Sharon Truzman recounted the moments she escaped when Hamas militants attacked the Supernova music festival in Israel. NBC6’s Ari Odzer reports
The vibe at the Supernova Dance Festival was all peace, love and music, until the sound of gunshots rang out.
“The change of the peace and the love and everyone, like, really enjoying themselves and being with their friends and loved ones and a second after, running for our lives, everyone was running for their lives,” said Sharon Truzman, who survived the Hamas terrorist onslaught.
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Speaking at a news conference Monday set up in Miami by the Israeli Consul General’s office, Truzman said it felt hopeless. She prepared herself mentally to die, but decided in an instant to take off running across an empty field.
“That’s it, it’s our reality, it’s 2023 and we’re still running for our lives,” Truzman said, describing how she ran for more than an hour. “Somehow I got into a car and we got, like, our way out, and it was like a miracle, every person that survived is a miracle.”
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Israel-Hamas war
Truzman said ten of her friends were murdered, and Hamas is holding several more as hostages. She’s still coming to terms with the fact that she is among the survivors and not among the 260 people killed at the festival in cold blood.
“Literally, like every decision I took, it was the perfect decision, and somehow I made it out, but I could’ve like taken one wrong step and maybe I’m not here to tell the story," she said. "A lot of people went to the kibbutzim, to the places that were next to the party, and they were all killed, massacred, it was a massacre.”
Truzman said it seemed like there were terrorist gunmen everywhere, suddenly, all at once.
“There were thousands and thousands of terrorists trying to kill us, like literally, that’s how it felt, they were coming for us,” she said.
“It’s not only that they stormed into the party and shot the people, they surrounded them with pickup trucks and shot the people from the trucks, they tied people, they raped women, they kidnapped people, they burned bodies while they were alive,” said Maor Elbaz-Starinsky, the Israeli Consul General for Miami.
Truzman is still traumatized, still trying to come to terms that she survived while 260 others at the festival are dead. She said she can’t get the images, the sounds of screaming and panic, and the smell of burning bodies out of her head.
“Like no one actually, I think no one is prepared for this kind of situation, and I really don’t wish this to anyone, also the things that everyone saw there, it’s not, no one should see, never,” Truzman said.
