A little more than 10 years ago, when she finished her quality control studies in Israel, the Chilean-Israeli Loren Pamela Garcovich Montoya (47 years old), who those close to her also call Dafna, took a trip to Spain to celebrate the end of a stage. She stayed three months, because not only did she make several friends, but she also met the Spaniard from Zarautz (Guipúzcoa), Basque Country, Iván Illarramendi (46). “There he met his better half,” Danny Garcovich, Dafna’s father, who arrived in 1984 to live in that country with his wife, Cecilia Montoya, when his daughter was eight, tells EL PAÍS, on the phone from Israel. years.
The Chilean and the Spaniard got married in Spain nine years ago and then decided to settle in Israel. Danny Garcovich (Peñaflor, Chile, 66 years old), is commander of the fire department in the Gaza Strip area and describes them as a very orderly and organized couple, who saved up to have their own house in the kibbutz Kisufim, two kilometers from Gaza, on the border. They had many plans, both well established in their jobs: she in a plastics factory as head of the quality control department and he as head of logistics at a restaurant cafeteria. kibbutsim close to your house. “They love my son-in-law very much. That’s why they gave him a lot of responsibilities,” says the Chilean.
The couple looked for a house about 100 meters from Dafna’s parents. The four of them spent a lot of time together and one of their favorite things to do was get together to eat. It was usual, says Dafna’s father, for Iván, whom he describes as someone with a lot of talent in the kitchen, to prepare Basque food, while they returned the hospitality with Chilean empanadas, his son-in-law’s favorite menu. “We are a very close-knit family, who shared a lot, with parties and dinners, like any normal family,” he describes.
But all that “normal life,” as Danny Garcovich calls it to explain that they were “a family like any other,” ended on October 7, when at kibbutz Kisufim was assaulted by the Islamist Hamas militia. In the midst of the missiles, Iván and Dafna hid in the shelter of their house; Her parents did the same in theirs, a few meters away. Danny remembers that, while they heard the missiles, they talked on the phone; that her daughter was telling her how she felt that they were entering her house, that she heard screams and voices in Arabic and that, as time passed, and when she knew that they were inside, she began to speak in a low voice so that they would not hear her .
The last thing I heard him say was “help, help, help,” says Garcovich. It was 12:30 p.m., he remembers. Then communication was cut off, as the mobile phone antennas were knocked down.
Almost two weeks have passed since then and Danny Garcovich has not heard from either his daughter or his son-in-law. “We don’t have any information about where they are.” For him, they are missing as long as there is no list from the International Red Cross indicating that they are kidnapped. “At the moment we have no information about who is and who is not, apart from two or three recordings that they (Hamas) made to show one or two people. We can classify them as kidnapped; Of the others there is no trace or any idea nor is there any way to verify the state they are in.”
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However, both the governments of Chile, Spain and Israel have considered Loren Garcovich and Iván Illarramendi among the approximately 200 people that Hamas is holding hostage. The Chilean Government was the first to break the news. It was done on October 9 at night by the chancellor of President Gabriel Boric’s Administration, Alberto van Klaveren, who confirmed on his X account (formerly Twitter) that Loren Garcovich was “kidnapped by terrorists in the conflict zone” and told who communicated with Danny Garcovich: “The temperance and clarity in his words is admirable. I expressed our concern and solidarity regarding the situation. We will not give up supporting their search and return,” said Gabriel Boric’s minister.
This, while on Tuesday the 17th, the President of the Spanish Government, Pedro Sánchez, called for the immediate release of “all the hostages held by Hamas, including our compatriot Iván Illarramendi.” That same day, the Israeli Foreign Ministry, through a message in X, included the Spanish flag among those of the 42 countries whose nationals are in the hands of Hamas.
Israeli-Chilean Dafna Garcovich and her Israeli-Spanish partner Ivan Illarramendi have been held hostage in the Gaza Strip for days now.
Listen to the brave testimony of Dafna’s father as he recalls the horrific events his family experienced.
Help us bring them home. Share the… pic.twitter.com/QEnCDUg33U
— Israel Foreign Ministry (@IsraelMFA) October 19, 2023
Firefighter in Chile and Israel
Loren Darcovich’s parents left Chile in the late 1970s, first to live in Argentina and then to settle in Israel in 1984. They left San Felipe, a city located about 75 kilometers north of Santiago de Chile, where his son was born. daughter. “The desire of every person who is part of the people of Israel is to reach this place at some point. That is always there, without stopping remembering and longing for the place where we came from,” says the man.
Before leaving Chile, Danny Darcovich worked as an electrician in the municipality of San Felipe and was a volunteer firefighter, just as he is today on the Gaza border. “Being a firefighter is in the blood. So, the first thing I did when I arrived in Israel was to contact the fire departments.” Since in Israel they receive a salary, he was one of the founders of the volunteer corps, who work without pay.
As commander, in the midst of the dramatic situation he is experiencing due to the disappearance of his daughter and son-in-law, Darcovich has continued working as a firefighter in the area. That explains, in part, how he copes with not hearing from Loren and Iván. He works in the area, he says, “24/7″, without rest. “I have much more knowledge about what happens in these cases. Therefore, the information or data, as a professional, is much more truthful than everything that is talked about in different places, because there are many conjectures or, arranged in one way or another according to the people who transmit them. We can see much more, although we are restricted from reporting things that endanger or may affect the military operation.”
He relates that, for him and his wife, “there is a 50 percent chance that everything will end well and positively and a 50 percent chance that the news will be painful” and not what they long for. Darcovich says that in his daily life as a rescuer, he has witnessed many tragedies. “Many traffic accidents, many fires in which we have had to extract people. That, perhaps, has toughened me up and made me see things from a different point of view, different from that of a person who has never seen a drop of blood and is terrified just by seeing it. That helps to be very strong,” he says on the phone, almost at night in Israel. But the Chilean confesses to feeling “anguish” about what is happening. “As long as we do not know what reality is, uncertainty dominates. And uncertainty is much worse than knowing the reality, whether happy or sad. We are totally convinced of that.”
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