The 81-year-old woman who climbed out the window to escape Hamas
Jaqueline Glicksman visits her ruined house at Kibbutz Ein Hashlosha, describes her harrowing escape from terrorists who burned down her house
Jaqueline Glicksman, 81, lived on her own in Kibbutz Ein Hashlosha until October 7, when Hamas terrorists overran the kibbutz and destroyed her home. On Thursday, she went back to her house for the first time since the attacks that started the war in Gaza.
“It hurts that they burned down my house, my life,” she told Channel 12 news. “Nothing is left.”
The elderly widow jumped out of the window of her safe room and ran 1.5 kilometers (almost a mile) to safety as terrorists set fire to her house.
Glicksman was raised in Morocco and educated in Paris. She moved to Ein Hashlosha with her husband in the late 1970s and lived there with their three children. Her husband passed away last year.
She said that on the morning of October 7, she went into her safe room when she heard the rocket sirens, but came out after a while and made herself a cup of coffee. She heard shouts of “Allahu Akbar” (God is great) outside, but did not know the extent of the danger until her son called her from America and told her to run for the safe room and turn out the lights.
Shortly thereafter, a terrorist with a gun came into her home and found her in the safe room, which was not locked. The man signaled her to be quiet, looked around for money and electronic devices, stole them and left. Afterward, three more men broke in but when they realized she had nothing of value, left as well.
A while later, she heard people scattering something around in the hallway outside the safe room, and realized “they weren’t distributing sweets” and that she was in danger. Just before her home went up in flames, Glicksman, wearing her pajamas and slippers, climbed up onto a dresser, then onto the chest-high window frame, and jumped out of the window.
“You are 81, and you jumped out of this window,” her interviewer asked her, incredulously. (Hebrew link.) “When you’re in a situation like that,” she said, “you act.”
Glicksman ran — past a friend’s house that was going up in flames — the 1.5 km. to the kibbutz’s central office where she hoped to find the security team.
Instead, she found a destroyed security vehicle, with the head of the security team lying dead on the ground beside it.
She ran past bodies and burned vehicles and homes, and knocked on several doors, trying to reach safety as large numbers of terrorists rampaged through the kibbutz. She was eventually taken in by neighbors Marcelo and Collie Cohen.
@n12news הנס של ז’קלין: בת ה-81 שקפצה מהחלון והצליחה להימלט מהמחבלים שפרצו לביתה #n12 #חדשות12 #חרבותברזל #מלחמה
Coming back to her home on Thursday for the first time since October 7, she told Channel 12 that she was emotional and frightened.
“Frightened of what?” the interviewer asked.
“That something will happen all of a sudden,” she said, referring to another attack.
Glicksman began to cry when she saw what had become of her home. She showed the television crew around the charred remains of her house, explaining where each piece of furniture had been.
What hurt the most, Glicksman said, was that one of her children, all three of whom live abroad, had truly believed she would die when he heard there was a terrorist in her house.
“He told me afterward,” she explained, “that he had said to his wife, ‘That’s it.’ And that hurt.”
Glicksman told the network that she intends to return to live in Ein Hashlosha when it is safe to do so.
“This is my home,” she said. “I have no other.”
