One of the survivors of the Meron disaster was the bochur Shalom Dovid, whose life was saved by a Border Police officer.
“My friend and I were on the way out and I saw how crowded it was,” he told Channel 12 News. “So I told my friend that we need to leave but when we started going down the walkway, it was terribly crowded and suddenly we began slipping on the slippery incline and began falling. And when we reached the steps, each person fell on top of the next person.”
“After everyone fell, a Border Police officer bent down to me and said: ‘Don’t scream, just breathe, just breathe in and out.'”
“And while he was talking to me, he placed his legs on either side of my head. And if he wouldn’t have done that, my head would have been trampled. He tapped me on my head and asked if I was okay to try to keep me conscious.”
Dovid, who doesn’t know the name of the policeman and would like to find him, turned to the camera and said: “I want to tell you, thank you so much. You concentrated only on me and you saved my life.”
(YWN Israel Desk – Jerusalem)
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2 Responses
“Instead of being 4 exits out of the Toldos Aharon complex as recommended by the Fire and Rescue Service, the police blocked all other exits out of the complex, so there was a single exit. Then at 12.30am, the police also blocked that exit without making any announcement that exit was blocked. Over the next 25 minutes more and more people exited the Toldos Aharon plaza via the metal ramp, without knowing the exit at the bottom of the stairs had been blocked by police. Shortly before 1am, people started to asphyxiate to death while the police looked on and refused to open the exit. Then shortly before 1am, police pulled the gates at the bottom of the stairs away – and instantly the crowd of people collapsed on top of each other. That’s how 45 people were crushed and asphyxiated to death – and despite all this ‘heroic police’ spin, the nation knows the truth.”
While it may be true that the police as a system was wrong, which should be fully investigated, it still doesnt diminish what this individual policeman did, he did save the life of a young man and he is a hero for that