The view of or appears Levi in February from Hamas’s captivity shocked the world.
The pale, enchanted frame of the 34-year-old youth stood as a testimony to the brutal conditions, which he endured in 491 days, in which he was held hostage, all of whom spent underground, shackled and hungry.
“It’s hard to understand how difficult it is to live in a pie a day for 491 days … No man should live like that,” Levy says in an interview with CNN this week. “And for the people who are still there, I know that those days were even worse than what I have experienced – and it’s scary.”
Levy has been home for five months now. At that time, according to him, he was a train of emotions, beginning the day he was released, which he describes as his best and most difficult life.
He reunited with his son Almog, who was only two years old when his father was abducted. But he also learned that his wife Aynav was killed in the attacks on October 7, 2023 – and the process of sorrows must begin.
It was the first question Levy asked the Israeli military representative who greeted him when he came out of captivity.
“I asked her about my wife. I told her I thought I knew, but I’m not 100% sure and I wanted to know,” Levi said. “And then she told me.”
For 491 days, Levi suspected that his wife could have been killed in Hamas’s attack on a bomb shelter from which he was abducted, but still hoped that she may have survived. At the same time, he said he was not ready to know the truth and did not ask his abductors if she had survived.
Photo of Almog, Or and Einav (from left to right) before the attacks on October 7 – a hostage forum and missing families
Instead, Levi said he remained alive, focusing on his son, a mantra, who learned from Hersh Goldberg-Polin, an American-Israel hostage, who would be executed months later by Hamas.
Levi and Goldberg-Polin were taken hostage from the same bomb shelter near Nova’s Music Festival. Seven weeks later, they reunited in the Hamas tunnels and spent three days in captivity together.
“I remember Hersh told me this sentence …” He who has “why” can bear any “how,” Remembered Levi, a quote, often attributed to the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, which psychiatrist Victor Frankl refers to a book on the survival of the Holocaust.
Almog was “why”.
Photo of or tax with Almog – a hostage forum and missing families
On difficult days when Levy said he was thinking of die, he would touch his left hand and think about the mantra – and his son.
One of these days was his son’s birthday last year.
With tears in his eyes, Levy remembered that he was spending the greater part of the day crying, quietly sang “Happy Birthday” of his son, telling the other hostages about him and promising that he would do everything he needed to spend the next birthday of Almog together.
Levy managed to keep this promise two weeks ago, celebrating Almog’s fourth birthday at their home in Tel Aviv’s suburbs.
Levy also received the mantra that helped him survive captive, tattooed on his hand – in the same place he envisaged it while he was captured.
Or his son’s gathering was nervous and emotional. He feared his son may not recognize him. But the moment they hugged all those fears, washed.
“I remember seeing him, I hugged him, I heard his voice … crazy,” Levy said.
Now Levy has devoted himself to being the father of Almog, full -time. Increasingly, this means answering his son’s questions about the “far place” where he told his son that he was also held about his mother.
“The story we told – that he knows – is that a big bomb happened and that unfortunately Mom was dead and I was taken to the far place and people were trying to take me home,” Levy said. “So he asks – he asks for his mother, what happened to her, who caused him? And he asked me about my wounds. He asked me again, why didn’t I take him with him to that away?”
Levy said he told his son that his mother did not want to leave him, he loved him from the bottom of his heart. And he tells him stories about her and shows him pictures of her every day.
No matter how difficult it is for Levi, who still grieves his wife’s death, he says he has promised that they will not stop talking about her.
“Even when it’s difficult,” Levi said, “It’s more difficult for him (not to remember his mother).”
Despite his gratitude for every day he goes home with his son, Levy’s test will not really end until all the hostages are home.
“The fact that people are still there is chasing me at night,” Levy said.
Watching the progress of stopping and launching the negotiations to end the fire was “very difficult,” he said, especially knowing that Hamas tends to treat hostages worse in the times when these negotiations stop or retreat. He recalled that Hamas tightens the shackles around his legs at times when the cessation of the fire scattered.
“Very easy, I could still be there,” he added.
He could be in the place of Alon Ohl-24-year-old hostage with dreams to study the music with whom Levy spends most of his captive and remains in Gaza.
“I think nothing costs more than these people go home,” Levy said. “I know we have to go on to get a deal to get everyone home and finish everything. Complete everything.”
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