Freed hostage Omer Wenkert bids final farewell to slain girlfriend Kim Damti

Omer Wenkert, a young Israeli man freed just a week ago after enduring 505 days in Hamas captivity, took to social media on Sunday to bid a wrenching farewell to his girlfriend, Kim Damti, who was killed in the brutal massacre at the Nova music festival on October 7, 2023. His words, tender and raw, offered a glimpse into a love story cut short by violence and a grief delayed by his own ordeal.

“It is a year and five months since we left home that night, and I finally have the chance to say goodbye,” Wenkert wrote in a post that quickly spread across Israeli media. The couple had been together since they were teenagers, their bond forged over years—until it was shattered in the predawn hours of that fateful day, when Hamas gunmen stormed the festival in southern Israel, leaving hundreds dead and taking scores of hostages, including Wenkert.

Damti, whom Wenkert described as “my fairy since I was 14,” was among those murdered in the attack, a cultural gathering turned killing field. For Wenkert, held captive in Gaza’s labyrinthine tunnels, her death was a wound he could not fully mourn—until now. “When the captives who were with me asked me about you,” he wrote, “I would tell them, ‘Kim? Kim was my fairy.’ And now? Now you are the fairy who became my angel.”

His tribute painted a portrait of a vibrant young woman whose presence lingered in his memory through the darkest months of his captivity. “My Kim, you are something special, you are magic in the making,” he wrote. “Every moment I am with you, your aura and radiance immediately envelop me.” Even in freedom, he said, that light remains: “From now on, this aura and this glow are inside me, and forever, I promise!”

Wenkert’s release last week marked the end of a harrowing chapter that began when he was seized at the festival, one of more than 250 hostages taken that day. Negotiations brokered by international mediators secured his freedom, though dozens remain in captivity. Now, as he navigates the fragile terrain of life after captivity, he grapples with a loss he could not confront while underground. “Since October 7th, I’ve been waiting to say goodbye to you in a proper way,” he wrote, “and I wish I could have managed to protect you on that day just like you protected me during all my 505 days.”

In his post, Wenkert also invoked another figure from his life—Baruch, whose identity he did not specify but whose memory he linked to Damti’s. “Now you and Baruch are up there watching over me,” he wrote, “the two most special, genuine, and fulfilling smiles I’ve ever had in my life are kept deep inside me.”

The Nova festival attack, a flashpoint in the broader war that erupted that October, has left an indelible mark on Israel’s national psyche. For Wenkert, it is both a personal tragedy and a story of resilience. “Thank you for what you are and for everything you left me,” he concluded. “These are the most special things that have existed inside me since that day! It’s time for me to say goodbye to you, thank you for everything you were and for everything you are now.”

Arutz Sheva contributed to this article.