There used to be a house in our kibbutz where someone played to piano so beautifully that everyone passing the house stood still to listen. I remember going for walks with my first baby, when he cried and wouldn’t sleep, and standing by that house, bouncing the baby in his carrier, listening to the piano music.

The man who played the piano was called Menachem. He was a holocaust survivor. The story went that, as a child, he spend a year hiding and living in a closet before being smuggled out to Israel. Alone. He was one of the orphans Lena Kuchler-Silberman took under her wing. Several of these children settled in my kibbutz. Some of them are still here today. Menachem passed away years ago and fortunately, did not have to know what happened on October 7.

I was strongly reminded of Menachem when I read the story of Moshe Ridler.

Moshe loved music and played the piano, too. He even danced, still, at the age of 91. And he was a Holocaust survivor, too.

He survived the European Holocaust. But not the Hamas Holocaust on October 7, 2023.

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Moshe was born in 1931 in the town of Hertsa in Romania. In 1940, he and his family were sent to a concentration camp in Ukraine. His mother and sister both died there of typhus. His father and his other sister were sent to work camps. Moshe stayed behind, alone.

At the age of 11, he overheard two men talking about escaping the camp. He convinced them to take him, too. They escaped together in the night. Moshe ran, and ran, until he fell down and passed out from exhaustion. When he woke up, he was lying by a fire in a family’s living room. He had run 30 kilometers, to another town, where the Ukrainian family found him and put him by the fire, because he was cold as ice.

The family dressed him as a Ukrainian boy and they pretended he was one of their children. They saved his life. Finally, when the war ended, he was reunited with his father and sister, and they returned home to Romania.

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In 1951, Moshe moved to Israel. He joined the Israeli police force and later helped with the transportation and immigration of Ethiopian Jews to Israel, which was a complicated operation.

One of Moshe’s children, Pnina Hendler, lived in kibbutz Holit in the Gaza Envelope. When Moshe was very old and needed help, she moved him to her kibbutz, so he could be near her and his grandchildren. They hired a caregiver from Moldova, who spoke with Moshe in Romanian.

Moshe was happy in the small kibbutz. He swam in the pool every afternoon and spent time with his grandchildren and great-grandchildren. He told them stories, played the piano and danced with his walking stick. “He was the granddad of the kibbutz,” Pnina said.

Moshe was so proud of his family. He had three children and 18 grandchildren and great-grandchildren. To him, they symbolized his victory over the Nazis, who had tried to wipe out his people.

But on October 7, 2023, at 91 years old, the new Nazis got to Moshe Ridler. Hamas attacked kibbutz Holit at 6:30 in the morning. They went from house to house, like in the Russian pogroms, and shot everyone they found.

Moshe Ridler, 91 years old, was murdered by Hamas, together with his caregiver, Petru Boscov. They were killed by a handgrenade thrown into the room.

Was Moshe, a great-granddad, a threat to the Palestinian people? The idea is beyond ridiculous. Did Petru Boscov even have anything to do with the Palestinian-Israeli conflict? Nothing at all. He wasn’t even Jewish. Their murderers did not care. They were killing machines on a rampage.

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Petru Boscov leaves behind a wife and three young daughters in Moldova.

Moshe’s violent death is devastating to his family. To survive one Holocaust, only to be killed by another at age 91, is the worst kind of irony. “In my worst nightmares I never imagined such an end,” said Pnina Hendler. She can only hope that her father was killed instantly and didn’t realize what was happening.

Etti Farhi, the director of the Foundation for the Welfare of Holocaust Victims, said on Ynet: “Instead of aging with dignity, Moshe was murdered in cold blood. We at the foundation are appalled by the terrible cruelty that befell him once again.”

Are you proud, Hamas? Of eradicating the terrible danger that was Moshe Ridler, a 91 year old great-granddad? You cowards. You will go down in history as the Nazis of the 21st century. The evil reincarnation of Hitler. But Moshe Ridler lives on in his children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren. He has won already, by living to be 91 years old and having a large and loving family. If I was religious, I would say he smiles down at them from heaven. Some part of me believes he does.

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