Celebrations recently turned to sorrow as Sarah Schecker became one of many Jewish-Americans who found herself in a living nightmare as war broke out between Israel and Hamas over the weekend.
The 26-year-old Schecker flew out last Thursday for the wedding of a longtime family friend. The friend is part of a family originally from the Boston area that has since moved to Israel.
Schecker said she was barely in Israel for 12 hours when the sirens started to wail.
“It’s like a blur,” she said. “There was just so much that happened. I feel like I was there for a month. I was there for three days.”
Schecker said she and family members spent all of Saturday morning in a bomb shelter. From their shelter, she said, the group could hear Israel’s Iron Dome defense system intercepting rockets overhead.
With some friends killed at a music festival that Hamas attacked, and other friends getting called up to fight, Schecker knew she had to get out.
She booked the first flight out of Israel she could find. But even the cab ride to the airport Monday proved to be dangerous as rockets continued to fire.
Schecker said she asked what to do if sirens went off while she was in the car.
“She was explaining how you lie on the ground of the highway,” Schecker said of the answer she received. “The driver will pull over. Get a little bit away from the car. You put your hands on your head and you pray.”
Schecker eventually got to the airport to find thousands of stranded travelers left scrambling after many commercial airlines canceled flights.
From there, Schecker waited hours to board a plane to Vienna, making sure to stay close to the airport terminal bomb shelters at all times.
Schecker later made her way to London and then to New York City, all totaling a roughly 48-hour ordeal.
Speaking with 7NEWS on Wednesday, Schecker was still processing her feelings of gratitude, grief and guilt.
“I came to Israel for a wedding and I ended up going to a double funeral,” she said.
Schecker continued, though, saying this great escape gives her a new perspective that she doesn’t take for granted.
“If somebody told me Thursday night before I got on the plane what I was going to experience, I would still get on that plane,” she said.
As of Wednesday, the US State Department was advising but not assisting Americans trying to get out of Israel or Gaza.
As if finding her way safely out of Israel wasn’t enough, Schecker said she took advantage of time spent sitting around during the approximately 48-hour period to fundraise for her friends who were called up to fight. In that time alone, Schecker raised $3,000 to help buy supplies for her friends’ IDF units.
Schecker said she will continue fundraising moving forward.
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