Ex-hostage says she met those whose bodies were recovered, recounts making ‘lemon into lemonade’ amid tough conditions

Former hostage Danielle Aloni recounts her time in captivity alongside five of the six hostages whose bodies were recovered yesterday from the Gaza Strip, describing their hopes of being freed despite enduring horrendous conditions in Hamas tunnels.

Speaking to Army Radio, Aloni — who was released with her 5-year-old daughter, her sister and her 3-year-old nieces in a hostage deal in November, and who has three relatives still in captivity — says she spent several weeks with the group of hostages who later died and whose bodies have now been returned.

“We turned the lemon into lemonade,” she says, describing how Alex Dancyg and others would hold daily lectures on the Holocaust, the Inquisition and other historic subjects.

She says it was hard to see and breathe inside the dark, humid tunnels, and that the stench was hard to bear after several weeks of nobody showering. She says power would go out for hours at a time, and that there was no light when they moved between different locations within the tunnels.

Aloni says she has survivor’s guilt, lamenting that people she describes as perhaps “better than me” died, while she survived. She says she doesn’t know how she would have done had she stayed in the tunnels for so long, and particularly how her child would have endured the conditions.

She urges Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to sign a deal to free the hostages, saying that more and more are dying and that for over 10 months now, she and many relatives are unable to resume their normal lives and put the events of October 7 behind them, since they are still experiencing the atrocities.