Little food, weeks of fear and a toy torn from her hands: a 13-year-old girl talks about her imprisonment.

Hila Rotem Shoshani had invited her friend Emily Hand to stay overnight at Kibbutz Be’eri, Israel.

The girls, then aged 12 and 8, woke up the next morning, October 7, to the sound of loud bangs:

the beginning of deadliest attack of the history of his country.

For about six hours, Hila and Emily hid in the safe room of the house with Hila’s mother, Raaya Rotem, 54, as Hamas attackers invaded the kibbutz.

Then men armed with guns and knives broke in and took the three through a landscape of horror, among corpses and burning buildings, to a car.

One of the attackers saw that Hila was carrying a stuffed animal.

He grabbed it and tossed it aside.

“I had it in my hand the whole time. I didn’t realize it,” Hila said in an interview in New York on Friday, before speaking at a rally in support of the remaining hostages.

“When you’re scared you don’t realize it.”

Hila was one of the most 30 children kidnapped by Hamas on October 7 and held until the end of November, when they, along with dozens of adults, were released during a brief truce.

Hila, now 13, is the youngest of the returned hostages who spoke about the harsh conditions in which they were held, trying to highlight the difficult situation of the returned hostages more than 100 hostages who remain in the Gaza Strip.

The terrifying trip to Gaza, surrounded by Hamas terrorists, was the first time, Hila said, that he realized how much “rreally close“That was the territory of the community where he grew up.

She said she, her mother and Emily were taken to a house in Gaza, where they were placed in a dark room with a couple of other hostages.

An armed guard initially remained in the room, but eventually moved into the living room.

“They understood that we were not going to escape,” Hila said.

“It’s dangerous outside too, why should we run away?”

They warned them not to try to escape, Hila said, and told them that “if we went out ‘the people out there don’t like you, so they’ll kill you anyway.'”

Their captors gave them little food – half a pita and some halva on some days, canned peas on others – and very little water, often well water so unpleasant, according to Hila, that she had to force herself to drink.

Sometimes the captors ate and the prisoners didn’t:

“There were days when there was simply no food and they kept it for themselves.”

From time to time, Hila said, they would hear the voices of other children and wonder if they were in another part of the house.

They had to ask permission to go to the bathroom and Hila learned the Arabic word for it, hammam.

Once, a nearby explosion caused their bedroom window to shatter, Hila said, but they were unharmed.

On several occasions, he said, they were awakened in the middle of the night and rushed to move in the darkness.

“At first they told us: let’s move them to a safer place,” Hila said.

“But we didn’t know if they were going to kill us.”

They told the girls to shut up.

Emily was turning 9 and Hila’s birthday was approaching.

They tried to keep busy, with drawings or games.

“We used to play cards, but how much can you play cards, all day, all the time?” Hila said.

Freedom came suddenly.

After a month and a half of captivity, the kidnappers suddenly separated the girls from Hila’s mother.

“Mom had started to get scared that something was wrong, that they wouldn’t take her,” Hila said, adding:

“and then they came and took us away, and she stayed.”

The girls were freed and brought back to Israel.

The separation of mother and daughter violated the conditions of the swap deal, sparking outrage in Israel.

Raaya was released several days later, just as Hila turned 13.

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