Freed hostage Ruthi Munder told Kan that she discovered that her son Roi had been murdered in the October 7th massacre while still in captivity by listening to a radio one of the terrorists had brought her.
“I very much missed my son. I heard on a transistor radio given to us by one of our captors to listen to from time to time that a distant relative was speaking about him. I heard and understood, but was strong enough to keep from breaking down.”
“To this very day, I don't cry over him,” she admits. “It is strange to me that I don't cry about such things. When people come to console me, I encourage them because I do not want them to be sad.”
“Roi was a special son with a warmth about him. He had many difficulties and dealt with them all very well. He had many friends in all kinds of places and would travel to them frequently. Now I have Keren and Ohad, that's my entire family. I hope that Munder (Avraham, her husband) will return and we can once again be a little family together.”
Munder spoke about how much she missed her husband. “I worry about him because he is not strong like me. On October 7th, with the first rocket siren, we went to our shelter. I do not worry about rocket sirens and generally leave the shelter immediately following the explosion, but this time it kept on going. The whole time, Munder didn't speak at all, and tried to hold onto the door. He did not succeed because it was hard for him to stand. He would have to go for walks with a cane. When the terrorists opened the door he fell on the floor.”
“The first thing they did was take our telephones and order us out. We didn't know what would happen to us. They loaded us, Karen, and Ohad onto vehicles and took us away from there. I don't know what they did with him. When we left, we saw the plunderers, and watched them taking many things. Our house was not damaged, and soldiers occupied it later. There are other people here that don't have all their history, and their house was completely destroyed. My house stayed intact, with all my memories and belongings."
She told how she received a sign of life from her husband while in captivity. "On the day I was released, Margalit Moses ran to me with joy and told me “Ruthi, I slept next to Munder, right next to his mattress.” She helped him there and positioned his mattress so that he could sit up, and they sang together.”
Despite knowing that his condition was good, a significant amount of time has passed since then and Ruthi is no longer sure of what happened to her husband Avraham. “ I love him and miss him, and hope that he will be strong enough to get through this. He will return, and we are waiting for him and miss him.”
Despite the traumatic experience and the many friends she has lost, Ruthi wants to return to her house. “ I want to return there. We had everything there. We did not need to leave the commune, we had a great life there. I loved life in the commune. I moved there with the initial community in 1963, and have had a great experience. Now they have destroyed everything, including the new multipurpose building, the kitchen, and the pharmacy. We had everything there.”