‘Leaves a tremendous mark on you’: Georgians recount arduous journeys home

For each of the travelers it was a reminder that war often simmers on the brink in the Middle East and can erupt at any moment.

“I went for a wedding, I went for something very happy. (When the war began,) it was a complete 180,” said Roey Shoshan, who was born and raised in Israel but now lives in Atlanta. “To be there, physically on the ground when it’s all going down, really leaves a tremendous mark on you, and … you realize the complexity of life in Israel.”

Tough, even for the familiar

Growing up in Israel, Shoshan is familiar with frequent sirens signaling an urgent need to find shelter. But every new conflict can be unpredictable.

“You really have no idea how long this is going to go, and if it’s the first round or there’s going to be more,” he said. “As the situation continued to escalate, the Iranians would send missiles at various times. So there was no way of really anticipating when it’s going to happen.”

Twice, he was driving on the freeway when alarms rang out. From that point, he had 10 minutes to find the nearest safe cover and ran to a gas station where he said he sheltered with people of all backgrounds.

He was visiting the country for a couple of weeks for his brother’s wedding. Despite the bomb threats, he felt more calm and comforted by being in Israel, knowing that if anything were to happen, his family would be together. If the internet went down or phone lines were cut off, he knew where his family was.

Because his passport says he was born in Israel, he wasn’t comfortable traveling through Jordan or Egypt so Shoshan waited until the Israeli airport opened up, more than a week after his scheduled flight. But being there, during the war, brought its own significance, he said.

“This is something that you’re going to read about in history books,” he said. “Israel has decided to do something that could really change the landscape and the narrative in the Middle East.”

Wendy Klarman of Dunwoody also attended the same wedding as Shoshan in Tel Aviv. Before she and her husband got to Israel, she was scared and anxious about the visit. “But when I got there, I was having so much fun, I said I want to extend my trip longer,” she said.

Then the alarms began to sound on the streets, and strangely, she said, “for some reason, I don’t know why, but I had faith.”

She quickly learned the protocol to stay safe: “When you go to bed, have your water bottle ready, your shoes and your go-bag ready.”

Inside the shelter, she focused on keeping her energy calm. But afterward, “it takes a minute to unwind and you’re laying in bed and you can hear the artillery echoing off in the distance, boom, boom.”

Klarman’s initial flight home was canceled and she eventually got in touch with her travel insurance carrier. She and her husband traveled south to the Israeli city of Eilat, crossed the border into Egypt, got a flight to Istanbul and finally arrived back at their home in Atlanta nearly 40 hours later.

A first-timer’s journey

Sonia Delgado of Alpharetta traveled to Israel with her best friend as part of a volunteering effort through the Jewish National Fund, a nonprofit organization.

She visited the Dead Sea, Masada National Park and Yad Vashem, the Holocaust Remembrance museum. Everything changed when bomb sirens after Israel’s strike on Iran.

One night, after several days of fighting, she felt a strike hit close enough to shake the whole building.

“That’s when I really started feeling the pressure that we needed to find a way out,” Delgado said.

She eventually got in touch with state Rep. Long Tran, a Democrat who represents Dunwoody. Because his district contains a significant Jewish population, Tran has become somewhat of an expert in coordinating travelers with resources to get them home safely.

“That man stayed in touch with me every day, checked on me if I hadn’t checked in with him. He asked where we were going to be, and if we were out of medications,” she said.

Tran connected Delgado with Project Dynamo, a rescue organization that gets people trapped in conflict zones back to their home. They coordinated with her to leave Israel and cross the border into Jordan, where she and her friend could catch a flight out.

Organizers told her they wouldn’t leave anyone behind, they would only move if it’s safe, and there would be plenty of security. Still, “they warned us, this is a very fluid and dynamic situation. Things can change.”

When going through security in Jordan, Delgado said they instructed travelers to pack light and smart: “Don’t show your yarmulke. Don’t show your tefillin. Hide it. Put a hat on. Don’t speak Hebrew.”

Eventually, they got on a flight to Cyprus, landed in Tampa, Florida, and she took one more plane ride back to Atlanta.

Tran said he focuses on providing travelers with the best choices based on their situation but ultimately leaving it up to them to decide.

“I’ve just learned that you’ve got to get people calm. And once people get calm, you present the options and have people think as rationally as possible,” he said.

As of Thursday, Tran said he was still tracking about 20 families trying to return home.

Left with resolve

Rabbi Peter Berg of The Temple in Atlanta traveled with a group of 15 people to visit Israel and see the state of the country after Oct. 7, 2023, when Hamas killed and abducted Israeli citizens.

The group arrived June 9 and traveled through Tel Aviv, the Gaza border and Haifa, a city in the north. By the time the group got to Jerusalem on June 13, the war reached a severe enough point that they couldn’t leave the hotel, Berg said.

When sirens went off that Friday, the group was in the middle of a Shabbat dinner. They traveled to a shelter, and “everybody was singing songs and trying to keep the Shabbat mood going while we were stuck in the shelter for a couple hours,” he said.

Still, he said the group felt resilient and more determined despite the war.

“I think for the most part, we felt, even looking back, we felt grateful to have been there,” Berg said.