Mia Schem, a French-Israeli concertgoer abducted by Hamas on October 7, gave her first interviews since being freed in late November, confessing “I went through a Holocaust.”
“It’s important to me to reveal the real situation about the people who live in Gaza, who they really are, and what I went through there,” Schem told Channel 13 in late December. “That I went through a Holocaust. Everyone there are terrorists,” she continued, “there are no innocent civilians.”
Schem shared her story about being abducted on October 7 and being shot in the arm by a Hamas operative. Her friend, Elia Toledano, was zip-tied and taken back to the Gaza Strip, where his body was recovered by the IDF in early December. Another terrorist sexually assaulted her before he realized she was wounded and then grabbed her by the hair and shoved her in a car bound for the Palestinian enclave. To her, the experience felt as though she was “an animal at the zoo.”
Former hostage Mia Schem: "I went through a Holocaust" pic.twitter.com/FsTGSd6OX7
— Aviva Klompas (@AvivaKlompas) December 28, 2023
Upon entering Gaza, she was dressed in a hijab and operated on “with anesthesia.” According to Schem, the doctor whispered in her ear during the procedure, “You’re not going home alive.” Schem became the first hostage beamed out by Hamas a week after its invasion, featuring her arm in a sling, coerced into saying, “I’m being cared for. I’m getting medications.”
After the surgery and forced statement, Schem shared that she was transported to a family home in the Strip with women and children present. I began asking myself questions: Why am I in a family home? Why are there children here? Why is there a woman here?” she told Israel’s Channel 13. Schem was kept under constant watch by the husband, a Hamas member.
Schem feared that the terrorist would try and rape her but believed the presence of the man’s wife and kids in the other room prevented it. “His wife hated the fact that he was alone in the room with me. Hated it. So she would play games with me.”
“There’s a terrorist, who is watching you 24/7, who is raping you with his eyes,” she continued, “an evil stare. I was afraid of being raped. It was my biggest fear there.” The youngest member of the host family, according to Schem, entered the room once and toyed with her, showing her food and then pulling it away and leaving the room.
“There are no innocent citizens there. They’re families controlled by Hamas. They’re children who from the moment they are born, they teach them that Israel is Palestine and just to hate Jews,” Schem said during her interview, explaining she felt “pure hatred” from Gazans.
With Israeli airstrikes closing in on her location, the 21-year-old was later moved by ambulance to another home before relocating to the Palestinian terror group’s intricate underground tunnel system days before her release. Prior to being turned over to the Red Cross, militants “stuck a camera in my face and said ‘Say that we treated you nicely, that people in Gaza are nice and good.’ What else was I supposed to do?”
Schem’s said that the traumatic experience has led her to develop epilepsy compounded by sleep deprivation following her eight-week captivity in Gaza. “I can’t get it out of my head,” she said.