Few wounds since the beginning of the war, which started with the Hamas massacre in the kibbutzim in the Gaza Strip on October 7, 2023, are as painful in Israel as the fact that 50 Israeli hostages are still in Hamas's hands. Our colleagues Markus Neumann and Anemone Rüger visited Matan Angrest's mother in Kiryat Bialik, a small town north of Haifa founded by German-Jewish immigrants.
By Anemone Rüger
With a slightly pounding heart, we approach the door. Will we find the right words? Will we be able to bring even a spark of hope?
A friendly woman, her face etched with pain and worry, approaches us. The living room is filled with pictures of Matan – Matan with friends, Matan with his football club Maccabi Haifa, Matan in uniform. We present her with our bouquet of flowers, and something like a smile flickers across Anat's face.
“On the morning of October 7th, I sent Matan a message asking, ‘Is everything okay with you? We’re hearing air raid sirens everywhere.’ He was with his unit in Nachal Oz. ‘Everything’s okay, Mom, don’t worry, I’ll get in touch later,’ he replied. That’s the last I heard from him,” Matan’s mother reported.
When Matan and his comrades realized that terrorists had crossed the border, they quickly advanced with their tank to secure the border.
Surrounded
“Matan was in a tank with three other young soldiers,” his mother recounts. “Then they were attacked with tank shells. When the terrorists reached his tank an hour later, Matan’s three comrades were dead. Matan was seriously injured. They pulled him unconscious from the tank and then took him hostage.” The Angrest family only learned of this much later, after weeks of anxious waiting.
CSI board member Markus Neumann in conversation with Matan's mother Anat (2nd from left) and city employees.
“We didn’t hear from him for three weeks. Then we received information that his mobile phone had been located in the Gaza Strip and that he was likely being held hostage. But it wasn’t until November, when the first hostages were released, that we heard directly from them that they had seen Matan and that he was alive. Hamas has since released some videos of him. Of course, we don’t know for sure, but there are many indications that he is alive.”
Grandpa Uri Weiss – saved from the Holocaust as a child
Her parents were both Holocaust survivors, Anat tells us as she places the flowers in the water. Her mother was from Bulgaria, her father, Uri Weiss, from Yugoslavia.
“He came from a large family near Lublin,” Anat said. “When their hometown was occupied, his parents gave my father, who was three at the time, to their neighbors, a Christian family. They hid him and were able to save him. My father never heard from his relatives again. There are no traces, no documentation of what happened to them. At the age of six, my father found himself on a ship full of orphans immigrating to Israel. Later, an uncle of his, who had survived, turned up and took him in.”
You are not alone
Finally, Markus pulls out his phone and plays Anat a video – of the solidarity rallies for the hostages in Altensteig, which take place every Sunday evening. Anat's face lights up. "Wow, that's so good to hear," she says. "Every bit of help we can get means a lot to us. To know that we're not completely alone. To know that someone else is behind us. That gives us hope to go on living. We're waiting for Matan to come home. He's already celebrated two birthdays in captivity. We're waiting for it, the whole town is waiting for us to celebrate his return."
