Adva Gutman Tirosh

Mishy Harman (narration): Hey listeners, it’s Mishy. So as you know, during these incredibly difficult days, we’re trying to bring you voices we’re hearing among and around us. These aren’t stories, they’re just quick conversations, or postcards, really, that try to capture slivers of life right now.

Even today, nearly three weeks after the devastating attacks of October 7, they’re still hundreds of people who are considered missing. That means they haven’t been confirmed dead. But on the other hand, there’s no definitive proof that they’ve been kidnapped into Gaza. One of those missing is Tamar Gutman who was at the Nova party in Re’im. Our senior producer Yochai Maital who was in New York is close to some members of her family. Here he is.

Yochai Maital: First of all, thank you so much for talking to me today. I really appreciate it.

Adva Gutman Tirosh: Thank you.

Yochai Maital: Can you please introduce yourself.

Adva Gutman Tirosh: Okay, my name is Adva Gutman. I’m 38 years old. I am orthopedic surgeon. I have two sons, one seven years old and the other four years old. I have amazing husband called Gideon. And I am sister of Tamar Gutman. She’s 27 years old. And she’s missing right now. She was at Nova festival.

Sorry, you want me to tell you…to start telling you?

Yochai Maital: Maybe before that, I wanted to ask you how many interviews you have done in the past week and a few days?

Adva Gutman Tirosh: I don’t know how many. More than 20 I think—more…with a lot of countries: Japan, three interviews; Brazil; India; United States a lot of interviews; Italy and Switzerland and Germany and England— a lot. I don’t really…and in Israel, a lot of interviews as well. And I’m not a camera person, and I’m not…I used to be, you know, behind and shy. But now I’m doing everything that I can.

Yochai Maital: Yeah. Can you tell us a little bit how you and your family are holding up?

Adva Gutman Tirosh: Everybody in the family taking it a little bit different. I’m all the time doing things. I cannot sit down. I cannot rest. I’m the one who collect all the information and research—still researching for my sister by videos and all the time talking to the war rooms of the police and the IDF—just cannot sit. I think from the moment I start…when I understand that she’s in…what happened, I am just doing. I cannot stop. I put my emotion inside, and I’m just act.

Yochai Maital: I mean I know from texting with you that you’re not sleeping: from the hours that you answer me and that we text.

Adva Gutman Tirosh: No not at all. In Israel you always have that option. But you can’t really imagine that you will be in that situation. You can’t. It’s hard for me when I think that I’m on the other side.

Like we had a family of friends that came to help us two days ago with the children. Because my children need a little bit more attention that I can give right now. And they had a brother that died in Tzuk Eitan. And I remember when it happened and I remember that we were there for them.

And still when I’m talking about them, I’m feeling that they are the family that need to cope, and I’m not. How can it be that we are now in this situation? How can it be that my sister is missing? It’s very hard.

I think that I cope good in a pressure situation. But it’s hard—you need to process it.  I’m thankful for being a woman because I think we’re better than you, than men in coping and in talking about feelings, and I think it helps.

Yochai Maital: So I do want to take you back to October 7th.

Adva Gutman Tirosh: Yeah, maybe to October 6th. I will start from there.

Yochai Maital: Sure.

Adva Gutman Tirosh: My sister Tamar, she is the caring one of the family. She always the one that says we have to meet. We need to do Shabbat Eve together. And she always complaining that we don’t do it enough, although we do. But she needs more.

She was mad that day on my mother because she was in Cyprus. And she was calling her and told her: “Did you know that we are in a holiday? How did you left father alone? What he will do?” So she postponed our time of going to the party and went to my father’s house and eat with him. And then she came to my place because I was studying to my board exam. She came to my place and gave me food as well.

Yochai Maital: What did she make you?

Adva Gutman Tirosh: Sushi. And then we left a little bit. I don’t remember how you said the gloss on the nail?

Yochai Maital: Nail polish.

Adva Gutman Tirosh: She added like metallic one. Yeah, for the party. It was very unique. So I laughed about it. She told me that she’s excited and it will be fun, and she’s going with all her best friends, and its long time since they did something like that.

And then she went and we went to sleep and woke up at 6:30 am from sirens. We went to the safe room. And I WhasApp Tamar if she is okay because I knew that the festival is near Be’eri so it’s more dangerous there and it’s an open field. She answered that she is okay but they cannot come out of the area. They cannot go home because they told them that there is terrorists on the road and one of their guards got shot. And I  told her: “Okay, can you go on another road? Can you go south?  She said: “No, it’s okay. Are they okay? Are your children okay? I said: “yes.”

Yochai Maital: So while this is happening, she was asking about your kids?

Adva Gutman Tirosh: I told you, she’s like that, she’s always worried about others. And I told her: “Tamar please open your phone, look where you are, look at a map, look where you can go if they will come toward you, you will stay away from the crowd. And please answer me so I will know that you’re okay.” And she said: “Yeah, I’m okay. I will let you know when we are heading home.” And this was the last message of her. It was 7:27 am. That’s the last thing that we know.

Because I’m a doctor, I have a lot of other colleagues, some of them are working in other hospitals in the south, and some of them are working in the army as doctors. So I called…first I called the ones that I know that will recruited to that area. And they told me: “Yes, I’m going there right now.” And I begged them just to tell me what is going on there, if the party is under attack, because we didn’t really know. After I think an hour I got a phone call from one of my colleagues, that was there, and she told me: “Adva, I’m sorry, I cannot tell you anything because it’s such a chaos here, I don’t know anything. I don’t know how to help.”

So I couldn’t sit down anymore. I got to my car and started driving to Soroka Hospital. I took pictures of her and I showed every patient that was there from the party. I showed him the picture and asked him if he saw her.

Yochai Maital: Can you describe the scene in Soroka when you got there?

Adva Gutman Tirosh: Ah, it was crazy. I have been in multi-injuries event, but that was different kind of craziness: people that were just sitting, you know, shooting in the hand and the leg was sitting everywhere.

Yochai Maital: Literally people with like gunshot wounds just in the hallway, sitting in the hallway.

Adva Gutman Tirosh: Yeah, like a person that come with, you know, I fell on my hand and now it hurt. Yeah, like that, sitting in the hall because there wasn’t enough beds for them. When I asked people about what happened, so I helped them. I examined them, and I checked them, and I explained them what their condition, and what the next steps will be. Next, when I saw that she’s not there, I ask all the doctors and all the patients and I went to see the departments to see the John Does. I decided to go home.

And since then we are coping and I’m doing everything I can. I was in a meeting with the ICRC, it’s a Red Cross organization. My sister has Crohn’s disease. She had a lot of hospitalizations. She needs medicines. But it’s not just my sister—they took babies that need diapers and formulas, and elderly that needs their medicine, like you know, someone after stroke that needs his anticoagulation therapy, or someone with diabetic that needs his insulin—those medicine, without them, they can die. It’s a ticking bomb.

Yochai Maital: Yeah.

Adva Gutman Tirosh: You can’t imagine your grandmother under the capture of a terror organization. It’s something that you know the Red Cross have to do something about it. I still don’t know what my sister condition is. But I decided that for now, I will act like she is alive and captured. Because this is the only thing that I can affect on and change.

I will fight for the hostages. And if we’ll get the bad news that she’s…she was murdered, I will cope with that when it will come.

Yochai Maital: I know from our previous conversations that it’s kind of this ongoing struggle for you—what tense to use when you talk about her? Is it hard to hold out hope?

Adva Gutman Tirosh: It’s very hard. But you know, I don’t really know what I prefer. I don’t know if it’s better for her to be already dead than to be captured and hostage by the Hamas. She’s a young, beautiful girl. And they raped women. And they cut organs, and they even killed the animals. They killed the dogs and the cats and the rabbits and the goats in those villages. You know who does that? Why?

So those monsters if they have my sister, I don’t know if it’s better for her to be alive or dead: I really don’t know. And I’m changing my mind from minute to minute. Yeah. Sometimes I prefer her to be alive, and sometimes I’m saying I hope she would rest in peace and not need to suffer that.

Yochai Maital: You know, I’m like holding my heart here. Like physically, it’s just it hurts in the heart to do this interview and to hear you talk and you know, I’m talking to from New York and I know that obviously this event happened in Israel, but the reverberations and the sorrow and the grief is something that’s felt very strongly all over the Jewish community in the world.

Adva Gutman Tirosh: Yeah, I just want to thank you, and the world, especially the Jewish community, but all the world for the support. And I think that this is so important to talk about what happened here, and what’s still happening here. And not to let it fade away. And to help us in any means that, you know, each person can do something…if it’s talking about the situation with his friend or community or, you know, we just need to pressure the diplomats and the leaders of the free world to act and to take responsibility about what happened and to help us get our hostage.

Yochai Maital: Thank you so much.

Adva Gutman Tirosh: Thank you Yochai.

Yochai Maital: We’ll be in touch.

Adva Gutman Tirosh: I will.

Yochai Maital: Give Gidon a hug.

Adva Gutman Tirosh: Yeah, you need to take care of him. Because it’s hard for him as well and I’m not there. You know he’s my rock, but he needs a rock as well, and I’m not the rock right now. Bye.

Yochai Maital: Bye.