The horror of October 7, 2023 is seared into the collective memory of Israelis and the Jewish diaspora. Yet one group whose lives were profoundly impacted by the bloodiest day in Israel’s history has no recollection of that day. Now approaching their third birthdays, they are the children of the women who transformed from excited expectant mothers into grieving pregnant widows in a bloody instant. The pain and grief have been overwhelming for their mothers, but in a country where tragedy is never far away, there was never any doubt they would be enveloped with love and support.
The IDF Widows and Orphans Organisation (IDFWO) has supported thousands of widows, widowers and orphaned children since its inception in 1991. After October 7, their numbers swelled horribly with more than 400 men and women, 46 of them pregnant widows, and 1,011 new orphans, joining the ranks.
After the single deadliest day for Jews since the Holocaust, IDFWO, together with Israel’s Ministry of Defence and the IDF’s Fallen Soldiers Division, launched the initiative Letzidech (Beside You), offering emotional, social and financial support for grieving women throughout pregnancy, childbirth and early motherhood.
According to the organisation’s CEO Shlomi Nahumson, the challenge has been unprecedented. “In November 2023, I stood beside my wife as she gave birth. I kept thinking of the widows who would face that moment without their husbands.
“We could not give them back the person they most wanted beside them, but I was determined they would lack nothing else we could provide. That conviction became Letzidech.”
Since then, Nahumson has visited every hospital with a maternity unit in Israel to ensure a sensitive delivery for the women. And from accompanying them to antenatal appointments to arranging a brit milah, Letzidech has been with the women for every step of their journey,
“For the only time in our organisation’s history, we prayed for the number of orphans in our care to grow, hoping each pregnant mother and her child would make it. All 46 women have now given birth to healthy babies.”
The women and children are also supported through their contact and relationships with widows from the Jewish state’s earlier conflicts. Some go on healing retreats together.
“Women who lost their husbands years ago have welcomed newly bereaved widows through personal contact and shared gatherings,” said Nahumson. “Should another woman, God forbid, be widowed while pregnant, we will be there for her.”
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Shahar Naim, widow of Major (Res.) Amir Naim from Kibbutz Erez
"I felt I was facing life and death in the same moment": a pregnant Shahar, holding a photograph of Amir[Missing Credit]
When Shahar Naim was admitted to Tel Aviv’s Ichilov Hospital in March 2024, staff drew up an identity wristband for her husband Amir. It is often a routine procedure for expectant fathers, but in this instance it was far from ordinary. Six months earlier on October 7, 27-year-old Amir was murdered while defending Kibbutz Erez, less than a mile from Gaza. The wristband was part of Shahar’s plan to include him in their son’s birth.
“It was important to me that Rafael would feel Amir’s presence,” she says. “There was a picture of Amir in the delivery suite and I also gave the midwife one of his tops to wrap Rafael in so he’d feel close to his father.”
The couple met at school and had been together for almost a decade before marrying on October 2, 2022. Just days after celebrating their first anniversary, they were woken by sirens at 6.29am.
Amir, who was studying for a chemical engineering degree, was part of the kibbutz’s security team. Shahar said her husband “quickly understood that something different was happening” that morning, leapt out of bed and grabbed his gear. “It was like he was facing his life’s mission,” she says
The husband and wife were in touch after Amir left, until his last message at 7.14am. “He tried to reassure me that everything was OK and under control,” she says.
She spent several torturous hours alone with her dog in the couple’s safe room, before a neighbour showed up. “Seeing them really helped me to calm down a bit. I was having terrible pains in my stomach and was really scared. I was in my first trimester,” she says.
Soon afterwards two close family friends, accompanied by a paramedic, arrived. “I knew straight away,” she says. “I remember screaming ‘no’ from my soul. I kept shouting at them that he couldn’t die because I was pregnant, that it just wasn’t possible.
“The paramedic literally held me up and said, ‘You have to remember you have a baby in your womb and you need to look after him.’ I felt like I was facing with life and death in the same moment.”
Amir and other members of the kibbutz’s security team were confronted by about 30 terrorists in pick-up trucks. “They requested and were granted permission to fire by the army but were told they were on their own, that nobody was coming,” says Shahar.
Speaking through tears, Shahar says the ensuing battle was “almost hopeless,” but that action taken by Amir and his colleagues prevented the terrorists from infiltrating the kibbutz.
In the immediate aftermath, she moved to temporary accommodation in Rishon Le’Zion with her and Amir’s families. “I had a lot of support from family and friends who really wouldn’t let go of my hand. I never went to any of the check-ups alone,” she says.
Shahar and Amir[Missing Credit]
Rafael’s arrival brought great joy. “I had mixed emotions but enormous happiness was one of them. It’s impossible not to be in love with him.
“He looks like me but his personality, it’s simply incredible – it passed from Amir to him without their ever meeting. He’s crazily curious like Amir, clever and grasps everything. He’s mischievous but he is such a good boy.”
In recent weeks mother and son have moved back to the kibbutz, where Shahar now works in a therapeutic centre for women. “Being back here is kind of a dream come true because now Rafael is now growing up on the kibbutz where his father was raised,” she says.
“I talk to him about his father a lot. Amir was so big in life that you don’t need to have his physical presence in order to feel him, wonderful though it would be to have it.
“We have photographs of him at home and he recognises him and knows to say Abba Amir, but right now Abba Amir is in his heart – he doesn’t really know more than that.”
But as little Raphael grows he will in due course have to face the truth of what happened to his daddy on October 7 and, with IDFWO’s support, Shahar is preparing for the day.
“He will eventually know everything. It has become my life’s goal – to pass on to him who Amir was. But it’s also very important to look after him because he’s not Amir or a replacement for Amir. He is Rafael.”
As for IDFWO, Shahar cannot speak more highly of the organisation. “It feels like being in a bubble, where everyone is in the same situation,” she said. “We’re all widows and all the children are orphaned. It’s a kind of neutral territory that really envelops the children and us. This. can feel overwhelming but it’s also very special.”
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Hen Assulin, widow of Master Sergeant (Res.) Dan Assulin from Moshav Mitvahim
Dan, Hen and their first child, Arin[Missing Credit]
Hen Assulin first met her husband Dan online while staying with family abroad during the pandemic. “He chatted me up on Facebook,” she says with a smile.
Things developed soon after she returned home and Dan proposed within five months. They married in October 2021 and settled on Moshav Mitvahim, which Dan’s family helped establish and where he grew up. “Then came the first pregnancy, the second pregnancy and then death,” said his widow. “We managed a full life in less than five years.”
Up until October 7, “everything was perfect” on the moshav where Dan was a full-time security coordinator, says his widow. “He would always be there to help with a smile on his face. He was an amazing husband and father.
“He had every good character trait you can imagine: he was funny, kind-hearted, generous and was always there for everyone.”
When the sirens began blaring first thing on October 7, Hen woke Dan up. “Within a couple of seconds he was armed and in uniform.” He ran out of the house, leaving Hen, then seven months pregnant, in the safe room with their 14-month-old daughter, Arin.
The pair were initially in regular contact. “He was evasive, telling me everything was all right and that he’d be back soon. Then at 8.30am he stopped answering.”
Soon afterwards, she received a call from his sister who stayed on the line for hours “holding me together”, said Hen. “She was checking with friends, checking in hospitals, trying to locate Dan and I said, ‘Leave him, he’s probably fighting and has his phone on silent.’”
At 2pm she heard her sister-in-law suddenly scream and hang up. Soon afterwards someone from the security team collected Hen and her daughter and took them to her sister-in-law’s home. “Nobody needed to tell me what had happened,” she said, through tears. “I saw their faces and understood.”
Dan and his security team colleagues, together with others from a neighbouring moshav, had fought their attackers and prevented them from entering the moshav. He was killed in the battle alongside four others, all of whom are memorialised in the moshav’s “Heroes’ Square”.
The following morning a “private rescue force” collected Hen and Arin, after her mother “pulled some strings”. “Two vehicles manned with people armed with guns rescued me and my daughter. It looked like something out of a movie,” she recalls. “I was in pyjamas and didn’t even have any shoes. The baby had a dummy and some nappies and that was it. They kept telling me to put my head down and I didn’t know why. I now know it was because the whole road was filled with bodies and burnt-out cars.
“When I got to my parents’ house in Ashdod my siblings were waiting. They took my daughter from me for I could hardly hold myself together. And that is how the next chapter of our lives began.”
After sitting shiva in Eilat, where Dan’s family were evacuated, Hen returned to Ashdod. “I didn’t spend time worrying about the pregnancy in the way I had first time around. I was busy trying to make sense of things, worrying about what would happen to us and how I’d look after my daughter.” But the baby had other ideas. “He kept telling me ‘I’m here’.”
When she went into labour, Hen was admitted not only to the same hospital where she’d had her daughter, but was ushered into the same room. “I was lying on the bed and saw in front of me the couch where Dan laid while he waited. It was still all so fresh.”
Her son is called Eliya, a name Dan chose before he died. “I think that compared with his sister, Eliya has grown up at ease with everything. He has no father but he hasn’t experienced loss in the way his sister has.”
Brave soldier: Dan Asulin died defending moshav[Missing Credit]
"We know we are not alone": Hen with Arin and baby Eliya[Missing Credit]
Recalling the early days, she said: “As soon as his name or anything to do with him came up, I would start crying hysterically. The psychologists think Arin understood that I couldn’t hear about him and my behaviour influenced hers. When people tried to talk to her about Dan, she’d change the subject.
Over time, and with extensive support from IDFWO, the healing began and Arin started asking questions. “She knows everything about him apart from where he is,” said Hen. “I talk about who he was and how he lived and the things he loved. I don’t talk about what happened at the end, but about who he was in his life. They know Daddy Dan was a hero.”
The children are a much-needed tonic for the family. “Despite the situation, they’re really funny, happy children who brighten up whoever is around them,” she says.
October 7 is especially tough. “What I usually I do on the day. is go to his grave to be with him, talk to him, shout at him a bit. Of course I’m grateful for the time we had, the gifts he left me and that he protected us, but it’s impossible not to get angry when I’m coping with everything alone. So I go and I unload it all, the good and the bad.”
One of those good things is the blanket of support from loved ones, as well as IDFWO. “I’m so grateful for my family and for Dan’s family and for IDFWO, which has become my third family,” she says. “They’ve provided a kind of circle for me and my children and introduced us to other people in our situation. We know we’re not alone.”
To support IDFWO’s work, visit: donate.idfwo.org/eng
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