Recently released Israeli hostage Rom Braslavski has revealed for the first time that he was sexually abused and tortured by his captors in the Gaza Strip.
The 21-year-old was working as a security guard at the Nova music festival in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. He was taken captive and held for over two years before gaining freedom last month along with the other 19 remaining living hostages as part of a U.S.-brokered ceasefire.
In excerpts of an interview with Israel’s Channel 13 News shared with The Daily Mail, Braslavski said that his Palestinian Islamic Jihad captors stripped him naked and tied him up.
“They stripped me of all my clothes—underwear, everything. They tied me up from my ... while I was completely naked. I was torn apart, dying, with no food,” he said.
“I prayed to God, ‘Please, save me, get me out of this already.’ And you just say to yourself, ‘What the f***?’”
He continued: “It was sexual violence — and its main purpose was to humiliate me. The goal was to crush my dignity. And that’s exactly what he did.”
“Yes. It’s hard for me to talk about that part specifically. I don’t like to talk about it. It’s hard, It was the most horrific thing,” he continued.
“It’s something even the Nazis didn’t do. During Hitler’s time, they wouldn’t have done things like this. You just pray for it to stop. And while I was there — every day, every beating — I’d say to myself, ‘I survived another day in hell. Tomorrow morning, I’ll wake up to another hell. And another. And another. It doesn’t end.’”
He added: “I came back from meeting the devil.”
His mother, Tami Braslavski, said last month that he was held alone for two years, and was offered better treatment if he agreed to convert to Islam.
The full interview was scheduled to air on Thursday night.
