'Most horrific thing': Freed Gaza hostage says he was sexually assaulted, captors worse than Nazis
A former hostage is speaking out about the sexual violence he endured while being held captive in Gaza for two years.
“They stripped me of all my clothes — underwear, everything. They tied me up from my… while I was completely naked. I was torn apart, dying, with no food,” Rom Braslavski said, according to the Daily Mail . The news outlet published excerpts from an interview with the 21-year-old who was featured in the Israeli television program Hazinor.
Braslavski was kidnapped by terrorists while he was working as a security guard at the Nova Music Festival on Oct. 7, 2023. The same day, 1,200 people were murdered by Hamas in Israel. The attack, the deadliest for the Jewish community since the Holocaust, sparked a war in the Middle East that has been ongoing until a ceasefire last month.
Braslavski was one of 20 hostages who was released as part of the deal. He had been held in Gaza for 738 days.
The group who “violently abducted” Braslavski, the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), is an ally of Hamas. They are described by the Canadian government as the one of the most violent Palestinian terrorist groups. One of their main goals is the destruction of Israel.
In one video shared by PIJ in April, Braslavski appeared sick and unrecognizable, his family said, according to CNN .
In the interview, Braslavski said he prayed to God to save him while he was in captivity. He also spoke of the torture inflicted upon him by the terrorists. He said it was “sexual violence” and the purpose was to humiliate him.
“The goal was to crush my dignity,” he said. “And that’s exactly what he did.”
He said there were multiple assaults and that it was difficult to talk about. “It’s hard. It was the most horrific thing,” he said.
“It’s something even the Nazis didn’t do. During Hitler’s time, they wouldn’t have done things like this. You just pray for it to stop. And while I was there — every day, every beating — I’d say to myself, ‘I survived another day in hell. Tomorrow morning, I’ll wake up to another hell. And another. And another. It doesn’t end.’ I came back from meeting the devil.”
After Braslavski returned home, his mother Tami Braslavski told the Times of Israel that he was whipped and beaten, among other things she wouldn’t mention. His terrorist captors also used psychological torture to try to break him, she said. They told him that his family was “broken” and that they “didn’t have the strength” to join other hostage families and Israelis to protest against his captivity. Terrorists tried to get him to convert to Islam, saying he would get more food and better treatment if he did.
They said he had “nowhere to go back to,” she said. “They told him Israel had fallen, that almost 3,000 soldiers had fallen.”
However, within the depths of darkness, Tami said there was a vision of hope.
“He told me, ‘Mom, I always knew it would end,'” she said .
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