On the morning of the festival of Simchat Torah, ten of Shifra Buchris’ children woke up in the Merhav Am settlement in the Negev, and discovered that their mother was not at home.
Inspector Shifra is the commander of the patrol unit in the border guard for the southern part of the country. She commands many fighters every day and that morning, without receiving an order from anyone, she realized very early on what was happening and went out with her lieutenant and two other policemen.
Shifra drove with another vehicle towards Re’im where there had been a party and the terrorists had invaded. In a brief moment, thousands of concert goers were caught up in a battlefield and Shifra and her friends knew that they all needed to be rescued from the terrorists.
For eleven hours Shifra and her team drove under continuous fire and risked their lives, to help get dozens of young people out of danger and to a safe place. Each time after evacuating people from the area of the attack, they turned around and returned to the concert area to help more people who were expecting to be saved by them.
Shifra and the other policemen escaped dozens of terrorists each time they passed them on their way to the survivors. They drove very fast on bumpy dirt roads, with one goal in mind: to save more and more people.
"I'm a fighter in my soul," said Shifra, "but I decided that I wouldn't fight but rather focus on the survivors. I decided to take care of the wounded and make sure they would be ok, so we didn't even delay fighting the terrorists." When they encountered the terrorists, Shifra and the police caught them and tied their hands and feet and handed them over to the army.
"I don't know if it has anything to do with the fact that I am a mother of ten children," says Shifra, "but the thought that something could happen to your child is a thought that no mother can bear. I thought about the other mothers and I knew one thing: my fighters and I needed to return as many children as possible to their mothers waiting for them at home".
Shifra gave birth to her own ten children but she also gave many other children the chance to continue living their lives. This mother is a legend.
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