Across Australia, Jewish communities are gathering to 'create light' in October 7 anniversary's deadly shadow

Warning: This story contains details some readers may find distressing.

As armed terrorists stormed his community, Yahav Winner held a window closed at his home, while his wife ran, holding their one-month-old daughter in her arms.

Yahav was killed, but his family survived.

A year later, on the other side of the world, his friend Keren Lewisohn will light a candle in his memory.

"[His wife] ran out barefoot, with no aid — with the baby — and hid in the storeroom behind my parents' house," Keren explained.

"She hid there with the baby in her arms, hoping that the baby won't start to cry, because she knew if the baby starts to cry, if terrorists are walking past, they will hear them."

When she lights her memorial candle, Keren will be thinking of more than just her friend Yahav.

More than 60 people were killed in Kfar Aza, the kibbutz where she grew up in southern Israel, and another 18 were taken hostage on October 7, out of a population of about 800.

Her wedding album is filled with the faces of people who were killed or are still missing.

As she and her husband turn the pages, they pause to reflect on the many friends they have lost.

Keren moved to Melbourne several years ago, and was left feeling helpless when news of the attack reached her.

Her parents and sister — along with her brother and his wife and children — were in Kfar Aza, in three separate houses.

"I was sitting here on the lounge, shaking," she recalled.

"I couldn't drink. I could not function. I was just on the phone all day trying to message them.

"They had no reception … it took sometimes hours until I got a response to say that they're alive."

After almost 24 hours hiding in their safe rooms, her parents, and her brother, sister-in-law and their three children were eventually rescued by members of the army.

They had to walk for about 2 kilometres past people who had been killed, grenades that had been left, and tanks that had rolled in.

"The kids saw all of this," Keren said.

Her sister's home was in a more dangerous area and she was moved into a building with other survivors, which was guarded by the army for another six hours.

"They're living with the trauma," Keren said.

"My brother's kids are suffering badly, and this is 12 months later, you know — the panic attacks, my nephew lost his best friend."

Keren said five of the hostages from the kibbutz were still missing, including a close family friend, Keith Siegel.

"He is the father of a close friend of mine — a grandfather of five," she said.

"I used to spend a lot of time at their house growing up. In fact, when my parents went overseas once, I spent a whole month at their house.

"We were very, very close friends, and he's the most gentle, kind person."

'Living nightmare'

Keren's family is still displaced, but are determined to eventually return to their home, even though they know that may be years off.

She doesn't know what the "socialist, pro-peace" kibbutz will look like when it is rebuilt.

"We don't know who will be going to live there — the new people, what will be be the ideology?" she asked.

"Things have changed for everyone, so we don't know."

Before the conflict her father, Ralph Lewinsohn, volunteered driving Palestinians from the border to medical appointments in Tel Aviv.

He formed a particular bond with a Palestinian mother who had to regularly bring her children to Israel for medical appointments, even though the two of them needed translation tools to communicate.

"On the eighth of October, she messaged my father and said, 'we hope that you are okay and you're really dear to us'," Keren said.

When Israel's ground campaign moved into Rafah where the Palestinian mother lived, Mr Lewinsohn was sending similar messages, and gave financial support to help the mother get her children to Egypt in search of the medical treatment they could no longer access in Israel.

Unfortunately, she found it wasn't available there.

"When you take away the whole conflict, these are just decent people on both sides that would love to coexist, actually, would love to just go on with their lives and live peacefully," Ms Lewisohn said.

"This is my father — still so caring and preparing to work with these people, even though Hamas tried to kill him.

Memorials planned across Australia

After lighting her candle at home, Keren and her husband Ronen Jachimowicz will be joining a community memorial service in Melbourne to mark the anniversary of the attack.

"For me and for all of my family and my friends, it's been a living nightmare ever since October 7," she said.

Commemorations are being planned in cities across the world, including events in Melbourne and Sydney.

Keren's family in Israel will also be attending memorials, but "they don't need to do much to remember, because they're still living in it", she said.

Israel said more than 1,200 people, mostly civilians, were killed when Hamas terrorists stormed across the border on October 7, and 253 people were taken into Gaza.

Of those hostages, 97 are still missing after being abducted and the United Nations says 35 of them are believed to have perished.

Israel's subsequent ground and air campaign has killed more than 40,000 people in Gaza and injured more than 92,000, according to Palestinian authorities.

Lanterns aim to 'create light' at memorials around the world

After a year of devastation, Hallely Kimchi said she felt compelled to try to "create light in a place of darkness", when tasked with organising a memorial for Melbourne's Jewish community.

"I tried to come up with an idea that will not leave us broken, but leave us a bit uplifted," Ms Kimchi from community organisation Habayit said.

"[To] bring some hope for here in Melbourne, but all around the world.

"We all want a different world at the moment, none of us likes what's happening at the moment, we need our hostages back, we need to have a different kind of reality."

Her memorial idea has seen people gathering in the weeks leading up to the anniversary, with paper, glue and balloons.

Each person is using papier-mâché to create a lantern to represent one of the victims from the Hamas attack, and at dusk they will walk in a "procession of light".

Organisers said the idea for the lantern procession, which began in Melbourne, had since been adopted by several Jewish communities around the world including in Paris and Washington.

"The lantern will represent the life and the spirit of the victim, to show that the light cannot be extinguished," Zeddy Lawrence from Zionism Victoria said.

"I think nobody expected [the conflict] to go on this long, nobody expected the loss of life on either side."

Mr Lawrence said the community had been struggling with rising rates of anti-Semitism in the wake of the war, and the killing of six hostages in the weeks ahead of the anniversary had left people "feeling very low".

"I guess the corollary to that is it's brought us together as a community," he said.

Among those making a lantern was a woman named Sylvie, who lamented the young age of the man to whom her lantern was dedicated.

"We're here to show solidarity," she said.

"We're all one family and that's what it's about."

Two young friends, Natalie Lock and Daliah D'Onghia, said it was a chance for the community to "come together to heal".

"I think we haven't really had a chance to properly mourn because it's ongoing and there's no breaks, moments like this provide us with a bit of relief, amidst all the chaos," Daliah explained.

Stories vital to 'understand each other'

Commemorations in the Jewish community have been taking many forms.

As the anniversary approached, a special quilt was being hung in the Jewish Museum of Australia, which is opening for free for several hours on the anniversary morning.

It is part of an ongoing project called Quilts for Hope, which has so far seen 400 women come together to create patches for seven quilts.

Three have already been delivered to affected communities in Israel, and others will be displayed as part of the memorial in Melbourne.

Atida Lipshatz, the coordinator of Quilts for Hope, watched on as the museum curators hung one of the quilts and explained that the project began as a way to help people cope with what had happened on October 7.

"The beauty of it is people are creating their own pieces, getting the therapy — it's a way of expressing their love and unity with the people suffering in Israel but also to relieve their own anxieties, through an art therapy," she explained.

"But then the coming together of the pieces, created something beautiful that we would then gift to the people who were so badly affected."

Other people donated materials for the project, including old Shabbat tablecloths, which form the basis of the quilts.

The director of the museum, Noè Harsel, said it was a privilege for them to display the quilt.

"Australia is a multicultural society, and as a multicultural society, the stories of all communities are important and precious," she said.

"The stories of the Jewish community are just as important and precious as all communities, and we need to know them, we need to tell them and we need to understand them."

Ms Harsel said after a year that was difficult for "all communities", understanding stories was vital.

"To celebrate the difference, and to celebrate the sameness, because that's truly how we understand each other," she said.