Segev Kalfon, who, B’Chasdei Hashem, was released from captivity in Gaza on Hoshanah Rabbah, recently spoke about his harrowing story of survival in the hell of Gaza in a lengthy interview published in Yediot Achronot.

Kalfon, who was abducted from the Nova music festival, recounted that at first, he ran for several minutes through fields before, after a long chase lasting about an hour, dozens of Hamas terrorists caught him. Having gone to the festival on Shabbos, he asked Hashem for forgiveness for being mechallel Shabbos while he was being taken to Gaza, and he became stronger in emunah during his two years in captivity.

Upon returning home to Dimona, Segev Kalfon says he wishes to remember not only the horrors he endured but also the strength he managed to preserve. “I was in a grave, underground—and I came out alive. Now I’m truly living.”

“You somehow learn to cope with fear, humiliation, and danger—but hunger, you never get used to,” Kalfon said. “It feels like your body starts eating itself from the inside. You’re alive, but dead inside. I was a walking corpse.”

He described the conditions in the tunnels as unbearable. “The water we were supposed to drink had tiny fish in it. I filtered them out with a gauze pad. The food? A bit of rice full of worms. You try to separate them—and then you just give up. You close your eyes and eat. We’d tell ourselves, ‘It’s protein.’”

“They would turn the light off for a second and then back on—that was the signal it was mealtime. Sometimes it was just a few grains of rice. Sometimes a big pot—and when you opened it, there was only a thin layer of leftovers at the bottom. If you got close without permission, they beat you. At some point, we said to ourselves, ‘Let them hit us; just give us a bit of food.’”

Kalfon shared that at one point, desperate and nearly without hope, he planned to escape. “I thought about it seriously. I mapped a route and made a plan. But my fellow hostages stopped me. I didn’t know if it was better to stay and endure what I was going through or try for maybe a 50% chance at life. I didn’t really know if I’d make it out alive.”

When asked what helps him begin to heal from the nightmare he experienced, Kalfon answered simply: “Letting go. Talking. Getting it out. And my emunah. It became stronger—because I have something to lean on. Now, I make use of every moment. I live every second. It’s not something I take for granted.”

While still in Sheba Hospital, Kalfon spoke to the Yanuka, HaGaon HaRav Shlomo Yehudah Beeri, who had promised his father that he would be reunited with his son, and revealed a chilling story.

(YWN Israel Desk—Jerusalem)