Hugo (Uri) Wolaj

Adina Karpuj: An oven…just like tossed on the side of the yard, completely burned. A pillow, somebody’s pillow. There’s a washing machine and what seems to be like a hanukkiah.

Mitch Ginsburg: Uri, what’s the single thing you miss most about the kibbutz?

Hugo (Uri) Wolaj: Wow, you know, what is the thing I really miss is to eat dinner: salad and cottage and fried egg at my home. Just normal evening, sitting on the couch watching TV. Having a space that we all can spend together to be normal, to feel family, to feel family. Now we are like five family members that live in three hotels room. It’s really hard.

Adina Karpuj: A barbecue, tons of like wires and wood and parts that make a house. You can still tell that it was paradise.

Mishy Harman (narration): Hey listeners, it’s Mishy. So the war has been going on for over three months now, and many of us have settled into some sort of new normal. I mean there’s obviously fighting and violence, the hostages, the casualties, and a never ending stream of bad news. And then there’s also everyday life that in some altered way continues. At least that’s the case for most of us. But there are hundreds of thousands of people, maybe even more, whose lives have been entirely upended. People for whom nothing is normal.

Hugo (Uri) Wolaj of Kibbutz Be’eri is one of them. See everything about his life—his job, his friends, his family, his parenting style—everything changed on October 7th. Uri, who is actually our producer Adina Karpuj’s relative, spent more than 20 hours that day hiding with his wife and daughters in the mamad, the safe room. They were evacuated to a Dead Sea hotel in the early hours of October 8th and have been there ever since. But last week Adina and our producer Mitch Ginsburg joined him as he returned to Be’eri for a rare an eerie visit to his own home. Here he is.

Hugo (Uri) Wolaj: So welcome to Be’eri. Welcome to my home. You know, Be’eri is the place that I feel like my daughters can go anytime 24/7 by themselves with the bicycles. We feel very secure here although we live very close to Gaza, less than five kilometres. I used to run three or four times a week to Gaza direction—west. 

We always describe Be’eri like 99% heaven and 1% hell. And now it’s like really hell, but we know that one day we will be back here: home sweet home. So welcome home. 

Adina Karpuj: We’re walking along what seems to be tank treads that cut through the grass. 

Hugo (Uri) Wolaj: This is the house of friends of mine, good  friends of us.

Adina Karpuj: Now we are in a neighborhood that’s been completely destroyed. Everything is in shambles and burnt. 

Hugo (Uri) Wolaj: Shikmim neighborhood: I don’t know, I’m trying to think who survived, but so many died over there, so many murdered, not died. 

Adina Karpuj: I’m looking at the back of someone’s house, but it was so badly burned that I can see through it. There are no walls, everything is black and ash. You can see where…that someone had a beautiful view out their window whenever they washed dishes. Someone used to have a really nice swing that’s now completely burnt. There’s two soccer balls. Someone’s two kilo workout dumbbell. Remnants of a life.

Hugo (Uri) Wolaj: I live in the center of the kibbutz. And my house…the enter of my house is a bit hidden. And you can see my neighbor still has his sukkah. And you know what, you can come back and on Passover and I guess this sukkah will still be here because we won’t be here. We still are in the seventh of October. We’re still there.

But let’s go to my house.

[sounds of walking and talking on the way to the house]

Adina Karpuj: Yeah, can we do it maybe in the mamad?

Mitch Ginsburg: So we should start if you could introduce yourself.

Hugo (Uri) Wolaj: Well, my name is Hugo Wolaj, and when I was five years old, almost five years old, my father passed away in Argentina from cancer, so my mother decided that she does not stay there, and she took us, five kids, and we moved to Jerusalem. We were in Argentina, we were in a high level way of living, and we got to mircaz klita, the immigration center in Gilo in Jerusalem, and it’s like, 180 degrees difference. You know, my mother told me that Hugo  is not a popular name. And since then everybody knows me as Uri.

But Jerusalem wasn’t good for me, and I knew that I must escape and run away from it. And I found Be’eri as a home. I’m Kibbutz Be’eri  member. I live here with Shani, my wife, and our three daughters: Tamar (15), Yael (14), and Ellah, 11 years old. And we live in the best place ever.

Adina Karpuj: Can you tell us where you were on October 6th? Well actually, two days before we came back: me and Yael, my daughter. We came back from Sinai. And when we unpacked the bags, we stopped for a moment and I told her: “You know, look around, everything is great. The green, the view from our windows is so beautiful, and our house is great, and our family is healthy and I have a great job, and I have so much significant to me what I do. I felt like so lucky and so thankful…it was, wow, I’m the richest man in the world. You know: Eizehu ashir? Hasameach b’chelko (Who is wealthy? He who is happy with his share).

And, you know, October 6th is the day that the kibbutz was established. So it’s like the birth of the kibbutz… was a big huge celebration. And we went to sleep feeling grateful. I woke up early, had an espresso, organizing my thoughts…going to run or not. And suddenly I started to hear the bombs, and we got into the safe room. So Tamar, Yael, and Ella were lying in the same bed. Can you imagine three teenagers, in another day they would fight or argue, but they stayed quiet for during all the 20 hours that we’ve been in the safe room.

Mitch Ginsburg: I also have a 15-year-old girl and I have a 13-year-old girl. And I remember being in situations a million times less scary than what you experienced, but trying to like distract. Did you try and like take this Catan game or anything? 

Hugo (Uri) Wolaj: Ein matzav, Ein matzav (there was no way). 

Mitch Ginsburg: It was impossible. There was no way.

Hugo (Uri) Wolaj: No no way, no way, because you know, in the WhatsApp, people are screaming for help.

People are dying. People are shooting. Do you think I can take in cards and play cards? No. How could I take the cell phone from the 14…you know the 15-year-old Tamar is fall asleep, but Yael, she as with us, with her  teenagers groups. They were asking for help as well. Friends of her were asking: “They’re here, they’re here.” And those friends of hers that were asking for help were murdered. Do you think I can take Catan? 

You know, Tamar was allowed to walk about the kibbutz and return until 1am. She returned that morning at half past five. I didn’t know that. A friend of her was…he was shot…early…it was 11 or something like that, half past 10 he was shot. And until five or six in the evening, he was still alive. I think he died only at 10. He could have been saved, he should have been saved. His mother was murdered, and he was urgent, and his 12 years old sister took her father’s phone and in our groups whispering: “Please come to us. I’m in my house.” And describing: “My mother died, and my brother is urgent, please come, why nobody’s coming? Why nobody is coming?”

And that feeling…I can’t describe it. I remember I started to chat with her in private, to tell give her a bit of force. What can I tell her? There is nobody around. What can I say to her that couldn’t gonna give her hope?

People asking for help. Someone said: “My daughter died.” People that said, “Please come, please come to us, please come to us,” that don’t answer any more in the WhatsApp. So you can understand murdered or kidnapped. 

Adina Karpuj: Can you tell us about leaving. What was 3am like?

Hugo (Uri) Wolaj: Walking through the streets of the kibbutz, seeing fires, houses burning, cars burning. Lucky I forgot the glasses because I couldn’t see dead bodies that my daughters were. 

When she told me that we got to the Dead Sea 5am, immediately get five rooms, we didn’t know that moment who were murdered, who were kidnapped.

The first week it was really hard. And then it was harder than that. It’s a very good hotel and a great crew that doing the best, but this is not fun. Being evacuated from home is terrible. No, it’s really hard to live in the hotel. We don’t have privacy, we don’t have a comfort zone, like a living room. And we don’t have a place that we can sit as a family. And you know with teenagers it’s even harder…and it’s breaking our family, it’s breaking lots of families.

Mitch Ginsburg: Can you talk a bit about your daughters, and how they’re doing mental health wise.

Hugo (Uri) Wolaj: Wow, you know, my daughters they’re too young. Tamar..wow, mamash kashe li ledaber al kol ze (it’s really hard for me to talk about all of this). I don’t know, it’s too much for me. 

Adina Karpuj: How do you parent during this time? Are you more compassionate with them, or strict? 

Hugo (Uri) Wolaj: I feel that my parental authorities were damaged. My opportunity to put borders into their…they need the borders from me, they asking it from me, but it’s really really hard for me to give it because we don’t live in the same area. We have different rooms, so if asked to come at 1am now at the hotel for example, it doesn’t have any meaning. I cannot do anything about it, I will not know. Tamar until October 6th, me as a parent if I say something we can discuss about it, we can argue about it, we can have conditions, but after it will be happened. And now, not. Now it’s not. Now she, like it’s like a role switch, like she  controls more, and it scares us, it scares her. I think it’s not normal, it’s not good, it’s not healthy.

But we can’t take the control back. We are really struggling in it.

Mitch Ginsburg: Why does she have more control now? What gave her more control?

Hugo (Uri) Wolaj: Because she was, she is in a condition that we want to be empathy to the condition: “If you don’t want to wake up to school, okay? Find yourself another activity that will be meaningful for you. And go and work.” They don’t feel like they can go and sit in the classroom now.

You know, a lot of families feel that it is better for them to leave the hotel and to rent an apartment until the next stage. But we’re trying to hear our daughters. Tamar and Yael wants us to be among her friends. And we asked them: “Okay, so in weekends, at least, let’s go to Airbnb, all the family and at least be together.”

And it’s hard as well because, you know, Tamar she rather stay with her friends.

And then, you know, the last Saturday, it was a great Saturday. We be in Jerusalem staying with Adina’s family. And I woke up Saturday morning…and it was a winter Saturday: drinking tea, reading the newspaper, sitting on the couch, was normal…I cannot explain how that small thing made me happy, made me feel like: wow, you know, that’s just a little thing. 

Mitch Ginsburg: So here how does it feel when you walk in? Does it smell like home still? Does it feel like home still?

Hugo (Uri) Wolaj: I don’t know, you know. I don’t know. It doesn’t feel…I don’t know; I don’t know… Sometimes I can feel it is possible to me: okay, I can come, clean the dust, replace the sheets, and put the fridge into the electricity, and yala, let’s go back. But then I think again. And we see ourself coming back to Be’eri. We want to come, it’s our home. But we hope that the government and the army will finish the job once and for all, that there won’t be more attacks from Gaza. We just want a peaceful life. You know, Be’eri is a community; Be’eri is a home, and it still is. It is. Be’eri is a utopia. It is a great place to live in and it will be again.