Seven months after the Oct. 7 Hamas terrorist attack on the area of Israel near the Gaza border, a friend of Adele Raemer, a fellow survivor of that day’s killing spree, asked Raemer to make a list of the people she knew who had lost their lives then.
Such a compilation, Raemer’s friend said, would be “more impactful” when telling people what took place on Oct. 7.
Raemer, a native of the Bronx, a lifelong Young Judea Zionist who at 19 made aliyah in 1973, has lived since 1975 in Nirim, a kibbutz about a mile from Gaza where she was stationed during her IDF service.
The request was daunting — Raemer knew dozens of Hamas victims.
Finally, she started making the list, which fills four pages in a small notebook she carries with her.
“I’m sure I’m missing people,” she says. Her latest tally: nearly 60 men and women she knew well who were killed in the Hamas onslaught, and at least 23 who were kidnapped.
A retired high school teacher who moderates a “Life on the Border with Gaza” Facebook group and blogs for the Times of Israel, and a disillusioned pacifist, Raemer has in the last year become a voice and a face of the community of men and women who lived through the Hamas barbarism.
During a series of public speeches and media interviews around the US, under the aegis of the Kibbutz Movement (kibbutz.org.il) and of various philosemitic Christian organizations, she has described:
• her 11-hour ordeal in a concrete-reinforced bomb shelter (aka “safe room”), worse than her “nightmare scenario,” in her Nirim home waiting to be rescued by the Israeli army;
• the fear felt by fellow defenseless Israelis that day;
• the relief she experienced when she found out that all members of her immediate family had survived Oct. 7;
• the threat posed from Hamas-controlled Gaza;
• the continuing trauma suffered by other Oct. 7 survivors;
• the desire she shares with Jews from Nirim and other residents of communities attacked by Hamas and “6,000 animals . . . the Nazis of 2023” who took part in the killings and rapes and kidnappings to resume their lives on kibbutz;
• her disillusionment with the hope that Gaza’s Arabs wanted peace with the Jews of Israel; and
• the future for the re-establishment of vibrant Jewish life in Nirim and other kibbutzim that have been the targets of Hamas in southern Israel and of Hezbollah in the northern part of the country, near the Lebanese border.
She also talked about optimism.
“We” — and her fellow displaced Israelis — “will be back” in their pre-Oct. 7 homes and pre-Oct. 7 lives, she said last week at Cong. Beth El, in Missouri City, Texas, near Houston, before she headed to central New Jersey, where she gave more speeches, before heading back to Israel for Rosh Hashanah.
Nirim (Hebrew for plowed fields) was founded in 1946 as part of the plan to establish a Jewish presence in the Negev. It was the first Jewish settlement attacked in 1948 during Israel’s War of Independence, and became the target of frequent rocket fire from Gaza after 2000.
About 20 Hamas terrorists attacked the kibbutz on Oct. 7, setting houses ablaze and aiming gunfire and grenades at homes.
The population of Nirim, which has maintained a lower profile than nearby kibbutzim like Be’eri, was 430 before Oct. 7. Five Nirim residents and three IDF soldiers died at the hands of Hamas.
Today, most of the surviving Nirim kibbutzniks, including Raemer, live temporarily in apartments in Beersheba, paid for by the Israeli government. Other kibbutzniks are also scattered throughout Israel.
Israel’s kibbutzim, which represent only two to three percent of of Israel’s population but serve as a symbol of the country’s “pioneer” ethos, have been a disproportionate target of Hamas and Hezbollah, Raemer said, because they are located in border areas, which afford infiltrating terrorists easy access.
The Kibbutz Movement and the Christian organizations have sponsored Raemer’s five consciousness-and-fundraising appearances in the US. Sometimes she appears with Ariela Lerman and Keren Pardo, the strategic consultant and international department director, respectively, of the Kibbutz Movement.
These initiatives are independent of the Israeli government.
They intend to counteract the wave of anti-Israel sentiment that dominated parts of the US in the past year.
Israel’s hasbara (Hebrew for “explanation” — Raemer prefers the term “public diplomacy”) isdesigned to show the human side of the aftermath of Oct. 7; i.e., the names behind the numbers. Ordinary citizens like Raemer, who are not politicians or diplomats, speak at small gatherings, not in mass media interviews.
‘I see it as a responsibility as a survivor to talk about it the horrors of Oct. 7 because the world needs to know and understand what actually went on that day,” she told Oregon Jewish Life.
In unemotional terms, her voice not cracking, wearing dog-tags that bear the words “Bring them [the hostages] home now,” Raemer in her Missouri City speech discussed the very emotional subject of deaths and losses. Her spoken words were echoed by a Power Point presentation and in videos.
At one point, she brought out her notebook turning the pages to show the column after hand-written column of names, all friends of hers, who lost their lives on Oct. 7.
Her message: “Resilience. We are strong, determined. We will rebuild.”
In a subsequent phone interview, Raemer said she has given several dozen speeches in the months since October 7, 2023 in such venues as synagogues and churches and Hillel chapters, before Jewish and Christian audiences, journalists and members of Congress.
Their reactions? No anti-Israel pushback. “Everyone has been supportive.”
What have her speeches accomplished? They have “spread awareness” of what happened in southern Israel on Oct. 7. People tell her, “We learned so much we did not know.”
A final question. Why did she survive, while 1,200 people, including non-Jews, died on that bloody Shabbat-Simchat Torah?
“It was random,” Raemer said. People who lived nearby her Nirim house died on Oct. 7. “Random,” she repeats. But her newfound activism on behalf of the survivors, and in memory of the victims, shows that she remained alive for a purpose: to tell the story of Oct. 7.
Using the names listed in her notebook.
