Help the Shalev Family Rebuild After Tragedy
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Shalom,
Thank you for taking the time to read our story and consider supporting us – Dekel and Oshri Shalev – and our children Goni (8), Lenny (6), Daria (4), and Hili (6 months).
We are deeply grateful for any help you can offer.
We miraculously survived the October 7th massacre at Kibbutz Be’eri.
That Saturday morning, as sirens blared, we rushed into our safe room and managed to lock the door just before Hamas terrorists broke into our home. The terrorists tried to enter the room where we were hiding, but thankfully, they couldn’t get in. Throughout that day, they came and went from our house multiple times while we kept completely silent, fearing the worst. For nine terrifying hours, we waited, thinking these were our last moments. When the IDF finally reached us, our home was on fire. They moved us to a safer location nearby, where we spent five more hours in hiding before being rescued under fire and evacuated by bus to the Dead Sea.
Before that day, we lived a peaceful life in Be’eri. Our community was vibrant, with simple homes, active social life, and a strong spirit of volunteering and togetherness. In a single day, our home and the entire kibbutz were destroyed. Over 120 of our friends and neighbors were murdered, many horrifically. Dozens were kidnapped, including children, women, and the elderly.
We lost everything - our home, belongings, photos, our children’s toys and clothes, our sense of safety, and most painfully, our community. Our 6-year-old son Lenny told us later, “The bad men came early in the morning. We had to run to the safe room and cry quietly so they wouldn’t hear us. We had to hold the door shut.” His big brother Goni, just 8 years old, tried to keep everyone calm. He now says he misses his friends, especially the father of his best friend, who was murdered that day. He misses so many people who are no longer with us.
Today, we are in Colorado with our children, trying to rebuild our lives in a place of safety. We arrived with only five suitcases – some donated clothing and a few salvaged items from the wreckage of our home. We don’t know how long we’ll be here, but for now, this is where we are trying to provide our kids with stability and peace.
We both grew up in the kibbutzim near Gaza. Our entire extended family – parents, siblings, cousins – have also been displaced and lost everything except their lives. It’s hard to put into words the pain and loss we carry, but we are determined to rebuild for the sake of our children.
Since launching this fundraiser, our family has grown to six with the recent birth of our fourth child, Hili. The generous support we've received through this campaign is helping us cover essential living expenses for our children, as we rely solely on a single income from a preschool teacher's salary.
We recently shared our story on Channel News in both Israel and Denver, opening up about the heartbreaking decision to leave our home in search of safety—our only goal being to protect our children. Life in Denver has been incredibly healing. It's been uplifting to see our children thrive in school, both socially and academically. We’ve been embraced by a warm and supportive community, both within the local Jewish community and the broader Denver area, for which we are deeply grateful.
Thank you from the bottom of our hearts for standing with us.
With love and hope,
Dekel & Oshri Shalev
Dekel's speech given to the Denver community on the one-year anniversary on Oct. 7, 2024:
My grandparents are founders of Kibbutz Be’eri.
I am third generation to Be’eri, where I was born and raised.
On Friday, October 6th, exactly a year ago, we celebrated in a big festive event, 77 years to the founding of the kibbutz.
The next day, on Saturday, October 7th, from 6:25 am when the attack began, we were besieged in our home - my husband, myself, and our three children, then 6.5, 4.5, and 2.5.
13 hours, without electricity, food, water, or communication with the outside world.
13 hours of fear and silence.
13 hours during which we heard, smelled, and saw death beyond our door.
At about 7 am, we received the first message saying this is not an “ordinary” missile strike, that terrorists have infiltrated the kibbutz, and that we need to lock our doors. I ran out of the safe room, under constant red alert sirens, I locked up the house, and ran back into the safe room. We didn’t take anything with us, we thought it must be a false alarm, or at worst an infiltration of 2-3 terrorists, that soon enough we’ll be told it’s safe to come out.
A few minutes later, we began hearing rapid gunfire and voices yelling in Arabic near our house.
Our children cried that they wanted to leave the safe room. We very clearly told them - if anyone spoke or cried loudly, they would hear us and come hurt us.
My husband and I looked to each other helplessly, saying a silent goodbye.
We couldn’t speak or comfort each other while armed terrorists invaded our home to loot, break, destroy, and try to burn us alive.
After 13 hours, three soldiers arrived at the door of the safe room, they seemed even more confused than we were.
At first, we refused to leave, my neighbor had written to me that there are rumors of booby-trapped doors.
One of the soldiers told us, “Your house has caught on fire, if you do not come out now we have to continue evacuating other houses.”
And so we went outside -
Under heavy fire, as Molotov cocktails were hurled in our direction.
We ran barefoot, partially dressed in pajamas.
As we were running, we were being shot at, the soldiers signaling to drop to the ground, on the road, on the lawn, to avoid the flying bullets.
We arrived at a neighboring house, where we were united with two other families and hid for two more hours.
At nine p.m., rescuers arrived, two brothers from the Kalmanzon family, who heard of the horrors at Be’eri and took it upon themselves to get to the area and help rescue families.
They got up on a small military jeep, saying “Women and children first, men after.” Five adults and nine shocked, screaming, crying children.
We arrived at an open field outside the kibbutz gates.
We lay on the dusty ground for two and a half hours, in the open air, under constant gunfire, sirens, and the anguished screams of dozens of kibbutz residents, who were unable to process the events of the day or what had happened to their loved ones.
At first, we were told we were waiting for buses and empty transport trucks to come take us away from the kibbutz area.
Only at 11:30 pm, when it became clear that no one could or was willing to approach the area, did a force of soldiers who fought by the kibbutz arrive and ask all the dozens of people to line up; to start boarding military jeeps, with priority given to families with small children and the elderly.
We boarded a military jeep with an open top and we drove to Netivot, with dozens of rockets flying above our heads. The whole way the road was lined with burned and overturned cars, smoke, and bodies.
Two buses arrived in Netivot and took us to a hotel in the Dead Sea, where we arrived only at 2 o'clock in the morning.
Only on the next day, bruised, scratched, and hurt, I stepped out of our hotel room, and began to hear from friends how their husbands – the fathers of their children – had been murdered. How so many of my generation had been orphaned in an instant, of kidnapped parents, of kidnapped siblings, and of children burned alive.
Of what happened beyond the walls of our home.
We live in a row of four attached houses, arranged side-by-side, sharing common walls.
In the first house, a father and his ten-month-old baby were murdered, shot at close range.
The second house was burned, the woman living in it miraculously surviving.
The third house, our home.
And in the fourth, the caregiver of the elderly resident was brutally murdered.
What our children, and us, heard that day, I will not describe.
But close your eyes for a moment!
Imagine the walls of your home;
You can hear what’s happening on the other side, can’t you?
Especially if someone is screaming in pain and horror.
That’s what it was like.
Those were the walls of my home on October 7.
102 kibbutz members were murdered in Be’eri, 10% of kibbutz residents.
32 people were kidnapped and taken hostage.
10 of them are still in captivity, but only 3 are still alive: Ohad Ben-Ami, Eli Sharabi, and Tal Shoham.
Of my age group, 2 were murdered and 2 are still in captivity.
Of my small school class, that only numbered 10 people - Yuval Rabia was murdered at the Psyduck music festival, along with his brother and fiancé. Yarden Bibas was kidnapped along with his wife Shiri, and their two children, still held in captivity.
We spent a month at the Dead Sea hotel.
We arrived with nothing.
It was impossible, at first, to get into the kibbutz and retrieve our remaining belongings.
It was hard, the atmosphere one of deep mourning. People were passing out from distress all the time, and everywhere. Families of 5 or 7 people, all sharing a room. There was no privacy to mourn or process.
Every day we received messages of people missing, kidnapped, murdered. Messages of daily funerals.
Some were hurt in body, but all were hurt in mind and soul.
For a month we lived with the living dead.
One month, where we waited for our documents, for passports, so we can leave Israel for a quiet and safe place.
We came to Denver in early November. We stayed with my family, who hosted us for the first month until we found a place of our own to try and begin to heal.
I left behind refugees in their own land – parents, three sisters, nieces and nephews, aunts and uncles, cousins. A big family.
My grandmother, and my grandfather, who has now survived two Holocausts, and who reminds me every time we speak that it’s possible we may never hug each other again.
Organizer
Dekel Shalev
Organizer
Englewood, CO