She Hid Among Bodies. They Tried to Take Her to Gaza. Then a Miracle Happened.

More than two years after the October 7 massacre, Abigail Gadge remains a living miracle, one of those who survived the inferno of Hamas's murderous assault on the Nova festival.

“We saw the long traffic jam snaking toward the exit from Re'im and were trying to figure out what to do,” she recalls of the first moments of the massacre. “Suddenly people ran toward us shouting: there's gunfire, there are bodies, get out of here.”

She saw the terrorists with her own eyes. She fled. They caught her. And later, she was rescued.

The First Shots

Gadge, now 23, immigrated to Israel from France eight years before the massacre and lives in Kochav Ya'akov in Binyamin. As the terrorists infiltrated Re'im, she fled with two young men, Itzik and Yehuda.

“We started driving and saw young people lying dead inside cars,” she tells Channel 12 News. “We didn't know where to drive; we circled. Yehuda, who was driving, took the first bullet. I saw with my own eyes how he died in a second. He didn't scream; he didn't have time to say a single word. He just died on the spot.”

Within less than a minute, Itzik was also hit and did not survive.

Abigail was left alone in the car with her two friends’ bodies.

“I dropped to the floor of the vehicle. I heard terrifying screams, people crying out just before being murdered. I clearly remember a woman screaming ‘no, no,’ and then silence. Sounds you can't explain or really describe. I lay there and heard everything.”

Hiding Under the Bodies

At that moment, she managed to send a message to her friend Achinoam asking for help: “Come get me now; two of my friends are dead on top of me.”

Her friend called back and told her to hide under the bodies.

Meanwhile, the terrorists were outside the car.

“I felt them leaning on it and moving it,” she says.

Within minutes, the terrorists set the car on fire to burn the bodies. Abigail leapt out the window and began running into the open field, but the flames caught her.

“I slapped myself to put them out. It was the worst thing I saw, the burned out car.”

Running for Her Life

“I started running and moving between cars. There were bodies in all of them. I heard terrorists reach one of the cars. A woman sitting inside screamed her final scream right before they shot her to death,” she continues. “Suddenly I see the terrorists, and they see me, and I start to run like crazy. They shout in Arabic, chase after me, and fire as they run. I ran crouched so they wouldn't be able to hit me. By luck, not a single bullet hit me. At a certain point I got tired. I understood they weren't going to give up. I understood that this was it, enough, and I just let go.”

“I just understood it was over. I fell to the ground and lay there behind the bushes, waiting for the moment they'd spot me and kill me. I covered my head with my hands and said Shema Yisrael.”

Then something unimaginable happened.

“In a single instant, hands pulled me from there. All around there were shouts in Arabic and I kept saying Shema Yisrael, and the hands lifted me and threw me. They grabbed my phone, which was on an open call with a friend from the army, fired into the air, and tossed the phone away. My friend was sure that was it, that I was dead. I looked at the terrorists and didn't understand why they weren't shooting me. One of them tried speaking to me in Hebrew. He looked at me and said ‘girl’ and ‘where is Mom.’ That's about all I was able to understand. I started speaking to them in French, hoping it would confuse them.”

Taken Captive

Abigail found herself inside another car, this time as a captive.

“All the windows were shattered by gunfire and smeared with blood,” she describes. “I sat in back, wedged between two terrorists. Two more sat in front. Two others had half their bodies inside the car and half outside, through the window, and that's how we drove.”

She was taken out and led into a building.

“I ran toward the wall. The terrorists let me walk because they were busy in a firefight. I saw a lot of blood; I was terrified. As the shooting continued, more terrorists arrived and the building filled up with them. One of them acted like their commander. He shouted, and I could see he was angry and didn't understand who I was and why I was alive. I saw in his eyes that he wanted me dead. A few terrorists put a sweater on me, opened the trunk of a different car than the one we had come in, and ordered me to get in. I climbed in with the sweater they had put on me. It seemed to me like a little girl's sweater they had found, because it was really small on me.”

The Moment of Rescue

The terrorists sped toward Gaza. Abigail understood she had to escape before they crossed the fence.

“I tried to stay awake,” she recalls. “I heard gunfire in the distance, and then our car crashed into another vehicle. The terrorists got out and shouted in Arabic. They tried to clear the damaged car from the road so they could keep moving. After the shots, I suddenly heard shouting in Hebrew. I remember hearing someone say Imma'leh. That was the first word I heard, and then someone said, ‘Come see what's here.’”

Suddenly, the terrorists who had been in the car with her were eliminated. Israeli soldiers opened the trunk and were stunned.

Abigail saw Capt. Amit Gafni, the operations officer of Battalion 450, one of the heroes who killed the terrorists who had kidnapped her.

“They were in shock,” she sums up. “They held me and said, ‘everything's okay, everything's okay.’ They tried to figure out who I was and how I ended up in the trunk.”

Looking Forward

“People were in shock that I'm alive, and of course I understand why,” she concludes. “We have an amazing people.”

Today, as all the hostages have returned home, her survival remains a powerful reminder of both the pain our nation endured and the strength and unity that carried it through.