During the October 7th massacre, Ofer Calderon and his sons, Sahar and Erez, were trapped inside their home’s bomb shelter. What began as a day of fear quickly spiraled into a harrowing ordeal.
"I heard shouting in Arabic all around us," Calderon recalled in an interview with Channel 12. "I knew immediately this was something different. I broke down like never before. I had a loaded gun, but there was no real way to protect my children."
The most terrifying moment came when he heard the gate to their vineyard creak open. "I thought to myself: Satan has come down from the sky," he said. Realizing they were moments from being discovered, Calderon turned to his son. "I told Erez, 'In a moment they’ll see us. I'm sorry,there’s nothing more I can do.' To say something like that to your child... it completely breaks you."
In a desperate attempt to save his son, Calderon made an unthinkable choice: he handed over his weapon to one of the attackers. The terrorists then separated him from Erez. "One of them tried to kill me right there," he recounted. "I jumped, screamed, 'I didn’t do anything to you!' That somehow changed things. Then a huge man, dressed like a soldier, grabbed me by the neck, and they began beating me."
Wounded and disoriented, Calderon was taken into Hamas' underground tunnel network. "I was thrown into a cell with no shirt, freezing," he said. Soon after, other hostages were brought in: Matan Zangauker, followed by Jimmy Pacheco and Yarden Bibas. "The three of us were packed into one tiny cell for two weeks, no air, no space, it was unbearable."
One of the most heart-wrenching moments came when Ofer and Yarden were forced to watch a video informing Yarden of the death of his wife Shiri and their children. Later, they even encountered senior Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar. "He walked through the tunnel with an escort carrying a fax machine. I asked what would happen to us. He said, ‘Things went a bit backward, but in a month it’ll be okay.’"
Although Calderon was eventually released, the trauma continues to haunt him. "I can’t sleep. And when I do, I wake up an hour later to imagined explosions in my head. The thoughts won’t leave me alone. I lock my door twice now, I never used to do that."
In an effort to support his recovery, Calderon’s friends from the cycling group The Smurfs, in collaboration with the "Reach Out" association, have launched a crowdfunding campaign to help Ofer and his family begin to rebuild their lives after the unimaginable.