Asaf Schlezinger, 57: Supernova head paramedic with ‘hands of gold’
Murdered by Hamas terrorists at the Supernova music festival on Oct. 7
Asaf “Asi” Schlezinger, 57, from Rosh Ha’ayin, was murdered at the Supernova music festival on October 7.
Asaf attended the rave not as a partygoer, but as a paramedic and the head of the festival’s medical response team. When the rocket fire began that morning, Asaf texted his wife that they were shutting things down and he would call when he was on his way home. Around 9 a.m., he called her and said “don’t worry, I’m fine, I can’t talk I’m treating the wounded.”
That was the last she heard from him. Asaf stayed at the festival site caring for the wounded and evacuating the injured until he himself was shot dead by the terrorists.
Asaf was buried on October 10 in Rosh Ha’ayin. He is survived by his wife, Galit, their children Nir and Nitzan, his mother, Malka, and his sisters Orna, Shirly and Tehiya. He was predeceased by his father, David, a Holocaust survivor, and his sister Nava.
He grew up in in Petah Tikva, and began volunteering in the Magen David Adom ambulance service as a teenager. During his mandatory IDF service, he served in the Golani Brigade as a combat medic. After his release, he continued along the same path, training and working as a paramedic, according to a state eulogy.
Asaf and Galit met when he accompanied a patient in an ambulance to the hospital, where Galit was working. They married in 1989 and had their twins in 1995. Family and friends said he loved to cook, and to travel the land of Israel and study its history, and also had a deep love of music.
Nir shared online the eulogy he wrote for his father: “Dad, you were always my hero.”
“Stable, strong, dedicated, sharp, with unreal strengths,” he wrote. “If anyone would ask me who is the strongest person I know, I would immediately respond: my father.” The family was not surprised, he said, that he didn’t try to flee the festival, and stayed “to help and to treat anyone you could with your hands of gold. I’m certain that you were a huge light in that horrible darkness there.”
“You were a cantankerous person, and I always loved that in you,” Nir added. “You were a strong person, sometimes bordering on closed off, who always went with his truth. You didn’t care what people thought of you… you always believed in your path, and you pursued it until the end.”
Nitzan told Fox News that he was “a great father, a great friend, everyone loved him, he was very kind, always loved to help other people — he was saving lives for many years.”
His wife, Galit wrote on Facebook to “my love, my other half, my best friend.”
“We went through so many things together, including difficulties and challenges. But nothing prepared me for this most difficult moment… My heart is broken and bleeding and my mind can’t stop racing with thoughts of what happened.”
The fact that he was saving lives until his last moment “is who you were and what you always did for years — after all we met 36 years ago when you brought a patient [to the hospital] and treated him in the ambulance.”
“My love, I don’t know how to go on without you, but I have our two incredible children, Nir and Nitzan, the two wonderful flowers whom we raised together, and you were so proud of them, and had so much to be proud of. We’ll continue down here together, and you will always accompany us and be with us and watch over us from above.”
