Deborah Matias — requiem.nw

Killed at Holit on October 7, 2023, aged 50.

Her life

Died shielding their son. Murdered in Kibbutz Holit, October 7.

Her story

Deborah (Shachar) Matias, 50, an American-Israeli citizen, and Shlomi Matias, 49, both musicians, were murdered in their home in Kibbutz Holit on October 7, 2023, as they were protecting their son, Rotem, with their body.

Rotem, 16, was shot but survived, while his sisters, Shaked and Shir, were hiding out elsewhere and were unharmed.

“Mom and Dad, they sacrificed their lives to save me,” Rotem told CNN in an interview after he was released from the hospital.

He said he asked to keep the bullet that was removed from his stomach during surgery: “I wanted to just keep it as a memory to never forget them and remember that even though it was the hardest and lowest point in my life, I found… some hope that maybe I could live and share the memories, and how I saw my parents, with other people… they will live on in memories and in stories.”

Deborah’s father, Ilan Troen, a professor at Brandeis University, said they found out about Deborah and Shlomi’s deaths via text messages from Rotem, who hid for hours until he could be rescued.

Troen told NPR that his daughter was a singer and his son-in-law taught music at a mixed Arab and Jewish high school.

“These are people that were committed to the good life for everybody, and yet it is they who paid the price for hatred,” Troen said.

October 7, 2023

It began at twenty past six in the morning with rocket fire and a coordinated crossing of the perimeter at some thirty points.

At the Nova music festival near Re'im, three hundred and sixty-four people were killed. Most were in their twenties. They had been dancing since before dawn and had nowhere to go across open ground.

In the kibbutzim and villages along the fence - Be'eri, Kfar Aza, Nir Oz, Nahal Oz, Holit and others - families were killed in their houses and their shelters. Be'eri lost about a tenth of its people.

About twelve hundred were killed in all, the large majority of them civilians, and two hundred and fifty-one people were taken into Gaza.

Among the dead were the volunteers and off-duty people who drove toward it without orders. Rachel Edri of Ofakim kept the men who held her and her husband talking for twenty hours, feeding them biscuits and coffee, until a rescue reached the house.

It was the deadliest day for Jews since the Holocaust, and Israel stopped.

Everyone taken by October 7, 2023 →

The ground

Holit

October 7, 2023 · 17 named here