Igor Kurtser, 73: Belarusian immigrant who loved to tour Israel
Murdered by Hamas terrorists in Sderot on October 7
Igor Kurtser, 73, from Ofakim, was murdered by Hamas terrorists in Sderot on October 7.
Igor was one of 13 people aboard a minibus of senior citizens heading for a day trip to the Dead Sea who were slain that day. The bus got a flat tire next to Sderot and stopped next to a bus stop in the city to try and fix it. While they were standing there, sirens began to ring out, and the shelter at the bus stop, which was supposed to electronically unlock, did not, and remained inaccessible.
In an photo taken minutes before his death, Igor, wearing a white shirt and a blue baseball hat with sunglasses around his neck and crocs on his feet, can be seen trying to open the door of the shelter. Moments later, a pick-up truck of terrorists drove by and shot dead all 13 travelers. Only the driver emerged alive.
Images of the group of pensioners lying dead at the bus stop were among the first to circulate on the morning of the Hamas onslaught, shocking Israelis and the world with the brutality of the assault.
Igor was buried in Ofakim on October 9. He is survived by his three children, Victor, Alex and Lena, and three grandchildren.
Born and raised in Mazyr, Belarus, Igor served in the Soviet army in an anti-aircraft warfare unit, according to a eulogy on the Ofakim municipal website. He studied carpentry, later working in a refinery and number of other factories. In 1973, he married Berta and the couple had three children.
All of the kids moved to Israel of their own accord over the years, and in 1997 Igor and Berta followed and settled in Ofakim, where he worked as a healthcare aide until his retirement. The couple later divorced.
His daughter, Lena, told a Kan podcast that her father grew up in a home of Holocaust survivors “and grew up on Holocaust stories, which he also passed on to us.”
Seeing how he was killed, she said, evoked the Holocaust for her: “They just shot them like in the Holocaust at point-blank range, this whole group of old people.”
He may have been 73, she said, “but he was young and healthy and he loved life, in particular living in Israel. He loved to take part in organized trips, he went on a lot of trips, and to a lot of shows. And he was killed on one of those trips.”
