October 7 · Personal story
Elma Avraham
Abducted
October 7, 2023
Abduction location
Kibbutz Nahal Oz
Current outcome
Released alive · November 26, 2023
Released alive on 26 November 2023 after 51 days in captivity; she arrived at Soroka in critical condition.
01
Life before
Elma Avraham was born in Tel Aviv and made Kibbutz Nahal Oz her home. She raised Uri and Tali with her first husband, Gaby Ravitz; after the marriage ended, she met Yaakov Avraham in 1974 and moved to Nahal Oz with her children. Yaakov was widowed and had Ma’ayan and Ronen. Elma later had a son, Roy, and helped raise Ma’ayan as her daughter. She loved the kibbutz’s open spaces and quiet. During her 50 years there she changed jobs several times, and in later years made ceramic flowers for the garden. Ma’ayan died of cancer in 2021, a loss Roy later connected to the recurring leg wounds Elma developed afterward. These family and work stories are part of the life she described in a May 2024 interview.
02
Abduction
On October 7, 2023, Elma woke to gunfire and went alone into the safe room, taking the medicine bag her daughter Tali urged her to bring. She kept in touch with her son Uri and a friend, first saying she heard shots and later that attackers were inside. She held the door shut until it broke open; a captor bandaged her bleeding left hand. At the gate, they put her on a motorcycle and drove through the fields toward Gaza. In a car, she said, she later saw her right hand cut too. A crowd followed the motorcycle, shouting and throwing liquid that struck her hand. Her family recognized her in a Telegram photograph the next day.
03
Captivity
Elma’s May 2024 interview gives her sequence after crossing into Gaza: she was taken first to a mosque, then to a family home with six children. There, a woman gave her a shower, food and help because both hands were hurt. Elma remembered pita and vegetables chopped with a curved knife; the family spoke little with her. She said the following day captors put a hijab on her and drove her to the tunnel entrance. KAN’s timeline places her descent underground on the evening of October 8, the day after the abduction. She stayed alone in a room with a guard outside the door, without a clock or daylight. To occupy herself, she played Sheva Boom word games. She said her legs hurt and no one treated her injuries during captivity.
04
Return
Elma was released alive on November 26, 2023, after 51 days. Her family and KAN’s chronology place her return from captivity that day; she was flown to Soroka Medical Center in life-threatening condition. After handover, medical teams began emergency treatment. Elma later said she did not remember the moment she crossed back into Israel. In her May 2024 interview she was still describing those first weeks from a hospital rehabilitation room.
05
Aftermath
Elma spent five months at Soroka before leaving the hospital on May 8, 2024, for rehabilitation in Bat Yam. During her hospital stay, she celebrated her 85th birthday in the rehabilitation ward and wished for all hostages to return. In interviews she said she hoped to dance again. Earlier, she had filled a Nahal Oz garden with ceramic flowers; the pieces were on her mind when she remembered home. Her public words during recovery turned repeatedly to her kibbutz friends still captive and to getting back to movement she loved.