Israel war: Melbourne holocaust survivor Dov Golebowicz saved from Hamas attack on kibbutz

Dov Golebowicz survived Hamas’ murderous spree on his Nirim kibbutz thanks to a simple wooden lock on his safe room door.

Dov Golebowicz, 92, formerly of Melbourne, who survived the holocaust and last week’s slaughter at nirim kibbutz is embraced by President of Israel Isaac Herzog, in Tel Aviv.

Dov Golebowicz fled the horrors of Nazi Germany with his family for the safety of Melbourne, only to have to face the terror of Hamas’ murderous rampage through his kibbutz last week.

“I am a survivor of the holocaust and the massacre of my area,’’ he told The Australian.

Mr Golebowicz grew up in Australia but returned to Israel seven decades ago with his wife Lily to live in Nirim, a rural kibbutz growing oranges close to the Gaza fence, which was also part of the Anzac trail in 1917 where the Light Horse brigade travelled to capture Beesheba.

But on Saturday morning of October 7, Mr Golebowicz, 92, was alone: Lily died eight years ago, his daughter lives in Tasmania and his two sons are in Tel Aviv and at the sounds of gunfire he quickly went to his bomb shelter.

The shelters were built to evade rockets, not invaders and usually don’t have a lock on the inside. But Mr Golebowicz’s son, Gideon, had made a simple wooden contraption that kept the door locked.

“I think it was a lifesaver, “Mr Golebowicz said. They didn’t get to me, I am safe, he had made a very simple gadget which stopped the handle moving,’’ he told The Australian.

It meant Mr Golebowicz could keep out the terrorists who were burning the kibbutz, and murdering his neighbours.

“I stayed in the safe room for 12 hours without preparation and sweated it out,’’ he recalled.

“On the phone all the people were very upset, hysterical about the intruders speaking Arabic. They were calling for help from safe rooms, it was going on all day.”

Three of the villagers were killed, five were taken hostage into Gaza and several others are still unaccounted for. The kibbutz of 400 people had been swollen with several visitors because the night before was a big celebration of its founding 77 years ago.

This week, while Israel was still reeling from the trauma of the brutal Hamas attacks, killing more than 1300, the Israeli president Isaac Herzog visited Mr Golebowicz, having heard about his survival from Mr Golebowicz’s other son, David, a physiotherapist who had learned his trade in Australia.

In conversation, it had emerged that Mr Golebowicz had came from the same Lomza town in Poland before WWII as Mr Herzog’s grandfather.

Mr Golebowicz had come to Melbourne as an eight year old, had met Lily, whose father was murdered in Auschwitz, and the couple relocated to Israel to raise their children. As well as tending to his orange orchard, Mr Golebowicz, a teacher, translated the memoirs of Holocaust survivors from Yiddish to English to Hebrew for the Holocaust museum.

He said the Hamas atrocities could be compared to the Islamic state: “It was very brutal, it was a deliberate attempt to frighten, they are weaker, but they wanted to make a very frightening attack on Israel and they succeeded. It is horrific the details of my neighbours.’’

Earlier this week the Hamas commander who led the murderous attacks on Nirim and Nir Oz, Billal Al-Qedra, known as the leader of Nukhba unit‘s southern Khan Yunis battalion, was killed in an air strike, the Israel air force confirmed.