Nova survivor shares story
"I took a video to show my family what happened, because after 10 minutes I understood that I'm going to die," says Michal Ohana.
“The first month was so hard because I was still alive, but I felt like my soul was dead and my heart was bleeding,” Michal Ohana told The AJN.
Ohana survived being shot during the Nova festival attack and marked the first anniversary of October 7 in Australia, where she lit a giant memorial candle at an intimate commemoration in Sydney on Sunday.
Ten of her friends were murdered at the festival and two more friends, Elkana Bohbot and Eliya Cohen, remain captive in Gaza.
The 27-year-old veterinary nurse had been living in Portugal but arrived in Israel the week before October 7 to visit her family and her older sister, who was due to give birth.
Two of her friends were organising the Nova festival, so Ohana accepted their invitation to attend.
“It was a good time for me to see all my friends and celebrate life,” said Ohana.
“It was the best festival; the people, the vibe, the energy, everybody smiling. Then at half-six they stopped the music and told everyone to leave.”
Ohana and a friend stayed in their car until about 8am, when they started hearing gunshots.
“We started driving, but after two minutes we saw cars with terrorists, so we got out of the car and started running,” she said.
“On the way I started to see people falling on the ground. My body was in stress and panic and I remember I sat on the ground and started to cry. I took a video to show my family what happened, because after 10 minutes I understood that I’m going to die.”
Ohana spotted an IDF tank and ran to it, but when she got there she saw that the soldiers had been murdered and kidnapped. She and other festival-goers crawled underneath, but she was shot in the leg and stomach after being spotted by terrorists.
“I called my mum and said, ‘Mum I love you, but I think I’m going to die because no one is coming and I’m bleeding.’ I prayed, I said the Shema, I said I don’t want to die, not like this, not today.”
After seven hours she was rescued and taken to Soroka Medical Centre, before being transferred to Hadassah Hospital in Jerusalem.
“At the same time as I was there, my sister was there after giving birth,” she said.
Ohana said it gets harder to relive her story each time she tells it, but she believes it’s her mission to talk about what happened, “to be a voice for my friends and the hostages”.
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