BEACHWOOD, Ohio — This Friday will mark eight months since the October 7 terrorist attack on Israel. For the families of the 125 or so remaining hostages, each day brings anguish, a pain that Batya Mantzur feels daily. Her father, Shlomo is among the missing, and at 86, he is the oldest of them.
“He's one of a kind, very adorable,” Batya said of her father. “A unique person that loves to help people, he always does it with a big smile. He rides his bike around the Kibbutz and he says hello to everybody.”
She is in Northeast Ohio this week to share her father's story with members of the Jewish Federation of Cleveland, who earlier this year announced a partnership with their Kibbutz as they begin the long process of addressing the community's needs as the healing process begins.
Kibbutz Kissufim is known for its dairy and poultry farming. It was home to 318 residents prior to October 7, when it was one of the 22 targets of Hamas terrorists.
Batya remembers that morning starting with alarms. She and several family members reached out to warn her parents, who were already searching for information themselves, when the silence was shattered by gunshots.
"They shot through the door and opened the door, they caught them," said Batya. "They asked for the car keys and they took my Dad handcuffed, took him towards the car on the way one of the guards hit him in his face and he told them 'why do you do this? I didn't do anything.' And my mom said 'he's an old man don't do that.'"
As they continued to walk towards the car though, Batya said her mother Mazal saw the opportunity to escape to neighbors.
"They opened and they took her in. That way she survived."
But she didn't see if they took him in the car or not.
"People in the Kibbutz saw his car during the day in different places but nobody saw him inside. So we don't know what happened to him. He was still in pajamas when they took him. We want to believe he's going to be strong enough to survive."
Surviving is something Shlomo Mantzur learned at an early age as a child in Iraq when his family was witness to another massacre of Jews known as the Farhud. It was a two-day assault on the nation’s Jews that happened this week in 1941 under the pro-Nazi Iraqi regime. This pogrom led to the murder of hundreds of Jews in the streets and the eventual ethnic cleansing of all Jews from Iraq. Batya said he never spoke of it.
“He didn't want to make us sad. He didn't want us to be worried for him. He was a Superman, he is Superman."
Fittingly, a flyer circulating shows Shlomo wearing a Superman shirt; the family was unaware of the Cleveland connection to the Superhero before this day, but they appreciate it that much more given the Jewish Federation of Cleveland’s partnership with their Kibbutz to aid in their recovery and hopefully in their eventual reunion.
"Everybody wants to help give us a big hug. And it means a lot,” she said.
On Monday, Israel confirmed the death of four more hostages killed during an earlier operation against Hamas, Shlomo's name fortunately not among them.
“You can't avoid the thinking what's going to be next, who's going to get the call next, which family,” Batya said. “I want the people not to deny what happened and to face the truth of what's happened in Israel, in our Kibbutz."
“Bring them back to their houses, to their home, to the people that care and love them. They don't belong there, they shouldn't be there.”
