14 October 2023 , 19:37
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A British mum-of-two has spoken of the “nightmare” of discovering her step-mum was murdered by Hamas.
Naomi Cohen watched the news in horror last Saturday as she prayed her dad Julian Cohen, 76, and his partner Carol SimanTov were still alive. Julian, who grew up in London, was hiding in his home in Kibbutz Nir-Oz, near the Gaza Strip, where he has lived for the last seven years.
He was FaceTiming a distraught Naomi more than 2,000 miles away in Warrington, Cheshire, as Hamas tried to break into his safe room twice and ransacked his house. He was rescued 10 hours later only to find his partner Carol, 70, had been brutally murdered in their home along with her 36-year-old son Johnny, his wife Tamar Kedem, 35, and their children, five-year-old twins, Arbel and Shachar, and Omer, three, were killed in their nearby homes.
A deserted house at a kibbutz that was attacked near the border with Gaza (Getty Images)Support worker Naomi, who spent the first 11 years of her life living in the Kibbutz, said: “It is horrific. Carol was like a second mum to me and my boys’ second grandma. She devoted herself to her children and grandchildren.
“I feel heartbroken, devastated and shocked. There are people there I grew up with for many years who have been murdered or taken by Hamas.”
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When Julian, who is currently living in a hotel in Eilat, found out Carol and his family had been killed after he was evacuated to an underground shelter by the Israeli army, he said: “My whole world came to an end when I found out. They were my adopted family and they have been completely destroyed.
Israeli soldiers guard a check point near the border with Lebanon, in Israel (AP)“I went to Krakow in Poland just a week and a half before this happened with my partner Carol and saw the horrors that had happened there during the Second World War. When we left: ‘I said thank God that we will never see anything like that again.’
“But what happened on Saturday was like 1939 all over again. It was our Holocaust. Hamas are nothing but pure, unadulterated murderers. I don't know how we will get through this, but if there is a message to the world it is that we are here and we are not going anywhere.”