Tamar Kutz, whose son and his entire family were murdered in Kibbutz Kfar Aza by terrorists on October 7, 2023, died Monday. An acquaintance said she had been heartbroken since the massacre.
Kutz, who was in her 70s, died in her bed in the assisted living apartment where she and her husband were staying after having been evacuated from the kibbutz, according to Hebrew media reports.
Kutz and her husband, Benny, were among the early founders of the kibbutz, which was established in the 1950s. They lived there their whole lives, raising their son Aviv in the community. She was a kindergarten teacher and school teacher for decades.
On October 7, as Hamas led thousands of terrorists in an invasion of southern Israel, gunmen stormed the kibbutz, which lies on the border with the Gaza Strip, slaughtered 64 of its 787 residents, and abducted 19 to Gaza.
Among those killed were Aviv, 53, his wife Livnat, 49, their 18-year-old daughter Rotem, and their sons Yonatan, 16, and Yiftach, 14. The five were found shot dead in their home, huddled together in a final embrace.
Prof. Rachel Elior, a family friend, told the Ynet news site that before October 7, Tamar was “a family woman, and a working woman, happy and glad. Since the disastrous murder of her five loved ones, she suffered from heartbreak and inconsolable grief.”
A resident of the kibbutz told Channel 12 that Tamar would teach the kindergarten children about nature, and “taught them to see the world and beauty in it.”
Tamar and Benny Kutz, who for five days did not know the fate of their son and his family, survived the attack by taking refuge in their home’s sealed security room, from which they could hear the carnage around them, as bullets whipped in through the windows.
In an interview she gave to Ynet a day after the attack, when the fate of her son and his family was still unknown, Tamar said she had last seen them the night before, when she hosted them for a meal.
The Hamas attack killed 1,200 people in southern Israel, mostly civilians, and saw 251 abducted to Gaza, triggering the ongoing war in the coastal enclave.
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