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A Survivor’s Last Day

Moshe Ridler survived the Holocaust and immigrated to Israel, where he built a career and raised a family. On Oct. 7, at age 92, he was murdered by terrorists at Kibbutz Holit.

by
Lee Yaron
September 24, 2024
Moshe Ridler

Courtesy of the family

Moshe Ridler

Courtesy of the family

Simchat Torah 5702/1941–Simchat Torah 5784/2023

1

On Simchat Torah, October 1941, Moshe Ridler was deported from his home in Herta, on the border between Romania and Ukraine.

The youngest child of Pearl and Zelig Ridler, Moshe was a third-grade student, age ten.

The family’s persecution began a year earlier, when the Soviets invaded the city. At first, it was only the bourgeois Jews who were deprived of their property and deported. But when Romanian troops took over, the repercussions for all Jews were immediate. On July 5, 1941, a new mayor and a civil guard were established with a clear mission: to get rid of the Jews of Herta.

Nearly the entire Jewish population was herded into a square in the city center. Men, women, children, and the elderly were separated from one another, stripped naked, beaten, and tortured. Dozens were forced to dig their own mass grave before being shot.

Three weeks into the Romanian occupation, most of the sixteen hundred surviving Jews of the town were deported to the Edintz transit camp. The very last group, including the Ridler family of five, was sent on a three-hundred-kilometer death march to transit ghettos and camps in Transnistria.

Pearl Ridler, the forty-six-year-old mother of three, succumbed to typhus during this death march. The rest of the family made it to the Romanchi ghetto, but fifteen-year-old Mina Ridler died of exhaustion shortly thereafter. From Romanchi, Moshe’s father, Zelig, was sent to a labor camp in Odessa, while his eldest sister, Feige, was sent to another labor camp in Tulchin. Moshe Ridler, not yet eleven years old, found himself alone in the ghetto.

2

The name Ridler was the bane of Tel Aviv criminals in the 1960s.

Thieves, drug dealers, sexual predators—one by one, Master Sergeant Moshe Ridler from the city police central investigation unit led the denizens of Tel Aviv’s underworld into the district courthouse.

Two men attempting to molest schoolgirls by seducing them with marijuana—Ridler found the substance hidden in a flower vase during a surprise search and arrested them; four masked men broke into a diamond polisher’s premises, stealing $50,000 worth of diamonds at gunpoint from an elderly couple—Ridler acted on a tip from an informant and didn’t just find the loot, he found other stolen diamonds worth well over $100,000; in 1965, the same year he busted a hotel owner for tobacco smuggling, he won a citation as the Best Police Driver—which came with a certificate personally signed by the police commissioner.

Master Sergeant Moshe Ridler was a slim young man with a thick mane of dark hair and a noticeable Romanian accent. He lived among the criminals he pursued, in a modest apartment in a police-only building with his wife, Pia—a fellow Romanian immigrant who fled to Israel after the war—their son, and two daughters.

He named his first daughter Pnina, the Hebrew translation of Pearl, his mother’s name.

Neither the criminals nor the policemen of Tel Aviv, not even his own children, knew the origins of Master Sergeant Moshe Ridler.

3

After a few months alone in the Romanchi ghetto, eleven-year-old Ridler threatened a group of older boys he overheard planning an escape: If they didn’t include him in their escape plans, he’d report them to the camp commander.

In the ghetto’s informal justice code, being a “moser”—a Jew who informs the authorities about a fellow Jew’s suspected crimes—was a transgression punishable by death. That the boy would risk this punishment was proof that he was serious, so after initially rebuffing him, they eventually included him. A few days later, under the cover of darkness, the group made a small hole in the ghetto fence and started running, without any intended destination.

The next day, Ridler awoke atop a stove in an unfamiliar house. He’d been discovered, nearly frozen, by a couple in a Ukrainian village about thirty kilometers from the ghetto.

Moshe Ridler, seated at center, and his family
Moshe Ridler, seated at center, and his family

Courtesy of the family

The family welcomed him as a member of their household. He worked alongside the family’s children, tending to the land and milking cows. He was there for a year and a half, until he heard that Jews were returning to Herta.

Out of the 1,940 Jews who lived in Herta before the war, only 450 were still alive.

Moshe visited the synagogue he’d gone to with his family, sitting on the stairs, waiting and hoping. One of those times, his father, Zelig, was there. They managed to reunite with his sister, Feige, as well. They were now a family of three.

4

Moshe emigrated to Israel in 1951, and Zelig and Feige joined him a decade later.

At the beginning, the family resided in Neve Yarak, a moshav in central Israel established and settled by Holocaust survivors from Romania. The founders petitioned the first president of Israel, Dr. Chaim Weizmann, arguing that they could build a new community and “serve as an example for middle-aged and older immigrants” (the typical moshav at the time was populated by people in their late teens and twenties).

It was one of the only kibbutzim or moshavim founded by Holocaust survivors.

After retiring from the police, Moshe opened a private investigation office in Tel Aviv, where he specialized in financial crimes. He also conducted extensive investigations on behalf of the Jewish Agency, focusing on individuals who’d defrauded the country’s immigration services.

All those years, he never talked about the past.

5

At the age of ninety, after the deaths of his sister and wife, Moshe Ridler moved to Kibbutz Holit, to live near his daughter, Pnina.

For years, Pnina had implored her father to join her at the kibbutz, asserting that there was no finer place to grow old than in its tranquil and serene surroundings. Pnina taught English in the local school and also volunteered to direct the kibbutz’s command center, where she was responsible for updating members during emergencies—which, fortunately, were rare, despite the kibbutz’s proximity to the Gaza border. In 2019, Moshe finally agreed. Thus, he became the senior-most member of Kibbutz Holit, a physically vigorous though increasingly senile grandfather emeritus. His new home was an even smaller Jewish community than the one in which he’d grown up in Eastern Europe.

Originally established in the Sinai, Holit was relocated following Israel’s territorial concession to Egypt as part of its peace treaty. Although still named after the desert terrain of its original Sinai location (hol means “sand” in Hebrew), the kibbutz saw most of its founding members depart. At times, its population dwindled to a mere twenty-five members, as it struggled to attract new residents.

Finally, a group of young urban idealists, inspired by the communal spirit of the original kibbutzim, stepped in to save Kibbutz Holit from decline in the first decade of the 2000s. Moving to the kibbutz, they helped to reinvigorate its orchards and especially its dairy production, guided throughout by their mission statement: to create “a cooperative community that engages in regular joint study and social work, and fosters a connection to the land and agriculture.”

At Holit, Moshe found himself speaking Romanian again in order to communicate with his nurse-attendant, who hailed from Moldova and helped him arrange his meals and dress and accomplish daily tasks.

Petro Bushkov, thirty-five years old, left his wife, Aliona, and their three young daughters in Moldova, moving to Israel to earn money. He’d paid thousands of dollars to middlemen in order to secure a work permit, confident that his earnings from eldercare would more than cover the investment.

Everyone in the kibbutz knew the strange duo: the elderly but energetic Ridler, walking with a walker, and the calm Bushkov, always at his side, trying to slow the old man down.

They made a daily trip together, a regular route: First they would walk to the post office, then to the grocery store, and finally—the highlight of the day—they’d walk to the pool.

Each evening, he’d see Pnina, who lived in the house across the way.

It was a graceful way to age.

6

The Jewish holiday of Simchat Torah, October 2023, was the day Moshe Ridler was murdered in his house in Kibbutz Holit, at age ninety-two.

In the days preceding the holiday, his daughter, Pnina, had told him she’d be celebrating by visiting her eldest child and grandchildren in Tiberias. Moshe decided to stay home rather than accompany her for two reasons. First, he preferred the comfort of his own bed. Second, October 7 was the last day his beloved local pool would be open before being closed for the winter. Moshe went to bed on Friday, October 6, planning to take a nice long swim when he woke up.

In Tiberias, at half past six the next morning, Pnina Ridler was startled by urgent calls informing her that a massive rocket attack had begun on the kibbutz.

“Heavy volleys of gunfire have targeted our kibbutz and others. Please enter a shelter and secure your doors,” she alerted the residents in her role as the kibbutz’s command center director.

Her father was still sleeping in Holit, oblivious to the sirens and incoming missiles.

Pnina called him to ensure he knew what was going on and had moved to their safe room.

Petro Bushkov, who was already awake, reassured her that they were fine, but their next-door neighbor, sixty-two-year-old Lily Keisman, was convinced that the noises she heard were unlike any rocket attacks she’d previously experienced.

Lily shared her concerns in the kibbutz group chat again and again—until her texts stopped.

From the house adjacent to Lily’s, owned by Shahar and Shlomi Mathias, forty-seven-year-old musicians and educators, came reports of gunfire.

A bomb shelter, with the word ‘grenade’ and an arrow written on the wall in Hebrew, after it was destroyed in the Hamas attacks on Oct. 7, in Kibbutz Holit
A bomb shelter, with the word ‘grenade’ and an arrow written on the wall in Hebrew, after it was destroyed in the Hamas attacks on Oct. 7, in Kibbutz Holit

Alexi J. Rosenfeld/Getty Images

Their sixteen-year-old son, Rotem, managed to write to the group chat that he was wounded and his parents had been murdered.

Next to the Mathias residence was the house of Ronit and Roland Sultan.

Ronit, a fifty-six-year-old art PhD from Argentina, and Roland, the sixty-eight-year-old Tunisian-born community director of the kibbutz, were murdered—Ronit inside the house and Roland on the balcony.

One block on was the Elharar household, whose only survivor was a seven-year-old girl, Adi, who hid in the closet.

Judy Torgman, a professional photographer and mother of two, wrote into the kibbutz group chat that terrorists were burning her home with her family inside: “Help—the house is on fire—Help.”

Anani Kaploun, a manager of the citrus and tropical fruit groves, and his wife, Adi Vital-Kaploun, a cybersecurity expert, were among the more prominent young professionals of the kibbutz, along with Anani’s brother, Ahuvia, and Ahuvia’s girlfriend, Tahila Katbi.

That morning Anani and Ahuvia set out from the kibbutz early for a brothers’ trip, while the women stayed home.

When the gunshots started, Adi called her husband, asking for instructions on how to use their rifle. She was murdered in front of their young sons: four-month-old Eshel and four-year-old Negev. The terrorists rigged her corpse with explosives, then filmed themselves feeding her two boys milk.

The next house belonged to Hayim Katsman, the young doctor of sociology who studied the effects of the disengagement from the Gaza Strip on the Religious Zionist movement.

In the living room he had a broken TV set, which had been sprayed in red graffiti: “the revolution will not be televised.” He was a DJ specializing in Arabic electronic music and a peace activist—as well as the bartender, the car mechanic, and the gardener of the kibbutz. The night before the massacre, Katsman fell asleep reading a monograph called Hamas: From Religious Ideology to Terrorism.

Woken by sirens the next morning, he went out to check on his neighbors and found Tahila Katbi shot to death. He ran to his other neighbor’s house, a Pilates and yoga instructor named Avital Aldjem, and hid with her in her closet. When the Hamas terrorists entered Avital’s house, Katsman shielded her with his body, and was shot dead.

The Hamas terrorist then pulled Avital out of the closet, dressed her in three skirts, and kidnapped her and the two Kaploun children to Gaza. After they crossed the border on foot, a terrorist suddenly ordered Avital and the children to turn around and return to Israel and filmed the “pardon” for Hamas social media. Avital escorted the Kaploun children home—carrying the youngest, an infant, in her arms, while the oldest child had to crawl over the pebbly wasteland due to the shrapnel lodged in his leg.

Fifteen members of Kibbutz Holit were murdered. Fourteen children became orphans. A number of Pnina’s students from nearby Kibbutz Be’eri had been killed; some had been kidnapped: third-grader Emily Hand, seventh-grader Hila Rotem, sixth-grade twins Liel and Yanai Hetzroni.

It was only around midnight that Pnina received the news about her father:

Hamas terrorists had launched an RPG at the safe room where Moshe Ridler and Petro Bushkov were taking cover. Afterward, the terrorists threw grenades at the house and then broke through the door. Petro was shot multiple times and died of his injuries. Moshe was later found dead in his bed: as if he hadn’t yet woken up, as if it was all just a dream.

Excerpted from “10/7: 100 Human Stories by Lee Yaron. Copyright © 2024 by the author and reprinted by permission of St. Martin’s Publishing Group.

Lee Yaron is a Haaretz journalist and winner of the 2022 Yitzhak Livni “Knight” Award for Free Speech in Media.