Ariel, who will celebrate his bar mitzvah two weeks from now, lost his entire family on the Sabbath, October 7. He asked ZAKA to rescue from his house the tefillin (phylacteries used for Jewish rituals) that he received from his grandfather, who had survived the Holocaust before the flames would consume them. "The unbelievable happened: we did it."
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Ariel Zohar, son of the Israel Hayom videographer Yaniv Zohar, who was brutally murdered along with additional family members on October 7, will turn thirteen two weeks from now. The surviving members of his family will conduct the traditional festivities elated but in the shadow of its profound grief. That Sabbath, as the ghastly bloodbath was about to begin, Ariel set out for a job along the lanes of Kibbutz Nahal Oz, where he lived with his family. As he ran peacefully, he was taken by surprise by Hamas terrorists who had invaded the kibbutz and raced, frightened, to the first house in the commune. It was the home of the head of the local security team, who rushed him to the safe room of the house and headed out heroically to defend the kibbutz. Horrifically, he succumbed to the murderers' bullets on his watch.
Video: Terrorists enter border towns near Gaza / Credit: Social media
Ariel, still in the safe room, spent hours hiding in terror as the blood-drenched battle continued along the kibbutz pathways. When he finally stepped out of the room, the shattering reality came into view: He was the only member of his family to have survived; the others had been cruelly murdered.
Ariel, nearly thirteen and about to read from the Torah for the first time on the occasion of his bar mitzvah, turned to ZAKA, the casualties rescue identification organization, with an impassioned request: "Help me save the tefillin that my family went to the trouble of getting me before they go up in flames or get desecrated by the murderers."
ZAKA didn't give the matter a second thought. Motti Buktzin, the organization's spokesman, told Israel Hayom the following: "We went into Nahal Oz escorted by special forces and under heavy fire. As we moved toward the house, an antitank missile was fired at us. The army returned fire to the source, but ultimately the unbelievable happened – we managed to extricate the tefillin intact, under fire.
"That evening, we drove to Rishon Lezion, where Ariel was staying with his grandparents. The recovery of his tefillin was greeted with tears and weeping. Ariel's grandfather told us that he had survived the Holocaust and that his parents, too, had been murdered before his eyes. He couldn't believe that more than 70 years later, his grandson would experience a similar atrocity."
Haim Outmezgine, commander of the special ZAKA unit, added: "When this bar mitzvah boy, the only survivor of the brutal slaughter of his entire family, asked me to save the tefillin that his father had given him – it gave me a little hope that our people will continue to carry on. When I met with Ariel, I was gripped with emotion and couldn't stop crying."
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