers the scale and abomination of the attacks, the releases of hostages, but also intense pain from a body that no longer functions. “I had lost 12 kg of muscle, I could no longer walk or move my arms. Until three months ago, I couldn’t even bathe my daughter, who is doing very well now. »
Released from rehabilitation last month, Ellay still has a day and a half of rehabilitation per week, alongside her internship, earning the admiration of her colleagues. But on a psychological level, regaining the sense of security that collapsed that day will take time. “Who could have written such a scenario? Certainly not a human! We try to rebuild ourselves, to stay strong, but I still carry heavy survivor’s guilt. That day, I also had to choose between saving an injured friend and my daughter, she said, haunted by this impossible choice. But it helps me a lot mentally to come back here to what I was before, a doctor. »