(NewsNation) — Holocaust survivor Lucy Lipner said she never imagined she would see such atrocities as the images coming out of Israel and Gaza after what she witnessed at 16.
“Yet the reality is that it had happened,” she said. “I seem to be replaying the scenes (of the Israel-Hamas war) in my mind.”
Lipner was 16 years old when she arrived in the U.S. from Poland after fleeing the Nazis. It was just last month, however, that she moved to Israel, which she views as her “spiritual home.”
“I felt that I needed to be with the Jewish people of Israel,” she said. “And sometimes, maybe foolishly, I think about what I can do to help Israel.”
Lipner’s feelings towards Hamas are reminiscent of how she felt decades ago.
“The perpetrators of the Holocaust were inhuman. And now we see the same inhumanity happening again,” she said. “To tell you the truth, I cannot refer to Hamas as human beings. I can’t even compare them to animals because animals do not kill that way.”
Palestinians have begun a mass exodus from northern Gaza Friday after Israel’s military told some 1 million people to evacuate toward the southern part of the besieged territory, an order ahead of an expected ground invasion against Hamas.
The Gaza Health Ministry said Friday that roughly 1,800 people have been killed in the territory — more than half of them under the age of 18 or women. Hamas’ assault last Saturday killed more than 1,300 Israelis, most of whom were civilians, and roughly 1,500 Hamas militants were killed during the fighting, the Israeli government said.
