Geula Bacher

On October 7, Cpl. Edan Baruch, 20, was slain as was his grandmother, Geula Bachar, 81, in Kibbutz Be’eri, while his brother, Sahar Baruch, 25, was taken hostage to Gaza. Sahar was murdered in captivity, and the IDF confirmed his death on December 9; Hamas is still holding his body hostage.

Edan and Sahar were survived by their parents, Tammy and Roni, and siblings Guy and Niv. Geula is survived by her husband, Yitzhak, five children — Yossi, Rivka, Tammy, Oved and Meirav — and 20 of her 22 grandchildren. Her daughter, Naomi, died in 1992 at age 22.

Edan and Sahar were together at home when Hamas terrorists broke into their house, and threw grenades into their safe room, wounding Edan. The terrorists set their home on fire, and they climbed out the window to escape. Sahar went back to get an inhaler for Edan, who was asthmatic, and was captured, and Edan was shot dead.

Yitzhak, Geula’s husband and Edan and Sahar’s grandfather, told the Kan public radio that when the sirens first started, they went to their bomb shelter in their own home, but when they realized terrorists had infiltrated the kibbutz, they split up into different rooms to try and hide. When Yitzhak was eventually rescued, he discovered that Geula had been killed.

Edan was an IDF soldier in the Education Corps who had only recently finished basic training. Sahar, who had recently returned from a long trip to South America, was slated to start studies in electrical engineering at Ben Gurion University in Beersheba.

Geula and Yitzhak’s son, Maj. Gen. Yossi Bachar, who retired in 2018 after serving as the commander of the IDF’s General Staff Corps, told the Kan public broadcaster that he fought against the terrorists in Be’eri all day, killing at least 15 of them, before he went to find his family, and discovered his mother had been killed.

A feeling of guilt that he couldn’t save her, “creeped in as I started to understand the situation. I wasn’t there for her in those moments.” But, added Bachar, who since October 7 has served as deputy commander of the Southern Command, “the intensity that I’m currently living in doesn’t allow me to take those thoughts to so many places — it’s an excellent escape mechanism.”

Amid the war, he said, he managed to sit shiva for his mother for about half an hour total, “but it was important, because it gave me the oporutnity to tell those around me who that woman is, and what she did,” he said, declining to expand further, as he held back tears.

Merav Barkai, Sahar’s aunt, described him to Ynet as “sharp, smart and realistic with a sense of humor, who was also an excellent chess player” and loved anime films and science fiction. The brothers, she said, were very close, and tried to protect each other on October 7.

A memorial page set up for Edan said he was a member of the Noar HaOved youth group as a kid, and later became a youth leader in the group and was “devoted to education.” Before enlisting in the army, he spent a gap year doing national service at a therapeutic dog kennel.

Ilana Blumberg, whose daughter was serving with Edan in the IDF, said she told her that “Edan came back describ­ing ’Darom Adom,’ his plea­sure in the way the whole south turned to fields of red blos­soms in the sea­son of the anemone flow­ers. He told the group how much he loved his home on Kib­butz Be’eri, that it was where he want­ed to live always.”
Source: The Times of Israel