100-year-old Serah Rabia, aunt of the oldest hostage, 86-year-old Shlomo Mansour, passed away a month ago. Her daughter spoke about the family's struggles and their choice not to tell her about her nephew's abduction.
"Today is the memorial service for my mother, who passed away a month ago – and today I am talking about Shlomo," Serah's daughter, Dalia Borgena, shared in an interview with Kan Reshet Bet.
"My mother was a young girl and Shlomo's mother was her eldest sister, so she felt obliged to help with the children. Shlomo was like my older brother and that's really how we treated him, so before my mother passed away we avoided telling her that he had been kidnapped, because we knew it would make her very sad."
Dalia recalled, "We heard from other family members that Shlomo had been kidnapped and we didn't tell my mother, because the attack was on a Jewish holiday and Shlomo had a habit of calling on holiday eves to ask how she was. On the last holiday, there was no call and my mother wondered what had happened. She asked me to call him. I told her the situation was difficult and that the kibbutz was being evacuated, but she shouldn’t worry."
"When my mother saw an article that mentioned Shlomo, she said, 'Maybe he's mentioned in a positive context. They are talking about him, about his work, about the carpentry,' and she didn’t connect it to the kidnapping," Dalia continued. "The television was on and she was listening and I think she always associated it with positive things, and not with kidnapping. It may have been her way of suppressing the bitter truth."
"Feeling helpless is the hardest part for me," Dalia concluded. "We keep on asking family members if anyone has heard any news. I keep on imagining that maybe the fact that he knows Arabic or is a kind person helped him survive, but it's so hard to know when dealing with an elderly person."