Freed hostage Or Levy rebuilds life, honours Einav

Every day since Or Levy was released from Hamas captivity, he has apologised to his son, Almog, for not being there for him for 491 days during which he was effectively an orphan. Since his release on 8 February 2025, Levy has dedicated himself to being a parent to his son as well as doing what he can for orphans.

This is why on his recent trip to South Africa, he along with the Jewish National Fund SA (JNF SA), and the Israeli embassy went to the Bramley Children’s Home in Pretoria on 31 August to give teddy bears to the children in honour of Levy’s late wife, Einav.

“I was approached about how to make something in memory of my wife,” he said, “And orphans are really a soft spot for me. My son is the reason I survived. And the fact that there are people without parents really makes me sad.”

Levy told the SA Jewish Report that he and Einav wanted to have one more music festival experience before moving away from that scene. They tucked Almog into bed at Einav’s parents’ home on 6 October, and headed for the Nova festival.

“We woke up at 05:00, drove the car, and arrived at the Nova parking lot, at approximately 06:28,” he said, “And everything started just a minute afterwards. We got out the car, walked a few steps, and then we saw what we thought were fireworks. We quickly discovered it wasn’t the case, these were rockets.”

Or and Einav found a small 1m² shelter near them in the parking lot and hid from the terrorists. This shelter was meant to hold only five to 10 people, yet on this morning, 27 festivalgoers were hiding there.

In the shelter, Levy and others fought back, throwing grenades out as terrorists hurled them in. Eventually, the attackers fired a rocket-propelled grenade, stormed the shelter, and began dragging people out, including Levy, Eliya Cohen, Hersh Goldberg-Polin, and Alon Ohel.

“I begged for my life. I told the terrorists that I had a baby. They lowered their guns, and dragged me from the shelter,” he said. “The last picture I see is this terrorist shooting inside the shelter, but my wife is still there. I didn’t know what happened to her, but I decided I didn’t want to know. I decided to wait until I came back.”

After getting dragged out of the shelter, Levy quickly realised that he and the others had been kidnapped.

For the first 52 days of captivity, Levy was in an apartment with Cohen and Ohel. “We lived with our captors. They treated us like dogs,” he said, “We spent 52 days in that apartment without the ability to speak. And when they allowed us to speak, it was to whisper.”

Levy said that after a certain point, he forgot what his own voice sounded like and hid under a blanket and tried to speak, but nothing came out.

Then, Hamas terrorists handed them oranges and told them that they were in for some good news, but it was anything but. They were taken to a tunnel where they would spend the rest of their captivity.

“In 2024, I saw the sun only once. It was on 4 January, when our tunnel was bombed and we had to flee. I was outside for 10 minutes, but it felt like forever.”

While in the tunnel, Levy met Goldberg-Polin; Ori Danino; Almog Sarusi; and Eli Sharabi. They would share stories, cry, laugh, and keep each other sane.

Levy adopted Goldberg-Polin’s mantra “If you have the why, you’ll find the how”, which is a mistranslation of Viktor Frankl and Nietzsche.

“Hersh became a mentor. My life was my first ‘why’ every day. My family, my son, and my friends would need to be my strength.”

Levy spent just three days with Goldberg-Polin, Danino, and Sarusi before they were led away under the pretence of release, only to be murdered. “I remember seeing them for the last time,” he said. “Ori smiled at us, saying, ‘See you soon.’ When I came home, my mother told me the truth.”

Levy said that while in captivity, he was shackled the entire time, and was able to take a shower only once every two months, and even then, it wasn’t a real shower as it was with a bottle of water and he had to put the same clothes back on.

“I didn’t really take a shower for the whole 491 days,” he said. “But the worst part was the fear and the starvation.”

He lived in constant fear – of his captors; Israeli strikes; or starvation, with just one pita shared between four men. To survive, he distracted himself with cards, sports trivia, and thoughts of the meals he’d eat once free.

“Before 7 October, I was a picky eater,” he said. “In captivity, all I could think about was food – everything I’d refused; everything I couldn’t make. It haunted us every day, more than the fear of dying.”

Levy described the area he was kept in as a waiting room in the worst possible sense – you wait for your sentence, either you get to live and are released, or you are left to die.

“People would go to sleep on the floor, change, drink salty water, and eat one meal a day,” he said.

He also said that one day, each of the four men in the tunnel were given two dates by their captors and, “I don’t really know how to explain to you the sugar rush we felt. It’s like, right away, I stood up, thinking my brain was working. It lasted an hour, but it was quite amazing.”

Levy said his worst day in captivity was his son’s third birthday on 25 June. “I sang to him. I was 50m underground, crying all day, promising I would do everything in my power to survive and celebrate his next birthday and not to lose any more birthdays.”

Levy described the day of his release as both the worst and best day of his life. This is because he found out the fate of his wife, Einav, and because he was able to see his son after nearly 500 days. The first thing he did when he saw the Israel Defense Forces was ask where Einav was. He was told that she had been murdered, probably immediately after he was taken out of the shelter.

“Only then was I properly able to mourn her,” he said. “Then I was asked if I wanted to see a video of Almog. I saw this smiley boy, with curly hair, saying, ‘Aba Or’.”

The first thing that Almog told Or when they were reunited was, “Dad, why did you take so long to come home”.

Levy had missed almost two years of his son’s life. In captivity, he calculated how much of his son’s life he had missed, which amounted to just about half.

“As soon as I hugged him, he started asking me questions, and the hardest one was, ‘Where is mom.’ I started crying. I had no words. He said mom was dead. It’s the hardest sentence to hear from a child.”

Celebrating Almog’s fourth birthday was the best day of his life.

“When I came back, I mourned, I cried. The thing is, I know bad things happened to me. I know, and I see the look on the faces of people that hear my story. I don’t want to feel sorry for myself. I told this to my mom – if I cried every day and became a shadow of myself, I would wish that I had died on 7 October. My son doesn’t deserve a parent who isn’t really a parent.”

But he said though he cannot think about the future while there are still 48 hostages still in Gaza, including Ohel, he intends to “live every day; hug my son; and smile, even though it’s hard”.