E02: Profiles In Horror & Courage - Shaylee Atary Winner
Shaylee Atary Winner Bearing Witness
Bearing Witness: The Profiles In Horror & Courage Series is a witness-by-witness rendition of what happened on October 7 and afterward.
I will be releasing these, one at a time, mixed in with the other posts from The View From Israel Newsletter.
Why?
Many have forgotten or chosen to ignore what occurred on October 7 and afterward. And history demands these be recorded and put in the annals of the war. Additionally, many do not have the patience to go through YouTube videos and listen to the inane advertisements every 5 minutes. Or we turn our brains off. Perhaps, in writing, it will help.
These are the rules for what you will read in the series:
The English is far from perfect. Remember, these are people who, for the most part, are not native English speakers.
In editing the transcripts, there is a limit to how much one wants to remove from the person’s original voice. It is a balance that takes time. So you will notice that though some sentences and paragraphs could read much better, the wording was left as is, with some minor corrections so that the reader will feel the original voice, horror, and fear.
There is no natural order to which witness I place first, second, and so on.
I have eyeballed the text and run it through Grammarly to catch the blatant mistakes and problems.
The paragraph structure may be off as well. It is difficult to put a transcription into an entirely correct English structure. Dividing paragraphs correctly is nearly impossible, even with Grammarly AI and other tools.
I have, in no way, shape, manner, or form, add any comments or remarks to these testimonies. In a place where a Hebrew word is used, you will see: (ex. by the editor: “and here will be the explanation”) or [explanation in the brackets]. That is the extent of any remarks.
I left some spoken delays, such as “um” and “uh” in. This is to show that the document is a transcript of someone speaking and bearing witness.
You will catch misspellings, wrong sentences and word usage, no capitalization, run-on sentences, misplaced periods, etc. This is not meant to be an edited piece for the NYT or a Newsletter. It is raw. It is as real as life gets. It is bearing witness.
There is usually an interviewer as well who sometimes asks questions. I have tried to put those questions into separate paragraphs to the best of my ability.
I have also included the accompanying Video of the person bearing witness at the bottom of the piece.
None of this is made up. None of this is AI. You decide.
One final point. We all put the share, comment, and subscribe buttons in our Newsletter. In this case, I am, without shame and with “chutzpah,” asking you to at least share the posts from this series on all your social networks, with all your friends, and anywhere you think it may be read. I know this is my POV, but I do not see why there is a question of why there should not be at the very least 100K subscribers just to read this series. Perhaps that is hubris or wishful thinking on my part. I will accept that.
The filmmaker Shaylee Atary, explains how her husband, Yahav Winner, died trying to protect her and their newborn daughter Shaya when Hamas militants stormed the kibbutz and killed dozens of residents.
**Special note on this Testimony: If you can ignore your perfectionist desires for clean, pure writing and can ignore the sentence structure - this is a must-read, and you will not regret it.
Shaylee Atary Winner Bearing Witness:
The following happened in Kibbutz Kfar Azza during the October 7 Hamas Attack:
Okay, um, so my name is Shaylee Atary Winner. My husband was murdered on the seventh of October in the Kibbutz Kfar Azza while he sacrificed his life holding the terrorist that came into our bedroom. Uh, this is why me and Shaya, my one-month-old daughter, a month and a half, uh could escape because he holds them so that me and her can run away, escape.
Let go from the beginning.
So, it was 4:00 in the morning. Yeah, it woke me up, so I can change, we can change shifts with Shaya. He told me she was going to wake up hungry soon. He said okay and came into the bedroom. I went to the living room and waited for her to wake up so I could feed her uh, but she didn't wake up.
I think it was, uh, 6:30 when I heard the first bombing. I was awake, but the explosions were massive in a way that I didn't know till then. Something felt really wrong, uh. I took Shaya I came to the bedroom who was already
they awake. We try to understand why there wasn't even an alarm. It started only after the explosions.
So, I came in, and I was hyperventilating like this. I was crying like it. I couldn't relax, so Yahav [her husband who was murdered] told me to put Shaya on the bed. We put her on the bed on her tummy. She was asleep. I was very stressed.
We tried to figure out what happened. We text all the WhatsApp groups we have of our friends in the community; what happened? We sent a message to Shaka, the security manager, who was also murdered. We didn't know then. So, we texted him, Shaka, what's going on?
And, um, Yahav tried to calm me down for the child. Um, and I remember telling him “mommy,” it means like honey, [“mommy is a Hebrew colloquialism for “darling” or “special one”] I feel like I'm going to die. And he was like texting, saying, “no relax,” like I'm hysterical.
And I asked him if I could pray. So, I did, and he said amen. Like every prayer, I knew by heart. [unintelligible] I felt a warm energy going through my back and up. And I told him we're going to die today. He said like, we're not going to die today.
They were shooting starting at the Kibbutz and understood it was getting worse because, uh, if you hear an explosion, you can say that's rockets. We're having them at least two times a year, this time of massive only rockets.
But uh, when it came when the shooting started, it means you have an infiltration of terrorists inside your village, and this stressed me out so much, and then we got a message to keep uh keep us inside the safe room. Don't go out and lock the doors.
So, you have, and we understood that Buckley, our dog, is not with us, and he wanted to go out and look for him and said, no, no, please don't look, please. I was so afraid of us, but he brought Buckley. Buckley is alive and so cute, and he came to bring it to the safe room.
Shaya was still asleep. Texting them in the group started to be in the WhatsApp group. I heard the shooting next to me. They were shooting outside of my window, and then we listened to the people asking are you sure? I think they're inside our village, then me and Yahav heard tak, tak, tak, and a lot of like a group of terrorists were like making a group outside of our window.
I remember them. There are footsteps on the grass outside the window and on Autumn Leaves. Like Autumn Leaves cracking, I understand they're so close, and we changed to sign language. Uh, the agreement was you’re holding the door with the baby. I'm with a baby.
This was the agreement and to keep quiet. Even though the dog was quiet, Shaya was sleeping. He [Yahav] tried to record them outside of our window, saying hello to each other and laughing. Tak, tak, but he didn't make it. Didn't make it.
In the middle of the voice message, they already opened the window, not the door. We thought they would come in from the door, but they suddenly opened the safe room window. So, they threw the blinds out, and then they moved the iron door. I saw a hand inside my bedroom, and I knew that hand didn't come to shake my hand. But it was so fast that we didn't have much time to say goodbye.
It was like he opened the glass of the safe room window and tried to push the iron rail. Oh gosh, they tried to push the iron rail against them, and in one moment, I just took Shaya in my hands and ran away with no shoes for nothing. I just like, and I'm disabled in my legs, so I'm limping, so the running was not as fast as an Able Body person. But I did it as fast as I could because they were shooting at us. I remember opening the safe room door. I had an accordion door in Shaya's room and the entrance door.
Run away, I thought. I would get shot in the minute because my house is very small, so if they were on my window and they heard there were 50, it was a lot afterward. I understand there were 70 terrorists in our house at that specific time. So, I assumed that they would also be at the front door, but they didn't make it. I went very fast. It was a glance between us, and then I ran away. I took a left and ran with Shaya, not looking back, but I heard the sounds of shooting next to me on a tree and on, and I tried to hit hide in bushes. I remember thinking they were shooting at me and a baby a one-month-old baby.
And at that time, I understood that Yahav was dead. I saw their hand inside our safe room, so, uh, this was so hard because I understood I needed to keep running and not think right now. So, I tried to take cover behind bushes. Behind a little motorcycle behind another Bush. I went to the side because they were running after me. I heard tak, tak, like it was a prize to kill me and the baby. I knocked on doors while hiding in one of my neighbor's bushes in the garden, but I knew that if I said anything, they would know where I was because I was the only one outside. They told us to stay inside the safe room, so I couldn't. I knocked on the doors.
Afterward, I understood she called her daughters and told them there were terrorists in my window. They were terrorists in my doors, but her net door saved me for a while because I could hide with Shaya uh in the net door. It was not locked like all the houses, so I waited a bit there until the terrorists left. I heard last tak, tak, and then I went through the gardens.
I found a garden shed that was open. I came in, and I heard for some. I look for something sharp and find a hammer and a screwdriver with a chisel. I think, and then, uh, I put one inside the pocket of my pajamas, one in my hand, and I covered us behind a washing machine. There were empty pots and sandbags. I put them on me and Shaya. And she was still sleeping, yeah. I don't know how, but this was very hard at that specific moment.
When I sat down, I understood now that it wasn't only an animal Instinct inside me. It was I started to acknowledge what made me come here and be right now. And I remember inside my head I felt like, no, no, no, don't go away, don't go away like this. is what it felt, but from the outside, what Shaya felt or saw was like my pinky. This is like, uh, we stayed there for a while. I heard shooting and bombings everywhere.
I felt there were hundreds. There were thousands. I remember thinking there were more and more, so I prayed for Shaya to be quiet and sleep. But then she started crying, and they had to go outside because they would come after me if they came after me while I was running. They wanted to kill us now. So, I had to run away. I went outside through a window and a bush, and then I understood I needed to go past the big lawn of sadot. It's our neighborhood, it's called Saft. but there is a big lawn that all of the houses can see whoever goes through that lawn, and I told myself if I will be killed now, this is with Shaya.
Now, this was the moment because they could shoot me from everywhere, but I had to run away because she was crying. And I heard the tak, tak, coming near me as we found her. I ran. I didn’t look back. I saw a laundry room open on the other side of the land in the house of one of my neighbors, and I told myself it was open. I could lock the door.
So, I ran. I almost got in, and then I heard someone telling me to come in from the blinds. This was Zoie, my neighbor, and Lon and their three children. When I came into their house, it was all dark. They put the windows shut down, and one of their children. They had three kids who started to cry when he saw me, like a big shadow of a person, like me holding a hammer and something and it didn't inside it was a baby it's like the shadow probably he thought I was a terrorist. He started crying, and I entered, saying Sorry, I didn't know where to go. Sorry for our brother. I don't know where to go.
And I told him Yahav was dead. Yahav is dead. They shot him. They were inside our bedroom. And she told me you did exactly what you needed to do. Afterward, I understood. She told me when I continued crying and asked if there was something I could bring her to eat I didn't have. I can't breastfeed. So, I couldn't. I didn't have anything to feed her.
So, she told me then that her sister died too, and her husband and they got an uh their child told her mommy and daddy are dead. I see them. And I don't know where the little girl is. She's now kidnapped in Gaza along with the neighbors. Um, it’s the neighbor and her three kids, so they probably think it's one of her kids. So, they think it's a woman with three kids, and the neighbor of her sister is also, uh, like me, lost her husband in front of her.
So, they risked their lives and put me and Shaya in the safe room with them. And we were besieged there for 27 hours with no food and water. For Shaya when she Shaya was, in the end, apathetic because our neighbor's house, who is also in the hospital now, is not breathing. You know, we went on fire, so we took all the smoke, and Shaya was apathetic. In the end, she took a lot of smoke. She needed oxygen for two days a month, a one-month-old baby.
I was so afraid that I couldn't save her. But now she's okay. She was dehydrated, and she was afterward. When I saw the hospital report, it said she was dehydrated. You can see she was crying with no tears. This is what I feel right now. I don't have enough tears to swap to grasp all of this. I cannot cry about my friends or my cat or my house that is burned. I cannot even understand what my body has been through, running away with it with a one-month-old daughter from terrorists wanting to kill me. or every time we were in the safe room of that family, they shot us doubled when Shaya was crying, and when she was quiet, it felt like we killed the baby. Like it was a competition
So I don't have time to adjust to this. I only more I don't even understand how I have died. I just don't know. I'm not willing to accept it because it's so cruel, and I still don't understand. how people can say they can do such a thing. We're not even like we're not soldiers. We're people with a crib in our bedroom and a trolley of a child.
I know how he died because afterward, a soldier who found him came and talked to me and told me. I had to understand how he died. I wanted to know if he suffered or not as I heard that there were already 70 terrorists inside our house, and I listened to what they did to other of my friends. My really good friend got a picture of her husband's legs with shoes, and women were raped. They found their body raped my friend, so I wanted to know if they butchered him or what they did to his body.
But I had a little hope because it was very early. Maybe they didn't stop in that house for a while and enjoyed butchering him because they needed to go to the next house. I think that that's what's happened because we were on the first that uh, after the uh terrorist infiltration, they were still texting. They didn't know where he was and why doesn't continue texting, and it was because it was already dead.
So it was really on the start, so maybe they just went to the next house because also on my neighbors this is where they have a big group. They killed her dog. I know, and um, her husband killed outside. But I know that in that house they stay, so maybe he just moved because his body was not.
The soldier told me he looked as if I remembered him. It was easy to identify the shoot. The major shot was in the back of the head, and he told me he was with eyes open, as you know, with blue eyes, looking at the Horizon. He tried to calm me down that he died fast, and the other thing that made me a bit feel a bit comfortable was that I had not only um blocked them on the window afterward when they came in from the window, but I left all the doors open for him to run after me. And I thought that would happen. But maybe I knew he wouldn't because if I knew my husband, he knew I was disabled in my leg, and he wanted to be a father more than anything in the world.
He's a filmmaker. I think he would never be a filmmaker, even if it would be a film child. He wanted to be a dad with all of his heart. We came to the Kibbutz, where he grew up, to raise a family near his parents, for the community, and to have kids. In the village, it is really special, like the old world you don't see anymore now in the modern world.
So, he didn't even block them on the window. He tried to hold them on the accordion door plastic. And how did he stop the door with a trolley of the child? So, he died under the trolley. And I asked him how come to the shooting was from the back, so he blocked him with the trolley and then he managed to run away, and they shot him. and told me no. He never tried to run. He tried to hold them down until he died.
They came in from the front. This is why you probably heard the shootings, so if he didn't hold them down because they came already from the front and shot him, you would be dead.
It was important to hear that because, on the first day, I asked myself why I didn't tell him what I was doing. Don't be here or come with me, like why I didn't say it at that specific time. I felt horrible for not saying it. Even if we did an agreement, you are holding the door. I'm with the kid. Who cares? Why didn't you tell him? Afterward, I remember the hardest second in the 27 hours we were based without food or water. For me, it was like hell.
That was when the Army came to rescue us, and I needed to go outside the family. That saved me a safe room and through the army cars. Not because I was afraid at that specific time, but because I understood in my guts that even though there were rumors that he was injured and he was in a hospital, I felt he was dead. And I felt that now, when I left this safe room, I would be alone, and my life felt like I was going to a life where the light of my life went off.
Her kids try to calm me down. Shaylee, don't be afraid. They won't shoot you their army outside. That's it. They're not going to shoot us anymore. We didn't. I promised them a helicopter that would save us, and they told me we don't need a helicopter. We could go walking in a car, we could just go. And they didn't understand. I didn’t want to leave them. They were my last family.
And you know we had little codes that when they're shooting at us, you can pray together. And I told them we had an arrangement like you're holding the spoiled milk we need to share five people and a child. Because they came from abroad, they didn't have to eat. And people do this. Do what their bathrooms need inside the safe room.
Most of my friends liked everyone I spoke to, so we couldn't go out. So we had like a microorganism of reality over there. And when I understand that I'm leaving that room, this is the only time I will ever feel like family again.
I'm sorry, I'm sorry.
I don't know what to say.
The Army took us out of that neighborhood. either all the houses were
in that big lawn of the spot, so many of them were killed, husbands. This was like, I don't know. We think that the one who saved us is Yahav. Maybe in the family because this is what I believe because the terrorists came into our house, but they couldn't find the safe room because of the spot.
Why is it called Saot? The grandmother's neighborhood in the Kibera because it was once of grandmothers and there was no uh there was a big dining room no need for a kitchen, and then they put a kitchen, and then they died. And they put this house will be for couples. Then, couples with a child and then a safe room. So the houses are built old and not organized, like regular outside.
You don't see it's a safe room. It looks like a regular window. so they didn't understand where is the safe room because the house was like this, so
we were one of the only survivors of the grand neighborhood, especially on that big lawn.
I ran through this. A lot of people were not with us, whole families from there. So when I got away, because they already knew there was a baby who was apathetic and, a doctor was waiting for us outside, and then they took us to an ambulance in Netivot and to that was waiting for us. And then uh to Soroka hospital.
But I remember that because I was it was we had to go fast because Shaya was not in good condition we had to go through that horrified 232 uh Road where I can't tell you how many cars and bodies was over there. You could see kids uh chairs on the back of cars or people were shot like this, and there were so many they could not even take all their bodies yet, but the road was like an apocalyptic film.
You know, all the time, especially when I was with Shay in the garden shed, I told myself to think about Holocaust films. What would a mother and a baby do? Because this is how it felt. I thought they were running after me and Shaya like she was prey. To kill a baby. So, I think about Holocaust films; they also wanted to kill a baby.
So think about it. Because of my not being in a regular situation, my regular reality could be even close to what we've been through and how it was, even if it wasn't sterile. I don't know how to say it in English. That means it's not like they didn't put uh push the button and killed us all together, and they could continue. They enjoyed raping, taking heads, raping women I don't know, dead or before dead, but they raped my friend, and they killed people.
I know that you are suffering. You can see when you touch a body how much they suffer and lose blood. So that you the the the government only if you ask will tell you. But they cannot tell people how they found their families. They were burned. Some of them were only recognized by teeth. Uh, you know, teeth photos are like medical photos. They could not be recognized.
I tried to tell myself, uh, a lot of people who came to the Shiva in this house. That people gave us. We are now in a home that a very good person gave us to stay with the whole family. Yeah, I have a mother and a father
and his brothers and his grandmother were all besieged in different safe rooms in the kibbutz. But we all don't have homes now. We all have no cars, and all the kibbutz stay with people because of their generosity.
But we also don't have where to come back. I think it's better for me to know that the house is burnt because if I see a picture of the house, I remember the one that we decorated from Pinterest. I volunteer in a secondhand shop in the kibbutz, where there are a lot of women’s hits. So, every little detail in the house that I did in my hands was secondhand; I colored it. So, if I could see it alive, it would be much harder for me always to know that there is a specific place that I'm not returning to.
But it's there now that I know my whole reality was burned with Yahav, but his body was not burned. They took him, I think, two days before the fighting.
Yeah, at least his body was not burned. The houses, but he was able to recognize him because they took his body. I think two days or three days before that, the fighting continued. I don't know where I'm going from here. He was my life. We did everything together.
He's a filmmaker; we've been together for eight and a half years: no, not eight, ten and a half years and 13 together, best friends. We met as partners and in an acting studio. So this is what we know: we did all our work together. We finished shooting. We did three films inside that kibbutz. Kubota was also more of our production company. I feel we finished shooting a movie in July that me and him were the main actors and all the actors were community members. Yeah, they all volunteered or worked with us. I taught them, um, acting with Yahav for a month and a half, but now all of the main actors, uh, her son is kidnapped to Gaza.
And Shaya, her dad, is dead. It was murder. at the start, and Leora, a main actress, our neighbor, her son is dead. So all the extras, half of them or more, are not alive. Even children exert of children. Yahav is not alive.
There are times in that running of mine or trying to keep Shaya I did like for 27 hours. So in those hours, I felt my hand already. I cannot move her. I remember thinking about very weird thoughts that I tried to think. Like a regular, I thought to myself, when I would finish editing the film, you understand? Sometimes me, and Yahav created together and helped me go
through the towers together. You need to find something normal to think about; otherwise, you will freeze. I miss him so much. She looks like him. She's very alike. so sad that you won't be able to raise her and
see her first, her first smile.
I was inside the safe room of the neighbor. I told her Leon was smiling and he could not see her. I remember being so sad about it. You cannot see her first smile. and I remember saying Yahav because I told myself it was before I knew it was a rumor that he was injured, and he
was evacuated. I remember saying, Shaya is now smiling because you're sending a bye-bye. This is what I want to believe.
Filmmakers are very human. It is very important to us, making us feel compassion. His last film, The Boy, was about a person who has PTSD after seeing his neighbor. Yahav saw his neighbor in 2008 and bumped inside. The first one who saw him in the garden was the father of his best friend, Jim Mikim. and he was bombed in front of Yahav, high and broken into pieces of bodies. Yahav had a very big trauma, but he decided to go and come back to live in that specific place where his soul was broken apart.
Why? Because he told me I wanted to come back to my roots. And Yahav made a film about a person. He is a little young man whose soul is broken, and his relationship with his dad is helping him to come back to reality. But his major conflict was that he wanted to go to Aza because living on the fence was hard. because you want to. I remember you told me my first bicycle was from Gaza, my dead workers. They worked together in the fields when he was a child.
But I truly understood after this massacre that Hamas is not a government or a movement. There are terrorist organizations. and I truly think that I'm sure there are good people over there in Gaza who don't want this to be their government. They want their child to go to buy a bicycle wherever he wants and have a government that can allow him to be whatever he wants and not the terrorists. I'm sure some people don't want that over there.
But I saw in my eyes what they did, and it's not a government. No, it's not. I think if people don't condemn it, they will be on the really bad side of the history of propaganda history. I wish we could be good neighbors and buy bicycles for each other. I wish to be as strong for Shaya as I can but allow myself also to heal my soul so that there won't be leftovers of this trauma. That will hurt her so.
I wish myself only Power. that I will have power for this next life without him. I will have strength. I'm very sad right now. I can't describe to you how broken I feel. But I know that every time she cries, every time she needs me, like in that instinct that took my legs and made me run away with her, knowing I was probably shot. But I did it to save her. It's the same thing. When she cries, I take myself up, take her, and say and sing to her. So, I know I will be a good mom.
But I hope that someday I will. I will love my life like a pinky of the life I did. I was then very lucky, and I understood that. I remember every person that I talked to. I told them I was happy. I had my best friend for love and an amazing Community to raise my child. And my tiny home was everything I needed. I didn't need something more. And I did Art. And it's not like the situation you tell yourself I didn't appreciate what I had I did. so I truly only wish that some days I would wake up in the morning and say to myself, my life is okay. That's it. It's only what I ask.
I am not super okay, not only for her, but for her, it will happen, I know. But for me, let's say one day I will be happy not only to show her that she will feel that I'm happy. But I don't know where it happened, and I don't know if it will happen now. I try to think second to Second, minute to minute, hour to hour. The most If I think of more than an hour, I want to die. It's too hard to wrap it all up.
So, I tried to think second to second for the kid for Shaya. Now, she needs a diaper. Now she's sleeping. I can talk to someone you know, like a step.
Step. I am surviving the Survival game. You have something to thank you. People do a lot to call me. Shaya, it's a combination of our names.
He's Yahav. I'm Shaylee, so Shaya.
Now I'll go there with her. It's okay, okay.
This series is also available on The View From Israel Website.
Very moving, amazing.