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If words could capture the last 15 months for Noam Safir, they are the ones you hear: the pain, the confusion, the memories—each brought to life with every stroke of the piano keys.
“My grandfather, Shlomo Mansour, is the oldest hostage in captivity, an 86-year-old Holocaust survivor,” Safir told ILTV, as she played a song she wrote in his honor.
Her grandfather survived a violent pogrom in Iraq as a little boy. Now, decades later, he is trapped in captivity by Hamas. On October 7, more than a handful of terrorists broke into his house. Safir’s grandmother ran into the bathroom. The terrorists took Mansour out, slapped his face, and beat him. Then they handcuffed him and took him away.
Eventually, they took his wife, Mazal, too. The couple had been married for 60 years.
Hamas terrorists led Shlomo and Mazal out of their home, but Mazal managed to break away. Shlomo, weighing only 57 kilograms and without his hearing aids, was then kidnapped into Gaza in his own car.
But the psychological torture for the family had only just begun.
“They didn’t leave my grandmother alone. They tried calling her, pretending to be Shlomo. They tried setting the house on fire," Safir recalled.
Just one kilometer from the border, Kissufim had once been a safe haven for Safir—a place filled with childhood memories of her grandfather. But the home she knew was now destroyed, and since that day, there has been no sign of life from Mansour.
“I decided that my mission is to be his voice, as long as he can't speak for himself,” Safir said. “He was always wearing a smile on his face. He always welcomed us with the widest smile and the biggest hug, just waiting to spend time with us.”