On the morning of October 7, 2023, Ellay Golan hid in the bomb shelter of her house with her husband, Ariel, their 18-month-old daughter, Yael, and the family dog. They tried to keep the toddler occupied as some 70 terrorists flooded through Kfar Aza and surrounded their home.
“We locked the shelter door and we waited there with a kitchen knife,” she recalls.
“The experience was so weird: we were so anxious, but we [also] had a one and a half year old daughter that we needed to entertain; to make her feel relaxed and not as upset as we felt. We played with her and we read books and we tried to make it ‘normal.’”
She and her husband had pushed a shelf against the door of the room, which doubled as their daughter’s bedroom. Through the window, they heard men shouting in Arabic, punctuated with nearby automatic gunfire.
The morning from hell
One year ago, on October 7, Israel suffered a nationally traumatic terror attack during which 1,195 people were killed, 251 were kidnapped and the lives of millions were dramatically changed.
As Hamas terrorists rampaged through southern Israel, many of the region’s kibbutzim were stormed with deadly force. On one of these kibbutzim, Kfar Aza, more than 60 civilians were brutally massacred, and 18 were kidnapped to Gaza.
Ellay Golan, a medical student who managed to escape from her home with her family, is one of the survivors of that attack.
Though the event left her scarred emotionally and physically, one year later she has made incredible efforts to overcome the past year’s many challenges, and continue on in pursuit of her career.
Set on fire
In their shelter, the Golan family heard the sounds of chaos ringing through the air outside.
In the kibbutz group chat, a neighbor asked someone to help her husband, who had been shot in the leg and was bleeding out in a nearby courtyard.
Ellay, who was in the middle of a three-month internship at Soroka Medical Center in Beersheva, wanted to help. But after reading more panicked messages, she learned that there were nearly 30 attackers in the area around their neighbor — making a rush to his aid impossible.
“That’s a feeling of guilt that I still carry. Because he’s dead,” Ellay says, her voice shaking. “I know I couldn’t help him. I couldn’t get there at all. But I could have tried — though if I had, my daughter wouldn’t have a mother.”
As the onslaught of Kfar Aza continued, the sounds of gunfire and shouting grew louder as the terrorists broke into the Golan family’s house, and forced the shelter door open. Ellay and Ariel began throwing knives, toys, books — whatever they could find to keep the men away.
“They screamed at us, ‘Come outside! Come! Give us money! Come outside!’ And we told them ‘Take the jewelry, take the money, whatever you find, just leave us, just go.’”
After a while, the men retreated temporarily. But shortly afterward, smoke began pouring into the room as the terrorists lit the house on fire.
“They tried to smoke us out,” she says. “We knew that if we went out the window, they would catch us. We didn’t even think about kidnapping — we just thought they would kill us.”
Ellay and Ariel wrapped clothing around their daughter’s face as well as their own. Trapped in a room that was filling with suffocating smoke, they decided to try to run through their blazing home and escape.
With bare feet, dressed only in t-shirts and underwear, Ellay wrapped her arms around Yael, holding her close to her chest, and the parents ran into the burning hallway. Their dog, fearing the flames, stayed behind, and died from smoke inhalation.
“We just ran through the fire. They saw us from the window and started throwing rocks and whatever they could find.”
The terrorists surrounding the home took the family’s cooking gas tank and threw it into the home as the family ran through the flames. It exploded.
“It was like a flamethrower all around us,” she recalls.
At this point, second- and third-degree burns covered 60% of Ellay’s body, 45% percent of her husband’s and 30% of her baby’s. The pain was overwhelming.
“That was the first moment we considered giving up. There was fire all around us, we were in severe pain… we didn’t know what to do. But I saw that my daughter was still alive. So I told my husband, we’re going to keep on fighting no matter what. We’re going to save her.”
Left to their fate
The family ran through the house and into the bathroom, where Ellay began spraying cool water on Yael, herself and Ariel, who was blocking the door.
“They heard the water working in the bathroom, so they broke the window and took whatever they could find and tried to stab us with it,” Ellay says. “They found a knife outside, and they took a broomstick and broke it, and tried to stab us with it.”
Eventually, seeing that the house was beginning to collapse, the men outside gave up, leaving them to their fate. They escaped through the bathroom window and ran into the agricultural fields of the kibbutz.
“Our open wounds got infected, because we were hiding in the dirt and bushes,” she recounts.
Hiding in the cabin of a tractor, Ellay nursed Yael to keep her quiet and hydrated.
About an hour later, she noticed that her daughter was losing consciousness after inhaling so much smoke — and though she didn’t realize at the time, Ellay herself was suffering chemical pneumonia, a lung irritation caused by inhaling toxins.
In a final lifesaving decision, Ellay took her family back through the fields and returned to the entrance of the kibbutz, where they were received by IDF soldiers. She gave the soldiers instructions on how to care for Yael, and fell unconscious.
The family was airlifted via helicopter to Sheba Medical Center.
A body lying on a bed
Yael was put into an induced coma for eight days. Ellay, the most severely injured of the three, was put into an induced coma for 58 days.
During that time, Ariel and Yael were discharged from inpatient care and Ellay was put on artificial life support for 10 days due to the collapse of one of her lungs.
Speaking of the doctors at Sheba, she says, “The staff fought for my life.”
After she woke up from her coma, Ellay could not walk.
“I’d lost 12 kilos [26.4 pounds] of muscle and fat. I couldn’t move my legs. I couldn’t move my hands. I had a tracheotomy, so I couldn’t speak. I couldn’t eat. I couldn’t drink. I was a body lying on a bed.”
After months in Sheba’s rehabilitation center, she gradually regained her functions.
“Slowly, slowly, slowly they taught me how to walk again and taught me how to move my hands,” she says. “Now I’m able to bathe my daughter. Three months ago I couldn’t even imagine it.”
The strength to go on
Today, the entire family is back on its feet, but their recovery is still a work in progress. Ellay and Yael wear pressure suits, which apply consistent pressure to their healing burn wounds to prevent severe scarring.
“We try to make it as normal as we can,” she says. “Our daughter is the most powerful girl ever. She’s amazing. She’s funny and joyful. She’s the light of our life.”
Having been discharged from rehab in August, Ellay will soon begin her residency at Soroka. Though she originally intended to become an OB/GYN, she now plans to specialize in ICU treatment and anesthesia.
Asked what gave her the strength to make each of the critical, lifesaving decisions that allowed them to survive the terrible events of October 7, she has one simple and immediate answer.
“We knew that we needed to fight for our daughter’s life. We thought that we were going to die anyway. But the motivation was to keep her alive, no matter what,” she says.
“And now we always say that she saved our lives.”