Shani Louk’s Mother: ‘Sometimes, I Feel Like She’s Abroad, Then I Remember’

i24 News – More than two years after the October 7 attack, the grief of Ricarda Louk remains as raw as ever.

The mother of Shani Louk, the Israeli-German woman murdered by Hamas terrorists during the Nova music festival massacre, says time has not healed the wound.

In an interview with the German Jewish newspaper Jüdische Allgemeine, she speaks of enduring pain and her distress over what she sees as Germany’s fading memory of that day.

“Time softens the pain for a moment, but then everything brings me back to October 7,” she says. “I am shocked all over again by the realization that Shani is gone.” At times, she admits, denial creeps in. “I feel as though she is still traveling abroad, that she will come home one day and knock on the door. Then the images return, of the terrorists with their rifles, and reality sets in.”

Shani Louk’s abduction and murder resonated far beyond Israel. Images showing her lifeless body in the back of a pickup truck, surrounded by Hamas fighters, spread across the globe.

Taken by an Associated Press photographer and later awarded prizes, the photographs are permanently etched in her mother’s mind. “I will carry these images with me forever,” Ricarda Louk says, recalling as well the moment her son collapsed after seeing the video.

Shani Louk’s body was repatriated by the Israeli army in May 2024 so she could be buried. Yet her mother feels that Germany never fully confronted the magnitude of what happened. She criticizes how quickly the fate of the hostages, including German citizens held by a terrorist organization, disappeared from public discussion.

“Why didn’t Germany exert more pressure on Hamas?” she asks, convinced that stronger international pressure might have helped bring about a ceasefire sooner.

Ricarda Louk also expresses anger at what she views as morally troubling comparisons between victims of terrorism and civilian casualties of war. She points to reactions in Germany following a deadly terrorist attack in Jerusalem, where civilians were shot on a bus, noting that the attack was minimized by arguments about higher casualty figures elsewhere.

Despite her grief, she remains determined to preserve her daughter’s memory. Shani, she says, believed deeply in humanity and often said that “there are no bad people, only people who are suffering.”

Open-minded and unconcerned with nationality or religion, she embodied an ideal of tolerance her mother hopes will survive. “I still believe that something good can emerge from these horrors,” Ricarda Louk says, urging young people in Germany to think independently, seek reliable information, and resist slogans, hatred, and misinformation circulating on social media.