"I'm sorry I wasn't there when the terrorist was in the house, that I wasn't with Elad, fighting alongside him, even dying with him. The only thing holding me up is my wife, and my son, who was born a day earlier. He came into the world a day before [the attack] to give me strength," says Shmuel Salomon, whose brother Elad, father Yossi and sister Chaya were murdered in their home in Halamish by a terrorist on Friday evening. In an interview with Israel Hayom, the full text of which will run in the weekend supplement, the three surviving children of Tova and Yossi Salomon -- Shmuel Salomon, Orit Marcus and Racheli Anzel -- talk about their childhood home, which became the site of a bloodbath. As well as their father and siblings being murdered in the attack, their mother was wounded and is still in hospital. "We knew from the news that three people had been murdered inside the house," Orit says. "I talked with the emergency team in Neve Tzuf [Halamish], and they refused to give me any details. I shouted at them on the phone: 'Who's dead? My mother? My father-'" Michal Salomon, Elad's widow, called Orit's husband, Dror, from the room where she was hiding with her children. She told him in English, so the children wouldn't understand, "My husband is dead." Orit informed her other sister, Racheli, that the terrorist "killed everyone." Michal Salomon describes how she had been sitting with her children in the living room after the Friday night meal, playing with them. The terrorist, who had been looking in from the kitchen window, came inside and turned toward the kitchen, where people were standing. His back was to the living room, where Michal and her children were. "I know that Elad saw us running upstairs and knew that his job was to do everything to keep him at bay," she says. "When I went downstairs [after the stabbing], I saw him [Elad] breathing his last breaths, and I longed to go to him and hug him, but I knew that if I did that, I wouldn't be able to go back upstairs to the children -- I was wearing a light-colored dress and Elad was covered in blood. He took three breaths and then stopped moving. "It was as if he wanted to see that I was all right, and then he let go, as if he knew he had fulfilled his mission to protect us," she says. "I don't feel like a hero. I did what I had to do," she adds, referring to her quick response in getting her three older children upstairs and hiding them. None of the bereaved siblings plans to return to the home. "It's the home I grew up in. I have memories of every inch of it, but I can't set foot in the place where my family's blood was spilled," says Shmuel Salomon. Meanwhile, the condition of Tova Salomon, who is hospitalized in Shaare Zedek Medical Center in Jerusalem, is improving. Dr. Ofer Merin, head of the hospital's trauma unit, said the medical staff would try to have her released so she can sit shiva, the traditional seven-day mourning period.
